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Food for Living: Choose Your Name Wisely
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By Henry Ukazu
Greetings Dear Friends,
We all have names which our parents, godfather/mother, or even good relatives and friends gave to us at birth, and we always like to be addressed rightly and with respect before we respond. Just to let you know how powerful your name can be, if you are called a name that is not yours, there’s every tendency you won’t respond, nor matter how nice it may sound. Even if you are called the right name but with the wrong pronunciation, you might also feel slighted to respond, and even if you respond, you’ll react in a way as to offer correction. This is because names are very symbolic, and according to the platinum rule, people are treated the way they wish to be addressed.
Names are very powerful and they have deep meanings, and as a result, must be chosen wisely. Names are regarded as trademarks/logos and come in different shapes and sizes. Some people even have nicknames which have defined them in different ways. Even in business; the name you choose has an impact on people’s perception, especially your potential clients. Therefore, it is imperatively and critically important for you to consider whatever name you will like to be associated with.
A name is an identity. It is a descriptor that allows people to make quick judgments and assumptions about us. When a particular name is mentioned, a lot of questions normally come to mind. We can even assume what it is likely to be. Our names and identities are regarded as the first impressions people have about us. For example, how we dress, the way we wear our hair, how we behave, and even where we go; all begin with our identity and what we call ourselves. Whether it is religion, sexuality or gender, it is part of an identity that can influence how you present yourself to the world, and how you interact with the world. Depending on the situation and circumstance, what we call ourselves may change. That is why it is important for you to consider the name, group or network you are associated with.
The big question we have to answer is what name do I respond to? As human beings, some of us are very sensitive, some are conservative while others tend to have a liberal attitude towards life. Depending on which category you belong to, you can decide to be the game-changer in whatever situation you are into. You may have been called a dull person, lazy being, slow, ugly, fat, etc., but how you respond is actually what makes the ultimate difference. As you may know, life is not what happens to you, but how you react to it. It should be noted that you can’t stop people calling you negative names, but you can decide to choose what you answer to. As a an advice, don’t answer names you are called, when they call you hello depressed, short, unattractive, unqualified, sick, orphan, just calmly respond, ‘sorry there’s no one by that name around here, I guess you may have gotten the wrong address’. In a rhetoric way, you can also respond, do you mean positive, tall, smart, healthy, blessed, beautiful, handsome, extraordinary, talented, skillful, etc.
Studies suggest that liking your own name is predictive of well-being and happiness, and it also positively affects your self-esteem. But does your name affect how other people treat you? According to Dale Carnegie.
“A person’s name is to him or her the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” Why then is it so important to call people their true names? A person’s name is the greatest connection to their own identity and individuality. Some might say it is the most important word in the world to that person. This is because it is one of the fastest and easiest ways to get someone’s attention especially when they are teased or praised.
Here are some tips on how you can use your name to influence your brand.
Make it a commitment:
Make a commitment to answer whatever uplifts and support your vision. Once you are subconsciously aware of what happens around you, do yourself a favor to international change the narrative by changing the negative news or information that surrounds you or your business. For example, you can work on your self, business, brand, organization, etc; to the extent, people will recognize you as an excellent or reliable person/brand as opposed to the different labels that bring negative vibes to you. As you may know, the world is governed by perception.
Practice:
Practicing whatever name brand you want to be associated with is a great way to bring change to not only your personal life but your business or brand. You can do this by calling yourself names of interest that appeal to you. You may be surprised to know it will come back to you. Don’t be concerned about the negative voices you may be hearing from friends or even family members, just continue to work on your craft. There have been testimonies of people who dreamt of being a governor, president, leader of an industry, etc. despite not having what it takes to be the person in the picture. They were able to act it in addition to calling themselves the names and guess what, it’s it came to pass. In one of my articles I published five years ago titled: Dreams Come True, I opined that your dreams are valid and it will come true if you work hard, believe in yourself and have the God factor around you.
Ignore the name tag:
As mentioned earlier, it is up to you to respond to whatever name you decide to answer. Names don’t matter anything unless you give it the needed power/energy it needs to feed on. Names are like dead woods, but you can activate life into it when you speak life into it. Names work with our minds, when you decide to call yourself love, love will automatically follow you.
Furthermore, Ignore the nay-sayers and give your attention to what brings you life, and when you do, the desired transformation will begin to rear up. Personally, I was called names because of my horrible writing skills, but I have been able to author a book by the special grace of God which my detractors have not been able to accomplish. The secret is simple, I never answered the negative names I was called.
