Connect with us

Metro

Food for Living: Skills for Life

Published

on

By Henry Ukazu

Greetings my friends,

We are currently living in the 21st century, regarded as the jet age. Progressive minds have admonished us not to compete with other people, rather we should compete with ourselves by distinguishing ourselves. The question we need to ask now is; how do we compete with ourselves? We distinguish ourselves by having the right skills. Just like information, education and our network sets us apart, in the same way, our skills sets us apart from our contemporaries.

Last week, I wrote on The Effect of Digital Age of Innovation and how it has influenced a lot young minds to believe that skills are of more relative importance than formal education in our contemporary society. This article seeks to shed more light on how we can maximize our skills.

This article is for progressive minds.

One of the qualities of a leader is the ability to bring out progressive change to the life of the people and the society in general. According to Quincy Adams. “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader”. One of the ways a leader can do this, is by being skillful. During the course of this article we shall shed more light on how we can apply skills to profit our business.

Skill can be defined as an ability and capacity acquired through deliberate, systematic, and sustained effort to smoothly and adaptively carryout complex activities or job functions involving ideas (cognitive skills), things (technical skills), and/or people (interpersonal skills).

There are different types of skills, but we shall focus on hard and soft skills:

Hard skills are skills we learn in classrooms such as Accounting, Law, Medicine, among others. They are measurable unlike soft skills which one learns while at work and through interpersonal relations like leadership, empathy, time management and communication. We shall be focusing more on soft skills.

Communication Skills:

Non Verbal: This skill doesn’t involve speaking. It’s mainly applied via body language. Your ability to read in between the lines is very helpful.

Listening: This is the master skill of all soft skills because it is the foundation of all informal skills. I call it the mother of all learnable and acquired skills. You can only learn in life if you pay attention. You need this skill in order for you to learn and apply all skills.

Clarity and concision: In communication, you need be as concise and clear as possible. Never have you allowed anyone to assume what you are trying to say.

Verbal Communication: Sometimes it is good to speak and write depending on what is needed. Either way, you need to be coherent for people to understand your message, otherwise there will be no communication.

Organizational Skills: This skill is applied in both cooperate and personal life.

Time Management: Failing to prepare is preparing to fail. This skill is in high demand by employers because they need employees to achieve more within the shortest period of time. Your ability to use this skill will set you apart from your contemporaries.

Decision Making: As a leader, you should be able to use your intuitive knowledge to make prompt decision when the needs calls for it. This is an uncommon skill which very few people have.

Delegation: A true leader knows how to delegate duties/authority as the case may be in order to complete a specific task and thereafter give accolades to such staff or team. This skill helps to reduce pressure on the leader.

Planning: In any progressive organization, they have a blue print for whatever they plan to do. They forecast the needs of the clients and the world and work towards meeting their needs.

Leadership Skills:

This is the mother of all skills. I call it the hallmark of all skills. As a leader, you have the responsibility of leading your peers and followers. This task can be hard, but it takes humility, love, and understanding to relate with people.

Feedback: You are required to provide feedback to your leader or peers when you are working on a project. This helps to foster team work. Feedback helps in keeping employees or target people in loop of the actual situation of things so that everyone will be properly guided on the most updated information.

Responsibility: This is the second most important skill any rational and progressive being can have. The world is truly governed by perception. Nobody relates or does business with an irresponsible being. If you are serious about making an impact in life or in business, you need be responsible. For some of us, our name is the only thing we have. This is because your reputation is what people think about you, but your character is reality who you are.

Flexibility: Every rational person must be flexible. As a leader, you must be able to understand the direction the world is moving towards to. You should also learn how to bend as opposed to breaking to fit into the needs of the company or organization especially if you don’t agree with their thoughts. For example, if you are having a Board meeting, most decisions are done by the Board of Directors. Be advised, you have to know when to take a stand from your colleagues and when you have to work with them. You need wisdom in order to decipher when to swing the pendulum.

Commitment: Anywhere you find yourself, always know that your word is your bond. I recently told myself; I will commit to what I can do and supposed to do as opposed to what the society wants me to do. This skill is hard to maintain because as human beings, we may experience many disappointments. The moral about commitments is that, it goes a long way to show how responsible and proactive you are.

 

Computer Skills:

This is one of the resourceful skill that is in high demand in the world today. Information and Communication technology has truly shaped the world. There’s hardly any company that will employ any individual who doesn’t have basic computer skills such as Word processing, excel, power point, publishing, and outlook. You need to be computer savvy in order to do a good presentation, be a computer analyst, and a good system administrator.

