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Food for Living: The Challenges of Life
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By Henry Ukazu
Greetings Dear Friends,
Let me confess to you all. It’s always a pleasure writing every week despite the challenges I go through trying to meet the deadline. I will also like to appreciate the kind support of my editors and various media firms who have been very resourceful and supportive. As you may know, nothing in life is easy, despite publishing insightful and thought-provoking articles every week consistently, I can authoritatively tell you if not for passion and addiction, I wouldn’t have been able to overcome the pressures. This is because I need to deal with the pressure of daily work, personal commitments and life challenges in addition to having a sound mind in order to produce a good work. In all, I will say, God is the ultimate “source” because beside from him, I can do nothing!
I had to X-ray these challenges because you may be experiencing a peculiar or different challenge that might have defined or shaped you in one way or another. We all face different challenges relating to finance, family/relationship, business, academics, health, etc. The big questions now remain, how do you face and conquer your challenges. The aim of this article is to see how we can address the numerous challenges facing life, and how it can be overcome.
Emotions:
The first step in handling any challenge is managing emotions. Your emotions play a critical role in stabilizing you in critical moments. This is because it’s extremely easy to act in anger, sadness or even frustration. As a way of advice, do or say nothing when you are angry because what you may say or do may be worst than the harm in question. Remember, words are like scars when you are hurt, the wound might heal, but the scar will still remain. It’s just like our words, it can be used to make or mar our life and relationship. As human beings, most times we allow our emotions to take a big chunk of our life. However, being able to sit down and analyze the situation will be a great way to diffuse or addresses any situation you might be facing. It’s worthy to note that only weak people act out impulsively. Strong people, however, see them as challenges and practice massive self-control.
It should be noted that your negative emotions are simply challenges. So take up the challenge and start to master your emotions. You’ll be stronger with this mindset if you master your emotions because it will enable you to study and learn human behavior.
Furthermore, It’s important to note that human beings are the most difficult people on earth to deal with. Some can be happy to relate with while some can be toxic to deal with. Most times we have people who get to our nerves, for example, our friends, partners, arrogant boss or even family member, but because we need peace, love, and friendship, you try to remain calm and allow your peace of mind to control you. In that way, you’ll be able to diffuse the problem as opposed to reacting back which might escalate the problem.
Your Job
Your job is not exempted from the challenge of life. Dealing with the politics of the job can be a great way of facing the challenges of life. You can deal with it by being positive with each ugly incident you are not comfortable with. Dealing with your colleagues, bosses, supervisors, inferiors and administrative bottleneck can be a pain in your body, however, your attitude to each situation can be a remedy in fixing the issue at play.Whether you lose your job, an opportunity, or a relationship, you’ll be forced to face the associated challenges that come with it. Regardless of how it happens, the loss is one of life’s biggest challenges in life. However, loss gives you the opportunity to reflect on what is truly important so that you to keep moving forward. We have all experienced a slow in progress, hindrance or delay on our journey. The challenge is understanding why the delay happened. What caused our progress to slow down. Setbacks are learning opportunities. Having a firm understanding of the types of things that slow your progress will allow you to both avoid and preempt them
Life issues
Every living being must surely face challenges. The only time challenges will stop will be when you give up the ghost. On a daily note, you face challenges in taking care of your responsibility both personally and professionally. Whether at home, at work, in public areas or even in the hospital, you are bound to deal with life issues. You kids can get on your nerve, it can even a traffic situation or something you can’t really explain how it came up, but you’re just expected to deal with it. My take on this is, smile and say this too shall pass especially when you have your best and the situation still persists. Things simply don’t go as planned. That’s life! And life will never stop giving you challenges. So stop complaining. Take up the challenges and assume full responsibility for the situation.
Tend to Your Loving Relationships
These relationships don’t just happen magically; they grow and are sustained through attentive care and hard work. Mature love in marriage, family, or friendships is a dynamic living experience. It requires a commitment to keep it working. It involves a daily process of overcoming the challenges. It accepts the reality that we will hurt one another and be hurt by one another. It is the nature of being human. These pains cannot be avoided. We can only devote ourselves to do what we can do to weather them and to mend them. Love, then, is essentially repair work which we must use to heal the wounds. However, we must endeavor to take responsibility for our mistakes by learning to say I’m sorry and then making an effort to make amends. We should also learn to forgive. As the monks do every day, we fall down and get up, fall down and get up again.
The question now becomes, how do we face these challenges?
Positive thinking
This is harder than most would think. Shaping your thoughts can be an uphill task. It’s easy to go awry in your head. It’s easy to start linking them with your emotions and then acting out impulsively. So take your thoughts as challenges because they want you to follow them. Overcome them slowly and have patience with yourself. Your thoughts are your reality, so create the reality you want.