Creating Opportunity:
Knowing how to relate with people is a powerful skill that is in high demand. A good personal relation skill will create opportunities for you. It’s like a charm that can disarm even the most hardened person to respond to stimuli. As popularly opined in some social parlance, if a man can make a lady to smile, he’s halfway into her heart. It is important to note that people want to be treated as human beings, not objects. Using their name is the fastest and most reliable way of building rapport and creating a good first impression. Everyone has a name — use it to better connect to them, especially if you work in the customer service position. You will notice a difference in your relationships.
In conclusion, what is your name?
Henry Ukazu writes from New York. He works with the New York City Department of Correction as the Legal Coordinator. He’s the author of the acclaimed book Design Your Destiny – Actualizing Your Birthright To Success. He can be reached via henrous@gmail.com
The Enugu State Forest Guard (ENSFG) has recorded major operational successes in separate intelligence-led security operations across Nsukka and Uzo-Uwani local government areas, resulting in the rescue of a kidnap victim, the arrest of three suspected criminal operatives, the recovery of stolen property, and the successful foiling of another attempted kidnapping, National Association of Online Security News Publishers, NAOSNP can report.
In Nsukka Local Government Area, operatives of the Enugu State Forest Guard, working jointly with members of the local hunters’ association, successfully rescued Mrs. Asadu Calistar of Opkuje Community, who was abducted by suspected kidnappers while working on her farm with her children along the Anuka Road axis.
Acting swiftly on credible intelligence, the joint security team launched a coordinated search-and-rescue operation and engaged the kidnappers in an exchange of gunfire. The victim was rescued unharmed, one suspected kidnapper was arrested, while three others fled into the forest. The victim and the suspect have been handed over to the Nigeria Police Force for further investigation, while bush-combing operations continue to apprehend the fleeing suspects.
In a separate operation in Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area, operatives of the Ogboli Forest Guard, in collaboration with the Ogurugu and Ojjor Neighbourhood Watch groups, arrested Mr. Ugbedeojo John and Mr. Chidi Adaji, who were allegedly conveying two dismantled stolen motorcycles.
Preliminary investigation revealed that the motorcycles had been dismantled, with the engines and several major components allegedly sold at Adani, while the remaining parts were recovered during the operation. The recovered exhibits were later identified by their owner, Mr. Edwin Dibiagu. The suspects and recovered exhibits have been handed over to the Nigeria Police Force for further investigation and necessary legal action, while efforts continue to identify and apprehend other members of the suspected criminal network.
Later the same day, at about 1820 hours, the Enugu State Forest Guard successfully foiled an attempted kidnapping along the Opi–Agu-Agu–Ekwegbe–Agu-Ukehe (Ugwuogo) Road in Nsukka Local Government Area.
Suspected armed kidnappers reportedly emerged from the adjoining bush at Opi-Uno and opened fire on a passing Toyota Sienna vehicle and other road users in an apparent attempt to force vehicles to stop for abduction. Responding promptly to the distress call, operatives of the Enugu State Forest Guard Headquarters Special Squad, working alongside the Distress Response Squad (DRS) of the Nigeria Police Force, engaged the armed suspects in a gun battle, forcing them to abandon their operation and flee into the surrounding forest.
Security operatives recovered several expended 7.62mm calibre cartridge cases believed to have been fired from AK-pattern rifles. No person was kidnapped during the attempted attack, and joint pursuit operations by the Nsukka Forest Guard Command and Ezimo Sector are ongoing to apprehend the fleeing suspects.
The Enugu State Forest Guard commends the courage, professionalism, and vigilance of its personnel, the Nigeria Police Force, local hunters, and neighbourhood watch groups whose continued collaboration has significantly strengthened the fight against kidnapping and other violent crimes across the State.
The Command reassures residents that intelligence-led operations and proactive security patrols will continue across Enugu State to deny criminals safe havens and protect lives and property. Members of the public are encouraged to remain vigilant and continue providing timely and credible information to security agencies.
The Enugu State Forest Guard remains steadfast in its commitment to working with all security agencies and community stakeholders to ensure lasting peace, security, and public safety throughout Enugu State.
By Tolulope A. Adegoke PhD
“Progress endures on three quiet anchors: leadership that roots institutions deep, security that keeps possibility alive, and nation building that weaves the many into one lasting strength.”
Leadership, nation building, and security are not abstract ideals. Together they form the operating system that determines whether societies advance or stagnate. When these three elements work in concert, nations generate stability, shared prosperity, and resilience. When they pull apart, insecurity, exclusion, and institutional decay take hold.
