Akin Ibitoye

Olomi! Olomi!! Olomi!!! (translated: Water Vendor) We screamed at the top of our lungs as we raced after the water tanker that came by our community a couple of times a week in the early nineties, he didn’t stop though and we gave up after doing about a hundred meters; either he was out of water to sell or he didn’t hear our ruckus which is highly unlikely. You see, the reason for that bizarre scenario is the bane of our country today, lack of planning! There was no municipal water system in place in what is regarded as the largest housing estate in Africa! If there was one in place, in less than a decade after its inception, we moved in and after a while, a small group of residents decided to concert efforts and dug a well, got a pumping machine, a storage tank and life went on. Fast forward two decades, a new municipal water system is built, but the downer is this, with almost a thousand housing blocks of six or eight flats each, you are looking at over two hundred wells ...

Question // Sunday, March 27 th 2005 You have been telling people “you are a world shaker” and you don’t say how. How does an average youth become a world shaker? Answer // Wednesday, March 30 th 2005 An average youth can become a world shaker that (s)he is by discovering who (s)he is! Discovering the “why” purpose for which (s)he is created at all. Discovery of self and purpose will put one on the road to the fulfillment. Commitment to the purpose will keep you on that road, because as you keep your eyes on the end result--which can include you discussing with world leaders, presidents, statesmen, leaders of industries, et al dictating their economic, political and social affairs, the idea should keep you on track. If you check very well, your future is not one faraway place that you are trying to get information about, your future is here, how today is treated readily transcends to your future. Your today was yesterday’s future. When the question “why” has been an...

The word "impossible" is used when we get to the limit of our abilities, when we know better, the word fades away and it becomes "I’m possible". I remember vividly in elementary school, we were taught that 1+2=3 , but 1-2=impossible. You can imagine my shock when I got into high school and we were taught that 1-2=-1, I was like, are you kidding me? Then it was time for the square roots, cube roots, exponential factors, quadratic equations and one we aptly labeled "almighty formula". We were taught that The square root of 4 is 2 , but that The square root of -1 is impossible. Off to college and in the very first class, learned that The square root of -1 is i. Then discovered that 1= Cos^2 # + Sin^2 # (where # is theta, from the Greek alphabet) It was becoming ridiculous for me, but then I thought, maybe they (whoever was in charge of the curriculum) thought that it is better to give it to us in bits and pieces, like in unveil...