Calm yourself.
During stressful times, we sometimes push the panic button and “catastrophize”, or imagine the worst. Instead, calm yourself with “traffic light coping”. This exercise, developed by Dr. Williams, works like this: When you start to feel worried, panicked, or angry—when you start to “see red”— stop and relax. Pause. Take time to breathe deeply to help calm your body and mind, then move forward.
Start with a single step. The sooner you take action, the better you’ll feel. If a challenge feels overwhelming, think about the simplest thing you could do to take you in the direction you want to go. Then do it.
Mastering Your Mind
Your mind can be a formidable opponent on your path to becoming a better person. It can pipe up with all kinds of negative commentary when things are not going well and can have the power to derail you with doubt and fear – if you let it. Mastering your mind is one of the greatest life challenges of all. Your mind controls your perspective, it informs how you receive and process your interactions with the world around you. Unlike other things you can claim mastery over after a finite amount of time, the mind can take some a lifetime to master. Some common methods to calm the mind include having personal time for yourself, therapy, meditating, self- reflection, prayer, and intentional silence. You don’t have to be hard on yourself, give your self some break.
In conclusion, whatever problems you think you have, whatever it is you’ve gone through, whatever you’re going through right now. You’re a challenge by itself. Don’t let mistakes, challenges, circumstances, pressure define you, you’re bigger than them all. Life challenges are not to paralyze but to make you discover who you are. I will leave you with some great nuggets:
Life is a challenge – Meet it
Life is a gift – Accept it
Life is an adventure – Dare it
Life is a sorrow – Overcome it
Life is a game – Play it
Life is a mystery – Unfold it
Life is a song – Sing it
Life is an opportunity – Take it
Life is a journey – Complete it
Life is a promise – Fulfill it
Life is a love – Enjoy it
Life is a beauty Praise it
Life is a struggle – Fight it
Life is a puzzle – Solve it
Life is a goal – Achieve it.
Yes, we may have been hurt in one way or the other, but as Mother Teresa will say, in other to live a positive life we need to have to have a positive mental attitude. According to her:
People are often unreasonable and self-centered, Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people will accuse you of ulterior motives – Be kind anyway
If you are honest people may cheat you, Be honest anyway
The good you do today maybe forgotten, Be good anyway
If you find happiness, people may be jealous Be happy anyway
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 Presidency has acknowledged, albeit inadvertently, that more Nigerians have been pushed into poverty under the administration of President Bola Tinubu, but said the situation is a consequence of the reforms being implemented by government.
The Presidency also faulted a report by The Economist on Nigerians’ dissatisfaction with Tinubu’s performance, describing it as watery and lacking substance.
On October 1, The Economist said President Tinubu might win the forthcoming 2027 polls despite public discontent.
The report, titled: ‘Nigerians dislike their president, but may re-elect him anyway’, identified a worsening security crisis, the biting effects of the economic reforms and popular political challengers as factors that could work against the president’s re-election bid.
Reacting to the report on Politics Today, a Channels TV programme on Wednesday, Special Adviser to President Tinubu on Policy Communication, Daniel Bwala, questioned the research methodology of the report.
Bwala said: “Let me say that The Economist’s theory, as published, is watery. It doesn’t have the substance. If you want to write an opinion piece, and especially when you want to rely on data, you want to make a claim on the data, the first thing you should do is to conduct a survey. There would be some people who don’t like him (Tinubu), but there are others who like him.
“In other words, in democracy you have to allow the two voices to speak. When you make a claim that Nigerians don’t like him (Tinubu) without also saying that there are a lot of people, for example, one million families whose children have benefited from Nigerian Education Loan Fund, NELFund, do you think they hate him? If you look at the agricultural sector in Nigeria, the kind of incentive and benefit they got, do you think they hate him? What about the incentive for the manufacturers in production?”
Asked whether more people had been thrown into poverty by the current administration, he said: “Do you know why? It is simply because we took a reform. There is no part of the world where reform comes with convenience. The population is 230 million, already at some stage of poverty. But we can’t make any progress until reform is carried out. None of the presidents that came before this president had the courage to do it because of fear.
“But the president said we can’t make any progress. So, he took that reform. Please let it be clear, even to the opposition. The reason why you have this number of poor people, and some of these doomsday analyses that people are giving, is because we undertook a reform. There is no part of the world where you start a reform like that, and there will not be discomfort. More people went down to poverty. I acknowledge it, I’m not doubting. But, there is a but to it. Since the reform started till today, we have made marked progress, which is what we have spent the last three years doing.”