Nigeria, the wider African continent, and the global community face converging pressures—multi-dimensional violence, weak institutions, economic exclusion, climate stress, and shifting geopolitics. The response cannot be piecemeal. Progress requires deliberate, solution-oriented strategies that treat leadership, nation building, and security as mutually reinforcing. This article outlines practical pathways and illustrates their impact through specific case studies that convert these inter-linkages into tangible gains for national development, continental advancement, and global well-being.
Core Principles That Guide Effective Action
Three principles underpin workable solutions.
First, security must be both protective and enabling. It creates the space for investment and daily life while drawing its legitimacy from fair and inclusive governance. Second, nation building succeeds when it expands shared economic stakes and a sense of common citizenship, rather than simply managing diversity. Third, leadership delivers lasting results when it prioritises strong institutions over personalised power and links immediate stabilisation to long-term capacity.
These principles shape the concrete measures and case studies that follow.
Nigeria: Building Security and Inclusion Together
Nigeria’s security challenges are complex and multi-theatre. Residual insurgency in the northeast, widespread banditry and kidnapping, farmer-herder conflicts, separatist tensions, and resource-related criminality all strain state capacity. These threats thrive where governance is thin, economic opportunity is scarce, and public trust is low.
A dual-track response is essential. On the operational side, sustained investment in the welfare, training, and equipment of police and military personnel remains critical. Intelligence-led policing, better inter-agency coordination, and technology-supported border management can improve results. Expanding professional state and local security structures under clear national standards can ease the burden on federal forces without fragmenting authority.
Parallel nation-building efforts must tackle the drivers of violence. Targeted programmes that create productive opportunities for young people and rural communities in high-risk areas reduce recruitment pools for armed groups. Transparent resource-revenue sharing, accelerated delivery of education, healthcare, and infrastructure, and practical land-use and livestock reforms can ease competition over scarce resources.
Leadership is the critical link. Clear performance metrics for both security and development outcomes, stronger independent oversight, and policy continuity across electoral cycles increase the chances of durable progress. When citizens see improved safety accompanied by rising incomes and better services, confidence in the state grows and social cohesion strengthens.
Case Studies in Impact: Continental and Global Lessons
Concrete examples demonstrate how aligned leadership, nation building, and security produce measurable results.
Botswana: Institutional Foresight and Sustained Stability Botswana stands as one of Africa’s clearest long-term success stories. At independence in 1966, it was among the poorest countries in the world. Founding President Seretse Khama and successive leaders made early institutional choices that proved decisive. Mineral rights were placed under national rather than tribal or sectional control before major diamond discoveries. Regular multiparty elections, relatively independent institutions, and prudent fiscal management channelled resource revenues into public goods rather than patronage.
The impact has been substantial. Botswana avoided the resource curse that affected several peer economies, maintained political stability for nearly six decades, and achieved consistent economic growth alongside improvements in human development indicators. The case shows that leadership decisions made before resource wealth materialises, combined with consistent nation-building around inclusive institutions and security under the rule of law, can generate broad-based and durable progress.
Rwanda: Rapid Recovery from Catastrophe Rwanda’s experience after the 1994 genocide illustrates the catalytic potential of focused leadership in extreme fragility. The government prioritised rapid restoration of security, centralised administrative capacity, and ambitious economic modernisation. Investments in infrastructure, public services, business environment reforms, and social programmes produced notable gains in poverty reduction, life expectancy, and economic growth over subsequent decades. Kigali’s transformation and the country’s improved rankings on various ease-of-doing-business and governance metrics reflect deliberate nation-building efforts.
At the same time, the highly centralised character of governance has generated ongoing debate about political space and long-term institutional resilience. The Rwandan case demonstrates that decisive leadership can restore order and accelerate development after profound trauma, while also underscoring the importance of gradually expanding inclusion for sustained legitimacy.
Singapore: From Vulnerability to High-Performance State Singapore offers a powerful non-African parallel. Upon independence, the small city-state faced severe security vulnerabilities, ethnic diversity, and limited natural resources. Leadership under Lee Kuan Yew and successors combined rigorous public order and security measures with meritocratic governance, strategic economic positioning, anti-corruption systems, and deliberate nation-building around shared prosperity and multi-ethnic coexistence.
The results transformed Singapore into one of the world’s most competitive and stable economies. High levels of public trust, efficient institutions, and sustained investment in human capital turned geopolitical exposure into a source of disciplined state capacity. The experience highlights how leadership that integrates security, institutional integrity, and inclusive economic opportunity can overcome structural constraints.