Social Skills:

This is another skill that is in high demand. There’s a saying; knowledge is of two kinds, its either you know the answer or you know where to find it. The same notion is applicable when working with people. According to Robin Sharma, “the business of business is human relation, but the business of life is human connection”. As a social being, your ability to relate with people is very important. This social skills transcends hard skills because it is the connection to all social skills. With the right social skills in place, you can network with the high and mighty.

Empathy: Empathy literally means showing concern and understanding to the feelings of others. As human beings, we go through situations, but how we react to those situations defines us. Sometimes stressed people are not concerned with the materials things that is given to them, they just want to feel the presence and care of anyone around saying “I hear you and I am with you on this”. This is an uncommon skill to have in real life. Most times, it is applied by selfless people who have a humanitarian heart of service.

Team Work: Empathy is a skill that is need in a work environment. As human beings, we are all wired in different ways and as such we learn in different ways. Some of us learn fast while some needs more time and attention. A great way to assist people when working in a group is by working together to get the work done.

Patience: Patience is one of the most priceless virtue. I call it the virtues of all virtues. We all need patience when we are dealing with human beings because human beings are the most difficult specie to deal with. We are naturally complicated. If you are in relationship, you need to accommodate the excess of your partner, if you are working in a professional environment, you need to tolerate in addition to dealing with some unprofessional work ethics of human beings because they will in one way or the other show what they are made of.

Trustworthiness: Trustworthiness is also similar to being responsible, although, it’s narrowed to a specific trait. It should be noted that nobody does business with anyone they don’t trust. As social beings, our customers are our most treasured asset after our name/product. Trustworthiness, does not only relate doing your fair share of the business, it also relates to how you relate with other people who can say a word about you and your product in addition to giving a review about your product.

Life Skills:

Life skills can be simply be regarded as the skills you need to live in the society. Personally, I think all skills originates from life skills because if you have life skills in your pocket, you can simply bring it out to solve any challenge facing you. I liken life skills to common sense. This is because with common sense, you don’t need hard formal knowledge to solve any problem. All you need is to think and reason. Isn’t it true that common sense isn’t common? Let’s see how common sense works with life skills.

Problem Solving: We face challenges daily at work, in our personal life, community etc. Being able to solve this problem entails caution depending on how sensitive it is. Problem solving is one of the most valuable skill employers’ love due to the friction that normally arises at work. This skill is normally used to diffuse problems in amicable and friendly manner to create a conducive work environment.

Handling Criticisms: How you handle criticism speaks volumes about you. Very few people know how to handle criticisms. Great men who think out of the box appreciates criticisms because it helps them to know what they are missing and how they can improve especially as it relates to their business. According to Uche Okorie, a maritime attorney, “When you are criticized objectively, examine it. If it is untrue ignore it. If it is unfair, rest the temptation to be irritated. If it is ignorant, just smile, If is justified, then it is not criticism, LEARN FROM IT”.

Adaptability: The ability to adapt to life is a life skill especially when you are in a new environment. As advance human beings, we have the ability to adapt to almost any condition or situation we find ourselves in. This skill is mainly used by strong minded people who normally turn out to be champions and great achievers. Adaptability is an emotional skill which only strong willed people maximize in order to produce results.

Resilience: The last but not the least of all skills is resilience. This skill is similar to adaptability, but the only difference is that it pushes harder in the sense that when you are not able to adapt, you are faced with either accepting the status quo or strive to try and try again without giving up. Without resilience, we wouldn’t able to achieve more in life. Nothing good in life comes easy. We succeed just because we are disciplined and push ourselves. Personally, churning out articles of this nature every week is not easy, but I have resolved to do it because I love and learn from it.

In conclusion, I do know there other skills life out there, I just thought is nice to share this skills with you. I hope they have been able to inspire and guide you. I wish you well in your endeavors.

 

Henry Ukazu writes from New York. He’s the author of the acclaimed book Design Your Destiny- Actualizing Your Birthright to Success. He works with the New York City Department of Correction as the Legal Coordinator. He can be reached via henrous@gmail.com

Continue Reading
Advertisement


Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Metro

Zion Ministry Begins International Crusade in Imo

Published

on

The 2026 World Conference of Zion Prayer Movement Outreach will be held next week at Zion City, the permanent site of the ministry at Mgbichi, Ngor Okpala, Imo State.

A press statement released by Zion Ministry in Lagos on Friday disclosed that the three-day crusade will begin on Friday, August 21, and end on Sunday, August 23, 2026.

The World Conference is the largest annual gathering organized by Zion Prayer Movement Outreach and attracts participants from across Nigeria, Africa, Europe, North America, Asia, the Middle East and others parts of the world.

