Opinion

Panorama: Physiotherapy: A Noble Profession Made in Paradise

Published

2 years ago

September 4, 2021

Eric

By Sani Sa’idu Baba

My dear country men and women, I will begin with the popular saying, ‘health is wealth’. This is a fact that no one can contest. Not just because one enjoys pain and disability-free life, but also that health ensures complete harmony of the body, mind, spirit and mental wellbeing. The saying of Mahatma Gandhi that “it is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver” and the Arabian proverb that says “he who has health has hope; and he who has hope has everything” are true. However, despite its enticing meanings, it has become nearly impossible to achieve a perfect state of health owing to some factors. These factors include genetics, environment, access to health and behavior. Extending one’s own capacity to keep self physically fit has also become a challenge. While both medical and physiotherapy doctors share their responsibilities on patients particularly during diseased condition, the physiotherapy doctors are exclusively very close to the patients as well as the apparently healthy clients who seek to maintain their health to reflect a popular saying “prevention is better than cure”.

Against this background, I will relate to two key issues. One is the less talk about cases of sudden death shortly after engaging in physical activity like running or jogging or cycling in the gymnasium or other playground or at home, which is becoming rampant, especially among certain class of people I can attest to. And secondly, the incessant exodus of medical personnel from Nigeria. One might be curious to ask why I should say “physical activity” and not “exercise” in the other case. Certainly because they are two entirely different things in the context of health, and the key issues surrounding the observed problem lies in either being ignorant or misperception of the two misleading words. I will dwell on both cases subsequently.

I will not bother my readers with the definitions of exercise and physical activity because it may take round a clock to satisfactorily explain what both entails. But I believe that being able to remember a scenario that if one has a headache or fever or any other strange illness, one would first go and see a doctor, carryout some investigations, identify the problem and be placed in appropriate medications that suitably fits. Not a situation whereby one will identify the disease, choose any investigation he/she likes, buy any drug of choice and be taking it endlessly, certainly no. In fact, doing so is tantamount to committing suicide. The same thing when one decides to go to any gymnasium, or playground to start running, flexing or jogging because he/she has diabetes, hypertension or is obese. You can imagine if one is only asthmatic and then took anti-hypertensive drugs expecting to see results. Is it possible? No. It will never yield any results but rather threatens life in the end. It is the same scenario with exercise. Different exercise specifications are employed to target specific disease and not others. And just like we have drug abuse as more often been campaigned about, we should equally be aware of exercise abuse and its detrimental effect. So the exact difference without taking it too far, is the word “prescription” in the case of exercise, and that has been unanimously agreed worldwide to be one of the key jobs of the physiotherapy doctors by all standards.

Exercise is a very powerful tool for both the treatment and prevention of chronic diseases, for mitigating the harmful effects of obesity, and for lowering mortality rates. Years of research have provided irrefutable evidence for the benefit of exercise in the primary and secondary prevention of diseases like diabetes, cancer (especially of the breast and colon), hypertension, depression, osteoporosis, dementia, and heart diseases. In addition, regular exercises has also been shown to dramatically lower all-cause mortality rates, and especially cardiovascular-related mortality. Beyond all this, exercise has also been shown to significantly mitigate the harmful health effects of obesity. In fact, studies have shown that patients are better off being fit and fat than skinny and unfit. That means a low level of fitness is a bigger risk factor for mortality than mild to moderate levels of obesity. The important message for all patients and clients to understand is that the benefits of exercise are the same regardless of how much you weigh.

