If you don’t know the rules of engagement in any activity, you cannot excel. The good thing about life is that several principles are parallel and they don’t need to have a point of convergence; they do not need to logically agree with each other.
A lot of arguments are borne out of a limited understanding of life. God is a God of love, but He also kills. If you like argue from Jos to Jericho, it does not change the mutually exclusive truths. There are principles that work for one person, in particular locations and circumstances, that might not work for others in different climes. I have found the principles of delayed gratification and gradualism very useful in my family.
The pictures in this slide are pictures of our new school, Petra Christian Academy, Okwokoko, near Osubi Airport. This land used to be my mother-in-law’s cassava farm. We bought it from the family about 20 years back. I remember vividly when my wife used to come harvest cassava there and someone made mockery of her that, “those who went to school are now the ones peeling cassava”. Then, we just returned from Aba after selling our hospital to start ministry.
Play your game, don’t listen to commentators, they don’t win medals. Focus on your goal, and put in the effort to win your game.
We started building this school in 2018, but we had moulded blocks many, many years back. When others were selling their portions to buy cars to live large, we held on to our own. Any time we sold a portion from the land, we reinvested part of the money on larger pieces of land in more peripheral and cheaper areas. We sold most times because of the challenges of training our children overseas. We do not regret any of such sales because it’s a win-win situation.
We have been building this school comprising of a nursery, primary, and secondary section, a beautiful duplex for the administrator, bookshop, reception, and gatehouse with the principle of gradualism. It’s located in a well-built area.
My wife has always believed that you should not let your mates meet you where or how they saw you previously. She insists that we must improve on our former best. One of the challenges we have presently at Petra Christian Academy, Ughelli, is accessibility. We have only one access road. But here, we have several access roads. We started with ‘fitness for purpose’ at Ughelli, but here, we will complete the school and officially open it by the grace of God on August 25th, 2022, on my wife’s 61st birthday.
You would have noticed that we are more into building schools. Find what works for you, grow, and improve in that space. Diversify very carefully. Focus is very very important. Whatever we have invested here could have been squandered on frivolities and grandiosity. But my wife, who is the project manager, has remained focused on achieving our family goals.
I derive so much fulfilment from this school project because when my father-in-law died, her family refused to train her because she was a girl child. They said it was a waste to train her for her husband. Today, this project is the biggest project and investment by an indigene in Okuokoko. Secondly, we have shut up all those who made mockery of us with a spectacular result. That’s my prayer for you, too, in Jesus name amen.
God Bless You.