It is the Third time the annual conference will be held outside Lagos, and the crusade will mark the end of the 100 Days Fasting and Prayer started in May by the ministry. Like in previous editions, hundreds of thousands of Zionites from across the world are expected to attend this year’ conference.

The Annual 100 Days Fasting and Prayers is one of the ministry’s most significant spiritual programmes during which members engage in a season of prayers, fasting, worship, Biblical reflection, thanksgiving and fellowship. The programme culminates in the closing World Conference drawing worshippers, pilgrims, clergy, volunteers and media representatives.

The Spiritual Director of Zion, Evangelist Chukwuebuka Anozie Obi, said that the crusade is expected to record thousands of people giving up their lives to Christ, awesome miracles, instant healings, deliverance from bondage, salvation of souls and verifiable testimonies.

Continue Reading

Metro

The Architecture of Enduring Impact: How Positive Posterity Walks and Works

Published

on

By Tolulope A. Adegoke PhD

“We are not the final word, nor the first; we are the crucial comma between what was endured and what is yet to be authored. To walk in victorious posterity is to accept that the soil beneath our feet is borrowed, the air in our lungs is loaned, and the systems we build are merely scaffolding for a cathedral we will never see completed. True victory, then, is not found in the monuments we leave behind, but in the capacity we cultivate in those who will inherit the work. For the future does not begin when we are gone—it begins the moment we decide to act as if we are already guests in it.”

Introduction: The Shift from Legacy to Posterity

In the lexicon of leadership and development, the term “legacy” has long been the gold standard. It implies what one leaves behind. However, to speak of “Positive Victorious Posterity” is to engage in a far more active, dynamic, and demanding discipline. Posterity is not a passive inheritance; it is a living entity that we are actively shaping with every decision made in the boardroom, every policy enacted in the legislature, and every culture cultivated within a community.

To walk in Victorious Posterity is to move with the deliberate intention of ensuring that future generations are not merely surviving the consequences of our actions but are thriving because of the systems we install today. To work in this realm is to engineer solutions that are anti-fragile—gaining strength from the volatility of the future rather than crumbling under it.

This write-up explores the mechanics of this philosophy, dissecting how it functions at the individual, corporate, and national levels to solve the pressing challenges of inequality, environmental degradation, economic instability, and social fragmentation.

Part I: The Foundational Pillars of Victorious Posterity

Before we can apply this concept, we must understand its structural integrity. Victorious Posterity rests on three interdependent pillars:

1.     Intergenerational Equity: The recognition that the rights of future generations carry equal weight to the rights of the present. This is not a moral nicety; it is a fiduciary duty. When we drain natural resources or accumulate national debt, we are borrowing from the future’s pocketbook without their consent.

2.     Adaptive Resilience: Victory is not the absence of crisis, but the ability to emerge from crisis stronger. Posterity-focused systems are built with “slack”—redundancies and buffers that allow for shock absorption, whether that be economic downturns, climate events, or supply chain disruptions.

3.     Semantic Integrity: The narratives we build today become the operating systems of tomorrow. A culture that celebrates short-term greed will produce a generation of transactional leaders. A culture that celebrates problem-solving and empathy will produce innovators and healers.

Part II: Impacting Peoples (The Micro Level)

At the individual and community level, the walk of Victorious Posterity is primarily concerned with Human Capital Development. The pressing challenge here is the “Skills Mismatch”—the growing chasm between what educational institutions produce and what the future economy demands.

The Solution: Victorious Posterity works by shifting educational paradigms from “knowledge retention” to “cognitive adaptability.” It is about teaching people how to think, not what to think.

·         Example (Finland’s Education Reform): Finland has moved away from “subject-based” teaching to “phenomenon-based” learning. Students don’t just study history; they study the historical, geographical, and economic impacts of climate change on their specific locality. This walk toward posterity ensures that children graduating today are not memorizing facts that will be obsolete in a decade but are instead solving real-world problems. The result is a populace that is inherently ready to pivot, upskill, and contribute meaningfully to a volatile job market.

·         Example (Community Banking in Bangladesh): The Grameen Bank model didn’t just lend money; it walked with communities to build credit history and entrepreneurial skills. By focusing on women and rural populations, it ensured that the posterity of those villages would not be defined by generational poverty but by generational commerce. The victory is visible in the literacy and health outcomes of the next generation, who now have mothers that are business owners.

 Part III: Impacting Corporates (The Meso Level)

For corporations, the greatest pressing challenge is the tension between Quarterly Returns and Long-Term Sustainability. The modern capital market often penalizes long-term R&D in favor of immediate stock buybacks. Victorious Posterity demands a redefinition of the “Fiduciary Duty” to include stakeholders beyond the shareholder—employees, environment, and society.