In fact, there is a linear relationship between level of exercise and health status. People who maintain an active and fit way of life live longer, healthier lives. In contrast, sedentary lifestyle has an astonishing array of harmful health effects. However, having known the detrimental effect of self-prescribed exercise, it is arguably quite better to be sedentary than to engage in it without consulting physiotherapy doctors. People who are sedentary and unfit predictably begin to suffer prematurely from chronic disease and probably die at a younger age or live with poor quality of life. This is because, their ability to live a normal life and do the things they want to do is often severely limited because the premature development of chronic diseases associated with an inactive lifestyle have impaired their functional capacity. This association between disease and an inactive and unfit way of life exists in every age group: children, adults, and the elderly. Results of several researches published in journals of physiotherapy consistently show that those who are active and fit are healthier and less likely to develop chronic diseases irrespective of gender or age. For this reason, many have suggested that sedentary lifestyle is the major public health problem of our time. It was therefore a consensus that “In view of the prevalence, global reach, and health effect of sedentary lifestyle, the issue should be appropriately described as pandemic, with far-reaching health, economic, environmental, and social consequences.” Can you imagine now the public outcry if such strong words had been used to describe a “pandemic” caused by an infectious disease or injury? You can bet there would have been numerous large scale campaigns mounted and associated publicity to deal with such a pandemic. Unfortunately, the clear identification of sedentary lifestyle as a pandemic barely generated any media response and awareness despite availability of physiotherapy doctors that can effectively play significant roles vis-à-vis preventing the occurrence of the diseases, diagnosing them in the presence of any health challenge and appropriately dealing with them. To make it clear here, sedentary lifestyle and self-prescribed exercise are almost the same because both are harmful to health. So the role of physiotherapist in global health cannot be overemphasized.

The fundamental issue on ground is that while people are battling with diseases like cancer, hypertension, diabetes and the rest, others are battling with the side effects of the drugs on top of the disease itself. A classic example of such situations is the paradoxical response to drugs in some cases, and drug induced severe pain in cancer patients. Physiotherapy doctors on the contrary, could target your heart, your lungs, your kidneys, your brain and manipulate your spines and joints with usually instant results and zero side effect. Besides, physiotherapy doctors around the world has achieved significant reduction in the occurrence of these diseases through their preventive efforts in various cases. Moreover, the recent Covid-19 pandemic has clearly exposed physiotherapy as a lifesaving profession by virtue of the observation that effective physiotherapy intervention is fundamental to achieving recovery in Sars-Covid patients with both mild and severe lung collapse. In fact in many countries, the intensive care units are being headed by physiotherapy doctors. They revived long Covid patients from post-exertional symptoms exacerbation, cardiac impairment, exertional oxygen desaturation, and autonomic nervous system dysfunction using several rehabilitation approaches. Many medical scholars like Meenakshi Wankhede recognized physiotherapy as a field concerned with all medical fields and based on the basic concept of human sciences, the importance of this field has been skyrocketing by the day as people are becoming more aware of their physical and mental health. So it is the need of the hour in the modern world especially because of the harmful undesirable effects of most drugs.

Coming back to the key issue I intend to address today, I believe my readers must have grabbed some ideas of the harmful effect of self-prescribed exercise. But to appreciate it more, let’s take for example, when one engages in self-prescribed exercise, he/she is not aware and has no control over many crucial vital profiles such as blood pressure, blood sugar, heart rate, oxygen consumption, respiratory rate, blood cholesterol level, general metabolism, and how these changes over time. These parameters if assessed and the outcome of pre-exercise testing are the key determinants that will inform whether one should do this for so so duration, or should do that for so so kilometers and for how many times or even to use certain machines or the other. Many people wrongly subject themselves to undesirable form of physical activities and beyond permissible limits for their age or conditions which the heart and lungs cannot withstand. In some cases, people are unaware they have a particular condition or the other, some have already developed obstructed blood flow and something like that. That is why, more often than not, people die of heart attack during or immediately after self-prescribed exercise and this is mostly the genesis of the key issue I am talking about today.