Additional African Illustrations Post-conflict recoveries in Sierra Leone and Mozambique further reinforce the pattern. In both cases, progress depended on integrating security-sector reform with political settlements and economic reintegration of former combatants and affected communities. Ghana’s record of successive democratic transitions shows that institutionalised leadership change can reinforce stability and investor confidence even under economic pressure. These examples confirm that context matters, yet the underlying logic remains consistent: security creates space, nation building creates cohesion and opportunity, and leadership aligns the two over time.
Continental Solutions: Strengthening Agency and Shared Resilience
Africa can scale these lessons through pragmatic regional action. Strengthening issue-specific security cooperation—intelligence sharing, joint border operations, and efforts against the financing of armed groups—remains essential even where broader political alignments are contested. Expanding intra-African trade, infrastructure corridors, and skills mobility creates shared economic interests capable of transcending political differences. Investing in a new generation of public leaders oriented toward institutional performance rather than short-term extraction reinforces these gains.
Global Dimensions: Mutual Gains from Local Progress
Stable and productive African states deliver clear benefits beyond the continent. They reduce pressures that fuel irregular migration, limit space for transnational criminal and extremist networks, expand legitimate markets, and contribute to global climate and food-security efforts.
External partners amplify positive outcomes by prioritising capacity strengthening over substitution. Support for African-led security initiatives focused on training, logistics, and institutional reform; investment in climate-smart agriculture and resilient infrastructure; and trade frameworks that reward governance improvements and value addition all align external resources with local priorities. Global leadership that models long-term orientation and respect for institutions reinforces these efforts.
Turning Pathways into Results
Implementation requires realism and discipline. Early, visible improvements in security and basic services build the political capital needed for deeper reforms. Transparent monitoring that tracks both security indicators and development outcomes enables adjustment and accountability. Inclusive consultation—bringing in local communities, traditional institutions, the private sector, and civil society—increases legitimacy and practical relevance.
Leadership development itself is strategic. Structured exposure to comparative experience, evidence-based design, and ethical standards expands the pool of actors capable of sustaining integrated approaches across political cycles. Civic education that connects individual opportunity to broader national and continental progress strengthens the social foundations of security and nation building.
Conclusion: From Interdependence to Shared Progress
The challenges facing Nigeria, Africa, and the wider world are serious, yet they are not insurmountable. The case studies of Botswana, Rwanda, Singapore, and other recoveries demonstrate that aligned leadership, nation building, and security produce measurable improvements in stability, prosperity, and human well-being.
National strategies that professionalise security forces while expanding economic inclusion, continental approaches that strengthen African agency and shared prosperity, and global partnerships that reinforce local capacity generate reinforcing gains. The ultimate measure of success is the steady expansion of human security, productive opportunity, and institutional trust.
When leadership, nation building, and security operate as a coherent system, they contribute directly to national stability, continental advancement, and global well-being. The pathways are practical and adaptable. Their realisation depends on sustained commitment to a simple truth: order, inclusion, and capable institutions are not competing priorities. They are interdependent requirements for lasting progress.
Dr. Tolulope A. Adegoke, AMBP-UN is a globally recognized scholar-practitioner and thought leader at the nexus of security, governance, and strategic leadership. His mission is dedicated to advancing ethical governance, strategic human capital development, resilient nation building, and global peace. He can be reached via: tolulopeadegoke01@gmail.com, globalstageimpacts@gmail.com
A 19-year-old housewife, Saudat Jibrin, has been sentenced to death by hanging for the murder of her 30-year-old husband, Salisu Idris, nine days after their wedding.
Jibrin, who lives in Kumbosto Local Government Area of Kano, was charged with culpable homicide.
Delivering judgment, Justice Maryam Sabo of Kano High Court held that the prosecution had proven its case beyond reasonable doubt.
“I hereby sentence Saudat Jibrin to death by hanging for culpable homicide. You have 90 days to appeal,” the judge ruled.
Earlier, the Prosecution Counsel, Lamido Abba-Sorondinki told the court that Jibrin committed the offence on May 5, 2025, at Farawa Quarters in Kano.
He said that at about 9pm Jibrin laced her husband’s “Zoho” drink and slashed his throat with a knife nine days after their wedding.
Abba-Sorondinki presented two witnesses to prove its case against the defendant.
The convict denied committing the offence.
The prosecutor said the offence contravenes the provision of Section 221(a) of the Penal Code.
The Defence Counsel, Abdulfatah Muhammad, presented the convict to testify in her own defence, Muhammad pleaded for leniency on behalf of his client, saying she had become a changed person while in custody, having memorised the Holy Qur’an.
He also urged the court to consider that the convict is the oldest child of her parents, adding that her siblings depend on her for their survival.
NAN