Former Vice President and ADC presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar has accused President Bola Tinubu of presiding over a collapse in agricultural export earnings while farmers struggle with insecurity and manufacturers confront punishing production costs. He said an administration that promised to build a productive economy has left Nigeria selling crops abroad without capturing enough of the processing jobs and value they can generate at home.
“Tinubu cannot call this reform when the people who grow our food and the businesses that should process it are being squeezed from both sides,” Atiku said.
In a statement issued by Phrank Shaibu, Director of Strategic Communication of the ADC Presidential Campaign Council, Atiku said the trade figures expose the scale of the failure. Nigeria’s agricultural trade swung from a ₦740.27 billion surplus in the first half of 2025 to a ₦56.13 billion deficit in the first half of 2026—a ₦796.40 billion reversal in one year. Agricultural exports fell by 33.3 per cent, far faster than imports, which also declined.
“The excuse that Nigerians simply imported too much will not stand. Tinubu’s government must answer for the collapse in what Nigeria sold to the world. The country is losing export earnings, and the President owes farmers, workers and businesses more than another speech about prosperity.
“What has his administration done to make it safer to farm, cheaper to move produce, easier to keep a processing plant running or more profitable to sell a finished Nigerian product abroad? Farmers cannot cultivate promises. Manufacturers cannot power factories with speeches. Workers cannot feed their families on assurances that prosperity is coming.”
Atiku said Nigeria’s leading agricultural exports still include cashew nuts in shell and cocoa beans, illustrating the value the country could retain by expanding domestic processing.
“We grow the crop. Someone else does more of the processing, builds a business around it and earns the larger return. Then Tinubu speaks of jobs while Nigerian factories struggle to compete. He has made production expensive and called the resulting hardship reform.
“A trade deficit alone does not explain every problem on our farms. But after more than three years in office, the President owns the decisions that have left farmers exposed and producers burdened. He cannot claim credit for every favourable statistic and disown a ₦796.40 billion reversal when the figures turn against him.”
Atiku said his proposed production subsidy for petroleum products refined in Nigeria follows the same principle: keep more production, work and value at home. The support would cover qualifying products from Nigerian refineries, including modular refineries. Imported products would not qualify. It would be capped, budgeted and independently audited, with measures to track whether savings reach consumers and businesses.
He said the Tinubu administration’s CNG initiative had failed abysmally as a relief measure: the cost of converting vehicles is beyond the reach of many poor Nigerians, conversion kits are difficult to access, and the buses presented as palliatives remain unavailable to many of the people who need them.
“Local refining is about more than the price at the petrol pump. Aviation fuel affects fares. LPG affects the cost of cooking. Petroleum products and feedstocks affect industries and the people they employ. Nigerians need practical relief they can actually access—not schemes whose costs and shortages put the promised benefits out of reach. The value of our resources must reach Nigerians beyond the refinery gate.
“My administration will begin restoring a transparent production subsidy from Day One. We will back farmers and processors with the same determination. Grow it here. Process it here. Refine it here. Create the jobs here. Make life affordable here.
“Tinubu’s record is becoming painfully clear: Nigeria supplies raw crops and crude oil while Nigerians pay dearly for finished goods. A government that cannot turn our resources into affordable products and decent jobs has failed the people it was elected to serve.”
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FBN vs GHL: Supreme Court Voids Appeal Court Judgment, Orders Immediate Handover of FPSO Tamara Tokoni Crude Oil to General Hydrocarbons
The long drawn legal tussle between FirstBank of Nigeria Limited and General Hydrocarbons Limited over the ownership of the crude oil aboard the FPSO Tamara Tokoni, may have come to a conclusive end as the Supreme Court of Nigeria delivered its judgment.
The Apex Court, on Friday, ordered the Chief Registrar of the Court of Appeal and the Admiralty Marshal to immediately hand over the crude oil aboard the FPSO Tamara Tokoni to General Hydrocarbons Limited (GHL), bringing to an end a legal dispute over the asset.
In a unanimous judgment delivered by a five-member panel of justices, the apex court held that the suit instituted by First Bank of Nigeria (FBN) was contractual in nature and not an admiralty matter.
The court consequently ruled that both the Federal High Court and the Court of Appeal lacked the jurisdiction to entertain the case.
The Supreme Court accordingly allowed the appeal filed by General Hydrocarbons Limited and set aside the judgment of the Court of Appeal, describing it as perverse.
Justice Abiru, who read the lead judgment, announced the unanimous decision of the panel comprising Justices Uwani Aba-Aji, Salawa, Agim, Uwa and Abiru.
