Talebearing24- A Patient Dog Eats the Fattest Bones

          Once upon a time, there lived two sisters who were twins. They were living with their parents who were poor. Their parents struggled everyday to make both ends meet. Their father was full of wisdom and he always created time to counsel his daughters about the need to be patient in whatever they were doing. He talked to them about so many other virtues, like tolerance, endurance, good behaviour and he always ended his talks with a saying that "whoever had patience had everything". When these twins were eighteen years old, their father died. They felt greatly the impact of their father's demise because they lost a god companion who also counselled them and a breadwinner.

         Soon after the death of their father, their mother found things difficult. As a result of this, she took the twins to her distant relation who was living a few kilometers away. Their mother's relation accepted them but he was a cruel man who maltreated the girls so much. They were to do all the house chores at home and followed the man to the farm. While they worked so hard at home, the man's only daughter would sleep endlessly. She was very lazy and spoilt.
         One day, Rachael, the man's daughter went to the man's room and stole four thousand naira. The man was so furious and called the twins to his parlour. He concluded that it was the twins who must have stolen the money. They were beaten and punished heavily for the money they didn't take.
The hard life and suffering continued for a long time. One day, Kehinde called her twin sister, Taiwo and told her that she wanted to run away to their mother. Taiwo reminded her that she should be patient as their late father used to tell them when he was alive. Kehinde refused to lisen to her sister's advice, and soon after, she ran back to their mother. When she got home, she counldn't continue her education because there was no money. She got married when she was twenty-one to a poor man who couldn't take good care of her. Soon after their marriage, their mother also died.
          Taiwo felt the grief of her mother's death and she determined more than ever before to be patient to get what she wanted. She finished her secondary school and gained admission into a University to study Accountancy. As time went on, the man she was living with grew to like her and he decided to sponsor her

education at the University. Rachael, the biological daughter of the man, had dropped out of secondary school and she had become a wayward and virtueless girl without a bright future.
          Taiwo finished her University education and graduated as an Accountant. Three years after her graduation, she got married to a pilot and she lived happily with her husband. After her marriage, she got a job with an international organization which necessitated that she should go and work in the United State of America. Before she travelled to the United State of America, a send-off party was organised for her. The man who sponsored her to school was invited to the party. Rachael and kehinde were also present at the party. When the man rose up to talk about Taiwo, he praised her for her endurance and patience. He ended his speech by saying that "I really agree that a patient dog eats the fattest bone".

Talebearing24: Every Good Boy Deserves Favour

Once upon a time, there was a boy called Godswill. This boy came from a good home of a monogamous family of three. The elder sister was out of the country, Godswill was the second born of the family. He was a well-disciplined boy to the extent that everybody in their neighbourhood loved him unlike his younger brother called Theophillus who was very  rude, arrogant and ill-mannered.

Anytime Godswill was sent on an errand, he would quickly go and come back in a jiffy with a satisfactory response. This made his parents to love him more. Even this superb attitude of his reflected in his academic performance at school because he used to come first in a class of thirty students whereas the reverse was the case for  Theophillus. Most times, he would be punished at home for doing wrong things at the right time, his teacher used to complain of his laziness and non-chanllant attitudes toward his academics at school.

His parents always used his brother, Godswill as a good example in the course of advising Theophillus with the hope that he would turn a new leaf but to no avail. Days turned into weeks

while months turned into years, both were growing as expected but there was no time their parents saw Theophillus that they would not feel unhappy for his bad characters. They didn’t relent in their prayers and efforts for him to change for betterment.

One day, their parents decided to buy Godswill’s favourite for him with the intent that this might change Theophillus for good. They bought varieties of good clothes, two pairs of shoes, leather belts and handset. When Theophilus saw all these items, he felt dejected and shamefully asked for his own, they told him to turn a new leaf if he desired good things and favour from them. Theophilus wept bitterly and promised his parents that he would change for betterment.   

Talebearing24: What a Horrible Dream!

I had a very terrible dream last week. I just found myself in a thick forest wandering about all alone. The forest was very deadly hearing a lot of horrible and strange voices from different angles which made me to be seriously frightened. My heart was beating fast because I didn't know where particularly I found myself and how I would get out of this horrible place.          
Not quite long, I saw a jinn with two heads and four hands coming towards me. It had a pointed horn on its fore-head while its eyes were very reddish. In no time, I quickly took to my heel to escape for my life not knowing that it would still chase me. The more I ran the closer it moved towards me. I was severely sweating and thinking of another means of escaping from this ugly creature.
It got to a point where there was no path infront of me except a bottomless pit, I stopped and turned back to where I was coming from but unfortunately the so-called jinn was nearly at me. The jinn was laughing in a mockery manner that he had got me. All this tme, my heart was beating fast as if it was about to come out from my entire body.
All of a sudden, the jinn ran to catch me when a gun was shot from unknown source at the jinn and it quickly disappeared. I opened my eyes and realised that it was all a dream. When I woke up, I was still shaking and sweating.