The Solution: The walk of victory for a corporation involves embedding ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) metrics not as a PR exercise, but as core operational KPIs that dictate supply chain decisions, hiring practices, and innovation pipelines.

·         Example (Patagonia’s “Earth is Now Our Only Shareholder”): Patagonia’s radical restructuring is a masterclass in Victorious Posterity. By transferring ownership to a trust dedicated to climate action, they effectively built a corporate structure that cannot be forced to prioritize profit over the planet. Their work involves using regenerative organic agriculture in their supply chain, which regenerates soil health. This is a direct intervention to solve the agricultural crisis. They are working now to ensure that cotton farmers fifty years from now have arable land, rather than desert.

·         Example (Microsoft’s Carbon Negative Pledge): Unlike “Carbon Neutrality” (which allows for offsets), Microsoft’s pledge to be Carbon Negative by 2030 requires them to remove more carbon than they emit. This pushes the corporation to invest heavily in direct air capture technology and biochar. By walking this path, they are solving the challenge of “climate techno-pessimism,” proving that heavy industry can be a solution to environmental damage rather than the cause.

·         The “Reverse Mentorship” Model: Corporates that work for posterity invert the traditional mentorship dynamic. They pair senior leadership with junior Gen-Z employees to understand emerging technological trends and social ethics. This ensures the corporate strategy remains relevant to the future demographic it aims to serve.

Part IV: Impacting Nations (The Macro Level)

At the national level, the challenges are systemic: Resource ScarcityGeopolitical Fragmentation, and Aging Infrastructure. Nations often operate on a 4-year election cycle, which is antithetical to the 30-year horizon required for infrastructure and education. Victorious Posterity requires the establishment of “Future Generations Ombudsmen” or similar legislative checks that protect long-term interests from short-term political expediency.

The Solution: National policies must pivot toward “National Resilience” and “Circular Economies.”

·         Example (The Netherlands’ “Deltaworks” and Room for the River): The Dutch are historically known for fighting the sea. However, in their walk toward posterity, they recognized that building ever-higher dikes was a losing battle against rising sea levels. The “Room for the River” program strategically relocated dikes inland, lowered groynes, and created water buffers to allow controlled flooding in designated areas. This is the victory of coexistence over conquest. It solved the challenge of catastrophic climate flooding by designing a landscape that accepts water rather than merely resists it, ensuring the nation’s survival for centuries.

·         Example (Estonia’s Digital Governance): Estonia built its digital infrastructure on the premise that government services should be accessible to citizens regardless of geography or time. By creating a secure, blockchain-backed digital ID system, they have solved the challenge of bureaucratic corruption and inefficiency. Their posterity is “digitally native”—meaning future generations will inherit a government that is transparent, efficient, and low-cost, rather than a burdensome bureaucracy.

Part V: The Psychological Framework—The “Walk”

To “walk” in this manner requires a psychological shift from a “Survival Mindset” to a “Stewardship Mindset.”

·         The Challenge: The modern world is riddled with “Doom-scrolling” and “Climate Anxiety.” This often paralyzes action. People feel that the future is bleak, so they consume more now.

·         The Victorious Walk: This philosophy reframes the future as a garden to be tended, not a battlefield to be survived. It requires leaders to exercise “Radical Optimism”—the belief that human ingenuity, combined with ethical constraint, can solve technical problems.

·         Practice: Leaders must engage in “Reverse Thinking”—imagining the year 2075 and looking back to 2026. From that future perspective, what decision would they wish they had made? This mental exercise forces leaders to abandon sunk costs and embrace daunting transitions (e.g., moving from fossil fuels to green hydrogen).

Part VI: The Strategic Framework—The “Work”

To “work” in Victorious Posterity involves a practical, step-by-step strategic model that I term the “Posterity Matrix.”

1.     Impact Auditing: We cannot manage what we do not measure. Corporates and nations must develop “Lifecycle Assessment” tools that measure the total cost of a product or policy over a 50-year horizon, not just a 5-year horizon. This includes social cost of carbon, social disruption of automation, and biodiversity loss.

2.     Generational Councils: Establish advisory boards comprised of individuals aged 15-25 to review major policy proposals. Their lack of experience is actually their asset; they are the voice of the future’s user experience.

3.     Diversified Sovereignty: At the national level, this means investing in domestic food and energy production to insulate the nation from global shocks (e.g., Israel’s desalination and drip-irrigation technologies that made a desert nation into an agricultural powerhouse).