The second issue that stimulated me to pick a topic of this nature this time around is the issue of exodus of health personnel from Nigeria that has become the order of the day. Needless to say that, there is serious problem with leadership in Nigeria. Health is supposed to be a key priority of any administration. It was actually worrisome to learn about the brain drain going on in the health sector in Nigeria. Many health personnel are reportedly leaving Nigeria for Saudi Arabia in search of greener pasture. Although some are of the opinion that it is brain gain, and not brain drain for obvious reasons. And I don’t blame anybody honestly because the situation is already out of hand. It is very embarrassing to realize that despite the shortage of man power in the health sector, concerned authorities are keeping their hands akimbo, allowing the situation to collapse. Take for instance, despite millions of Nigerian patients that are in need of physiotherapy and rehabilitation services out of about 200 million population, the numerical strength of physiotherapy doctors available in the country today is abysmally low. The level of wastages and inadequacies in the field has been brought to the fore. In a 500 bed hospital for instance, where we are supposed to have at least 50 physiotherapists, we can have less than 10. This is terribly low. The rate at which physiotherapy doctors migrate to the U.K, U.S, Canada and other countries is also very disturbing. As of 2015, it was gathered that about 50% of the nation’s registered physiotherapists have migrated to seek greener pasture. Eventually, it is Nigerians who are suffering these deficits, because they are not having the best. The global ratio of physiotherapists stands at 1 : 4,000 people, Nigeria has one of the worst ratios in the world: 1 : 170,000 persons, after recording a shortfall of more than 41,000, because Nigeria needs about 43,000 physiotherapy doctors to be able to meet the growing demands of Nigerians. One of the reasons people go abroad to get care is not necessarily because the surgery is not going to be successful, if they were to do it here. But because of post-surgical care that is needed, which has been developed to a very high level in developed countries, but which has been neglected in Nigeria, up to the point that it now appears as if the surgery was not successful. And the reason why the surgery appears not to be successful is that the post-operative care, which the physiotherapists will have to embark upon, has not been supported by the system.

As has been exemplified earlier, self-prescribed exercise corresponds to self-medication. And also corresponds to over-the-counter drugs. While antihypertensive exercise prescribed by an expert physiotherapist tally with the antihypertensive drugs prescribed by an expert cardiologist. Most important to note here is, the detrimental effect of exercise abuse could be more dangerous than that of drug abuse because in the former it can lead to instant death while the later may presents with chances of reversal.

Based on the extensive highlights above, it is clear that exercise is the new medicine. It is the long-sought-after therapy needed to prevent chronic diseases, and extend life. Can you imagine a pill that had even a fraction of the positive health benefit like exercise? It would be the most widely prescribed medication in the world, and not prescribing it would likely be considered malpractice. So why has the medical community neglected exercise as a standard treatment? The answer to that question is quite complex, but I suspect it’s just easier for most physicians to prescribe a pill to reduce blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose, or even body mass index, rather than counsel patients on getting more active or referring them to physiotherapy doctors.

The other issue is the lack of reimbursement for exercise counseling and other preventive measures. However, it is clear that this focus on pills is flawed, because we know that medication adherence by patients is very low, let alone someone seeking weight loss. The affordability of these medications by the patients is also another issue.

In addition, a reliance on drugs seems to transfer responsibility for health from the patient to the physicians. In many cases, patients seem to be less active and eat more poorly when medications are prescribed. This is not to talk of the dangerous side effects that most of the medications come with. I therefore, appeal to authorities to do everything possible to enhance the number of physiotherapy doctors in every health institution.

Kano State, as a case study, with about 20 million people has only about 150 physiotherapists, where only 76 are under the state government, and more than 100 are currently not recruited by the state government despite the huge demand. My special appeal therefore, to our workaholic governor, Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, is to be more pro-active to solve problems like these in the health sector.

Moreover, the dangers that are attached to allowing gymnasiums to operate without licensed physiotherapist is very alarming. Authorities should also mandate such facilities to employ physiotherapist. And the people, on their part, should never patronize any gymnasium that has no physiotherapist to properly evaluate them before any exercise activity.

A word is enough for the wise! May God Almighty continue to bless us with sound health.

Opinion

Voice of Emancipation: Removal of Fraud Subsidy

Published

1 day ago

June 3, 2023

Eric

By Kayode Emola

The week just passed saw the inauguration of the Nigerian President, Bola Tinubu. Upon assuming office, the first major policy that he instituted was the removal of fuel subsidies, causing the pump price to skyrocket overnight. As much as this policy is necessary in order to confront fraud in the petroleum industry, its implementation was handled terribly.

Since the 1970s, successive Nigerian governments have attempted to remove the fuel subsidy, with each government failing to provide the framework required to implement the policy. Resultantly, it has historically proved impossible to fully extricate the pricing of this commodity from governmental control across the country.

This subsidy has proven to be a lifeline for the majority of people trapped in poverty throughout Nigeria for years. However, it has been grossly abused, being turned into a means for oil marketers to unduly enrich themselves.