Talebearing24: What an Impatience and Non-endurance!

      Bentil was a conscientious senior clerical officer promoted to the rank of Deputy Personnel Manager of the Ministry of Science and Technology in Jos. His colleagues, envious of his promotion and critical of his no-nonsense attitude to work, resorted to intrigues and got him sacked. For one year, Bentil could not secure a new job. Life became unbearable for him - he could hardly provide for his family, and sadly enough, his wife left him in the lurch.  One morning, Bentil ran into an old friend, Francis, and narrated his ordeal to him. He humbly pleaded with him to come to his aid. In sympathy, Francis gave him some money and the addresses of three oil companies in Port Harcourt to apply for a job. Bentil thanked him immensely. 

       On reaching home, Bentil wrote letters of application to the oil companies. After two months, one of the oil companies invited him for an interview for the post of Personnel Manager on a Tuesday at 9.00a.m. But he was required to report  at the company's hotel in Port Harcourt at 6.00p.m.on Monday preceding the interview. This he did obediently. When
Bentil reached the company's hotel that Monday evening, he was very tired and hungry due to long trip from Jos.The lack of water in his suite and the poor reception by the hotel infuriated him so much that he openly made insolent remarks about the hotel.

      After a late supper, he entered his suite only to discover that there was power outage. He could hardly cope with the heat and hordes of mosquitoes in his suite. Ablaze with anger, Bentil rushed to the receptionist complaining bitterly about the hotel's services. The receptionist ignored him.

      On Tuesday morning, Bentil, in exasperation, rained abuses on the company's driver, who had come two hours late to drive him to the venue of the interview. Both the driver and the official who accompanied him remained unruffled by Bentil's behaviour. Bentil did not know that all his ordeal in the hotel was a ploy by the company's management to test his patience and endurance when faced with challenging situations. The panel of interviewers explained that to him. Thus, Bentil was unfortunately disqualified for the job but must have learnt his lesson from this experience.

Talebearing24: "You reap what you sow"

       Many believe that the life they have is a gift from God and should be handled with delicacy while others simply believe it is theirs and they can do what they like with it there are those who don’t know where their life is from but a common juncture to all of us is the "Law of karma”. karma implies that what goes  around definitely comes around that a man is bound to reap whatsoever he sows I personally do not believe this until a man wept bitterly before my very eyes and confessed to being a victim of karma himself . His story was a short and pathetic one which relays below.
         Mr Ogunjimi as fondly called was a teacher in a public school with over thirty years experience. He was the type of young brilliant teacher (at least in those days) whom students loved to relate with. This gave Mr Ogunjimi a lot of access and even vote of confidence from both parents and the likes.   Then came to the destiny destroyer , Mr Ogunjimi found himself threatening students with failures and examination scores that he became a literary ''terror" in the school. He would receive financial bribes from the male and sleep with the female.

          Nothing escaped him, He was like a demi-god until recently. When he claimed that God had struck him just one adequate blow for all that he had done in the past. Mr Ogunjimi's wife and four children (2 graduates and 2 undergraduates) were to return from Ghana, where he preferred that they live and stay so as to have across to the kind of life he had grown used to. His excuse was that he preferred Ghanaian education and English to that of Nigeria .The traveling troops were just returning into Nigeria when they had a ghastly motor accident with no survivors. The news had just been brought to him that very day he rushed to meet his pastor. He had met his own karma for all the lives he threatened, destroyed and toyed with. I guess Mr Ogunjimi reaped what he sowed

Talebearing24: The Dangers in Drug Abuse

         Drug abuse has become a matter of constant discussion n the radio, television and in the daily newspapers recently. The menace of drug abuse in our country has reached a frightening proportion and it has pervaded every sector of our society. Drugs, which are made from medicinal substance formulated by pharmacists for the cure of the people's ailments, is used wrongly and abused by people across the social strata. A lot of people just walk across to the nearby chemist to their houses to buy drugs which are not prescribed for them by a pharmacist or a doctor, thus abusing the drugs. There are lots of dangers in drug abuse. In fact, many families have endangered the lives of their members through self medication. There are cases of many small children who lost their lives simply because their parents, out of ignorance, purchased drugs from chemists and even in the common markets without any doctor's prescription and administered such drugs on their children. In our society nowadays, it is common to see young children with one deformity or the other. This is so because many pregnant women abuse drugs easily.