4.     Ethical AI Deployment: Posterity works when AI is used to augment human potential, not just replace it. Nations must invest in AI that predicts infrastructure decay (bridges, roads) to fix them before they collapse, solving the crisis of aging public assets.

Conclusion: The Intergenerational Contract

Positive Victorious Posterity is not a destination; it is a continuous, iterative process of negotiation between the living, the unborn, and the planet. It demands that we view time not as a linear arrow, but as a cycle of renewal.

For the Individual, it means becoming a lifelong learner who contributes more knowledge than they consume. For the Corporate, it means becoming a regenerative entity that creates more value (environmental and social) than it extracts. For the Nation, it means becoming a guardian of resources, a cultivator of peace, and an enabler of human dignity.

The pressing challenges of our time—political polarization, ecological collapse, and economic inequality—are not insurmountable. They are merely the friction that forces us to innovate. Victorious Posterity walks with the humility of knowing we are not the final chapter and works with the audacity of knowing we are the most important chapter so far. It is in this tension between humility and audacity that victory is forged.

Let us stop asking, “What will we leave behind?” and start asking, “What are we building alongside?” Because ultimately, posterity is not waiting in the future; it is being assembled in the present, piece by piece, by those who dare to walk forward with their eyes fixed on the horizon, and their feet firmly rooted in the soil of today.

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.comglobalstageimpacts@gmail.com

Continue Reading

Metro

Empowering Rural Women Initiative: Nestlé Nigeria Celebrates Five Years, Receives 50 Zaria Retailers

Published

on

Nestlé Nigeria has marked the fifth anniversary and 10th edition of its Empowering Rural Women Initiative by supporting 50 women retailers in Zaria, Kaduna State, with practical business training and grants in the form of Nestlé products valued at three times their existing stock.

The intervention also marked the beginning of a three-month mentorship period designed to help the women apply their training, manage the additional stock effectively and build stronger, more sustainable businesses.

Launched in 2021, the Empowering Rural Women Initiative supports women retailers who have demonstrated the determination to grow their businesses but have limited access to training, mentorship and the resources required to expand.

Before the Zaria edition, the programme had supported 432 women entrepreneurs across several communities in Nigeria. The addition of the 50 women from Zaria brings the total number reached to 482.

Programme monitoring shows that more than 80% of participants from previous cohorts have sustained and grown their businesses beyond the initial stock boost provided through the programme. Many now operate at a significantly higher level than when they joined, with larger inventories, higher turnover, more customers and stronger financial and business-management practices.

Across Nigeria, women entrepreneurs sustain local commerce, support household incomes and ensure that everyday products reach their communities, particularly in areas where small retailers provide an important connection between consumers and larger markets.

Speaking at the event, Boladale Odunlami, Commercial Manager, Nestlé Nigeria, highlighted the scale of their contribution and the importance of enabling their continued growth. He said, “Women account for approximately 60% of the retailers in Nestlé Nigeria’s retail network. Every day, they help us reach consumers, build trust within communities and keep our business moving. Their contribution is significant, and we value them as important business partners. The Empowering Rural Women Initiative reflects our belief that the women who contribute to our growth should have the opportunity to grow with us. By investing in their skills and strengthening their businesses, we are helping them increase their earning potential while building a stronger, more capable and more resilient retail network.”

The training for the Zaria participants covered bookkeeping, merchandising, stock management, financial management and customer service. Over the next three months, mentors will provide practical guidance as the women manage their increased stock, apply their new knowledge and reinvest their profits to support continued growth. The participants were also encouraged to learn from one another and build relationships that could provide support beyond the formal mentorship period.

Reflecting on the programme’s five-year journey, Victoria Uwadoka, Corporate Communications, Public Affairs and Sustainability Lead, Nestlé Nigeria, said, “The true measure of this initiative is not the support we provide on the day, but what the women go on to build with it. Five years on, we are seeing women sustain their growth, expand their businesses and create greater economic security for themselves and their families.

“That is Creating Shared Value in action. As these women build stronger businesses and better livelihoods, they also strengthen the retail network that connects Nestlé to communities across Nigeria. It is a model in which progress for the women and progress for our business reinforce each other, turning an initial investment into lasting value.”

The Zaria edition was delivered with the support of Nestlé Nigeria’s implementation partners and local distributors. During the mentorship period, their continued engagement will support the participants as they put their training into practice and work towards stronger, more profitable businesses.

As the Empowering Rural Women Initiative enters its next chapter, Nestlé Nigeria remains committed to building on the progress recorded over the past five years and enabling more hardworking women to develop stronger, more sustainable businesses.

Continue Reading