The principle underpinning the subsidy ought to be that government takes stock of the petroleum commodity and sells it on to the retailers, creating benefit for the populace. However, the current system merely requires that the oil marketers complete a form stating the quantity of petroleum they are supplying, and the government reimburses them for the difference between retail and subsidised price.

Research shows that the average consumption of petroleum products in Nigeria is around 60 million litres per day. However, the quantity on which government subsidy is being claimed is about 100 million litres. This discrepancy of approximately 40 million litres of product every day for which subsidy is being paid, yet never reaches the general population, demonstrates that the current application of the subsidy is not only harmful to the government but also injurious to the people themselves.

In her address to graduating students at Columbia University a few years ago, the former Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo Iweala narrated her mother’s ordeal at the hands of four young who kidnapped her. They had requested the finance minister resign her position for the release of her mother and failure to comply will result in her death.

The kidnappers told the Finance minister they kidnapped her mother because she failed to pay the oil marketers for fuel subsidies. This is clear evidence that the oil marketers involved in the whole subsidy regime are part of a bigger problem the country is experiencing.

Obviously, the finance minister did not resign and her mother regained her freedom by sheer luck. The situation would have been worse for her family had her mum been killed in that instance or she gave in to the blackmailers and resigned from her job. It will mean that evil is given the opportunity to thrive once again in our land.

Nonetheless, her family’s victory over the kidnappers did not mean the fraud was eradicated or the fraudster was apprehended, it only meant that the oil marketers lived to fight another day and they continue to win both the people and the government.

President Tinubu’s removal of the subsidy feels like this is the time to tackle the corruption within the industry once and for all. However, whether the President is successful in his endeavour will depend on his intended approach.

Whilst I believe the removal of the subsidy was necessary, the manner in which it has been implemented is poor. A better approach would have been to announce the removal of subsidies in advance, with a timeline for its implementation. In this way, people would have had time to brace themselves for the increased price that would follow the subsidy’s removal.

Secondly, the President should have also made provisions to enable increases in workers’ salaries, helping cushion the effect of the increased pump price. Workers’ salaries in Nigeria are already too low at present for people to meet their daily expenses. Expecting people to somehow absorb the extra expense incurred by removing fuel subsidy – with its consequent rise in the pump price – without increasing salaries, is like asking a man tied and thrown in the ocean not to drown.

In light of this, it becomes necessary that the government now makes arrangements to alleviate the plights of workers, on whose efforts the growth of the country depends. The government of Tinubu must not think that this matter is concluded, as there is still much more to be done.

Furthermore, the fuel subsidy issue is not the most pressing concern that the populace seeks to see addressed by the government. The country is facing a crisis of nationalities, with numerous segments of the country feeling aggrieved over continuing forced allegiance to a country for which they feel neither identity nor affinity.

The Yoruba, Igbo, Ijaw and Gbagyi nations, to mention just a few, feel it is now time for the government to address the issue of the “One Nigeria” policy. The government of Tinubu cannot just ignore the cries for a sovereign national conference, resolutely forging ahead as if, by disregarding these concerns, they would simply go away.

The Yoruba people, as well as the Biafran nation, are resolute in their determination to leave Nigeria. It is down to the President to ensure the development of a peaceful path by which this can be achieved, allowing each nation making up Nigeria to go and develop according to their own ability. President Tinubu should not stand in the way of these legitimate requests, as history will ultimately judge him by his actions or inactions on this matter.

The president must recognise that fuel subsidy is not the only problem, nor even the greatest problem, afflicting Nigeria. The country is beyond repair; everyone knows the current environment of lawlessness and backwardness is unsustainable. This is why we implore the President to do the right thing, while he still has the opportunity so to do.

Adding Value

Adding Value: The Hand of Favour by Henry Ukazu

Published

1 day ago

June 3, 2023

Eric

Dear Destiny Friends,

Favour is one essential ingredient we need to succeed. Favour certainly mean different things to different people. To Christians, it can mean the grace of God; in the circular world, it is called the X-factor, and for professionals, it can be luck or “unmerited” access to people. In all, favour can come from God, human beings, or the society.