         

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         They simply buy drugs and use them without doctor's prescription during pregnancy. The resultant effect of this ignorant act is that most babies are born with one deformity or the other. Drug abuse also leads to the several psychiatric cases we have around the country. Several youths take drugs such as heroine, cocaine, Indian hemp which affect their brain. They take these drugs ostensibly because they want to be in fashion and they want to be daring and bold. Consequently, most of them constitute themselves into nuisance to the society and end up in psychiatric hospitals. Our national prestige and honor are not spared of the gruesome effect of the social malaise called drug abuse. Many Nigerians traveling abroad are subjected to derogatory search at the points of entry into other countries. This has destroyed our international image as many Nigerians are found to be carriers and couriers of these hard drugs.

             Many crimes in the country can be linked to drug abuse. The high rate of criminal activities is a pointer to the danger inherent in drug abuse. Armed robbers and the likes operate under the influence of drugs which make them to be so daring and ruthless in their nefarious activities. It is certain that drug abuse has posed a lot of dangers on our society and the government has to do something about it. Our people need to be enlightened about the dangerous consequences of drug abuse. Mass enlightenment campaign should be organized by the government. In addition, the government should promulgate a law which forbids the sale of drugs in the common open market and there should also be a law which forbids a chemist from selling drugs to the public without prescription paper from a doctor or a pharmacist. Religious bodies also have a role to play in educating the public about the dangers of drug abuse.

Talebearing24: Heavy Rain In Ibadan Metropolis

This day dated 26th August, 2011 started on a brighter note as usual, various activities were going on without being disturbed in the early hours of the day in all the nooks and crannies of the metropolis. There was a little shinning of the sun around 11:00hrs which was normal and bearable.

After this shinning of the sun, the cloud started gathering momentum in the sky and before we knew it, the weather had been completely changed into a cloudy and rainy type. This did not send any signal to the people because people had seen and experienced such friendly environment before which later faded away, but the reverse was the case on this day.

Around 16:30hrs, the rain began to fall with a very soft hand for few minutes and stopped. It did that severally but when it returned, it continued to fall heavily for several hours, everywhere was full of running-off water. This rain was expected to fall for few minutes and stop but it was not so. What a big surprise!

Many fences collapsed, shops were carted away by this heavy downpour while many bridges were not left out. Properties and lives were lost in this flood. What a fateful day!

Nobody could ever imagine such ugly occurrence in Ibadan metropolis on this day. There was no junction without traffic jam. Several bridges that linked two roads to each other had been carted away by this overflowing running-off water which compounded the menace of the traffic jam and standstill

of vehicular movement. This resulted into the movement of the people on the road with the legs. The car owners abandoned their cars and trekked long distance to their various homes.

The remaining bridges were covered up by the flood. When the flood was coming not knowing that there was a traffic jam on the bridges, having seen this odd and uncalled-for visitor by the drivers, they alighted from their cars and took to their heels for the safety of their lives, it swallowed the cars and drove them away. Nobody could ascertain the amount

 of losses of properties and the number of peoples' lives that went with this disastrous and unfriendly incident.

One could compare what happened in Ibadan metropolis concerning the unstopped rain to "Omiyale" meaning house carted away by water that occurred in 1980 in the same city about thirty-one years ago, where many lives and properties were lost then as well. What a tragedy!

This odd occurrence is not the first time in this particular year but this one was very exceptional. This problem can be traced to the poor management of the few available drainage or inadequate drainage system in all the nooks and crannies of the city. Many shops and buildings were built on the drainage paths while some buildings were built very close to the riverbank. Small gutters were constructed by the landlords and landladies without the knowledge of the engineers.

The available drainage and gutters were blocked with the eroded soil and wastes from human activities and erosion. Nobody or few cares for the cuttings and clearing of grasses in the drainage or gutter paths which also constituted to this problem. Environmental sanitation is not as effective as what and how it was known to be in 90s.

To put an end to this ugly incident, government be it local, state or federal has vital roles to play. People are needed to be enlightened and seriously-educated on how to dispose their wastes and where to dispose them. Law-enforcement agents should be employed and mobilized to oversee this process in the nook and cranny of the city.

Carted away bridges should be strongly constructed and raised above the water level to avoid such occurrence in the future. The drainage system needs to be seriously looked into and found lasting solutions to this problem. Town planners should checkmate the man's activities on the erection of buildings and shops on the drainage or near the drainage and dismantle any building or shop found on its path to pave way for running-off water.

Jingles should be made on radio and television stations across the country to enlighten people not to dispose wastes or refuses into the drainage system or gutters. Any defaulter must be sanctioned and prosecuted. If all these solutions are considered by the government and the masses, the problem of flooding which can lead to loss of lives and properties in future will be a thing of the past. Peace brings development and people want to live in peace not in pieces, for this to be realized, government must do something very tangible at this moment time. God blesses Ibadan, God blesses Oyo State and God blesses Nigeria as a whole.