I chose to write about this topic because as a Human Capacity Coach, I have come to understand that in the journey of life, most people attribute their success to their abilities; hard or smart work. They fail to understand that the universe works in dynamic ways one may never understand. This is because you may have all it takes whether it is theoretical or practical experience, you may even come highly recommended, and still lose to someone with less theoretical and practical experience.

Let’s get more practical. In labour law, we have a saying that you cannot force a willing employee on an unwilling employer. You may be wondering what that means. In the corporate world, when a prospective employee is applying for a job, their biggest joy will be for the interviewers to like his or her face. This is because regardless of how qualified the candidate may be, if the panel or the head of the panel don’t like the face, it’s game over.

The hand of favour cannot be overemphasized; it trumps many factors. Favour works where man fails. In the real world, it is called the X-factor, and works in a dynamic way. It simply means a force or situation one cannot explain or imagine how it happened. When the X- factor is at work, there’s something about you that will make you stand out. In actual fact, to accomplish certain things in life, one needs favour. If everything works for you due to your strength, knowledge, or skill, you are not favored. There should be something that you can’t do, but only favour can make happen.

When you are experiencing unprecedented tough times you can’t decipher, just call on the universal power of favour to come to your aid. To accomplish great things, you need the favour of God and men. It is not your knowledge, experience, background etc. that can make it work. Sometimes, you might have all and still need favour. In my estimated understanding of life, apart from that of the creator of heaven and earth, the highest favour we need in life is that of men, because human beings are currency.

There’s usually a force one cannot explain as regards why some people will just like or dislike someone for no reason.

On a personal note, I have seen and experienced the hand of favour upon my life cause I didn’t know I would come this far. Though my mind usually tells me I will be great, but when I look at the circumstances surrounding my life, I tend to have faith in the impossibility being made possible.

Let me start from being the author of two amazing books, being interviewed on television several times, being interviewed by the New York Times, having rare, amazing, genuine family and friends in addition to having mentors who have shown me love beyond my imagination. Some of these mentors of mine were met virtually, while I met a few in person. Most recently, I was honored to pick a former Presidential Spokesman in Nigeria from the airport. The striking thing for me is that we were communicating virtually, and the communication was humbling. When this great man arrived in New York, not only did he autographed four of his amazing books for me, he lodged me in a five-star hotel and splashed dollars on me. When I specifically asked why he did that, he said he came to New York just to see me. That’s a wow for me.

To attract the magic hand of favour, your faith and altitude will have to attract the grace of favour to work for you. When you are favored, kings, queens, captains of industries, governors, presidents, celebrities, and many more will seek you.

Most times, we are quick to attract the blessings, and uncommon blessings that come our way as a result of our cerebral personalities, but that’s not the true position. Sometimes, there are things that come to you without your input. You may be even less qualified, and in some cases, it might appear technically and humanly impossible for you to overcome or succeed in that endeavour, but you might be surprised to win at the end of the day. That’s favour.

To know how favour works, consider how that beautiful and sassy girl from a decent family married you; how you got that job, how you met that great person, how you accomplished that task; how you won the election; and how you came this far. It’s called the favour of God.

When you are favored, people will inconvenience themselves to bless you. Favour works when it looks impossible to achieve a particular task; when you are sick and wondering how you will overcome this sickness. The doctors might have given you a date to die, but the date will come and go, and you’ll still be alive and, in some cases, live longer than the person who gave the date. What can one call such a situation if not favour and grace of God.

When you understand how favour works, you will thrive. For example, if someone is talented or gifted in designing, writing, singing, playing soccer, leading, among others, there’s a tendency that person or their team is likely to win just because someone is who is favored to do a particular work in the team. It is sad to note that most times, we lose opportunities and blessings because they do not dress well as we expect them. A typical example can be a young lady who has many suitors asking for her hand in marriage, she may be deceived by the looks of a particular man who may have riches, but lack the qualities of a husband or father, as opposed to a man who may not have the money now, but blessed with the desired qualities of a being a good husband, father in addition to wealth.

In conclusion, it is instructive to note that we all have this favour, but we don’t tap into it. Start by declaring and speaking favour into your life. While we waste time complaining of lack sometimes, it should be noted that the universe responds to what we give to it. So whenever you speak, just know that the walls hear, the ground stamps it, and the air carries it. Again, the universe does not respond to lack. It responds to abundance. So, whenever you complain, just know that you are driving favour away.

Henry Ukazu writes from New York. He works with the New York City Department of Correction as the Legal Coordinator. He’s a Transformative Human Capacity and Mindset coach. He is also a public speaker, youth advocate and creative writer Design Your Destiny and Unleash Your Destiny. He can be reached via info@gloemi.com

Opinion

Against All Odds: Be Ready for Effective Leadership

Published

1 day ago

June 3, 2023

Eric

By Tolulope A. Adegoke

“As you walk in God’s divine wisdom, you will surely begin to see a greater measure of victory and good successes in your life. Wisdom is the principal thing which opens its subscribers up to Learning, living, loving, leading and being ‘liquid’; to being Enterprising, educative and entertaining; toward reaching the greatest Altitudes with the right attitude, which is amplified by aptitude, through tireless Determination, decency and deliberate diligence; Extra-ordinary feats and exemplariness; Restitution which commands restoration, revitalization, redemption, powered by result-orientation; Sensitivity, sensibility, stability, sanity, sanctity and sacrificial lifestyle; culminating in great Harvest, with uncontrollable happiness that transforms you into a healing vessel; you gain Immunity, independence, intelligence, and becomes an instigator as well as an internal developer; thereby, exhibiting acute Professionalism being a principal, producer, a price and the prize. Every leader has a ship, and every ship has a leader; The SHIPs you build is what makes you the LEADER.” – Tolulope A. Adegoke, PhD., MNIM, FIMC, CMC, CMS

To effectively lead, you must gain and harness wisdom. To harness means to control or use something especially resources or potentials. But it requires divine wisdom to harnessing your ‘empowered Zeros’ correctly or effectively. What is the essence of empowering your Zero if you would not use or engage it? Of what use is wisdom if it will not be engaged? For example, many people have empowered themselves by investing in a series of skills and academic programmes, yet, might still lack the capacity to harness it properly to their profiting. Even, many that are well-read are most times “walking textbooks,” they have all the relevant information or knowledge in their areas of specialization(s), yet cannot practically apply it to solving real-life situation or issues. Yes, they have the “key” to their field, yet cannot still unlock real life’s doors, they can tell you everything about the “key” and how useful it is to society. What would you say of an expert or professor of Mechanical Engineering who cannot work on his own vehicles or gadget rather, would rely on the roadside mechanics to fix the mechanical faults on his own vehicle, but can only give you theoretical explanations on information about some brand of vehicles.

It is divine wisdom that teaches us to go into actions towards solving problems distinctively and accurately because it is what makes saviour out of men; it is not just your knowledge or understanding. Knowledge gives you information but wisdom helps you to go in search of required or needful information and their application processes, while understanding would only help you to have in-depth insight about a problem or situation. But wisdom helps you to apply and not just “apply” but correctly and profit from it.

I once wrote in my previous articles about two different persons who applied wisdom as Zeros. One person benefitted from the wisdom he applied and became a HERO while, the other did not benefit from his own applied wisdom; yet, he remained the same and nobody noticed afterwards. The application of our gifts must also be well guided by wisdom through the Holy Spirit if we would seek Him. The Holy Spirit inspires us and helps us with what would seek Him. The Holy Spirit inspires us and helps us on what to do with the gifts, how to go about, what to do with it, when and where to apply those gifts to our own benefits of others and to the glory of God.

It takes divine wisdom to harness (put to usage) your empowered Zero. Let us see some of the surpassing virtues of Divine Wisdom. Divine Wisdom makes saviours out of men. Obadiah 21 says: “And saviours shall arise out of Mount Zion.”

Saviours are men that are answers to the prayers of others. Nehemiah9:27 says: “And they shall cry unto the Lord, and He will send them Saviours.” They are men who are the answers to the calamities of the earth. Romans8:19 says: “the earnest expectation of the creatures waiteth for the manifestation of the Sons of God.” So the whole world is waiting for you to harness your empowered Zero for their liberation, comfort, and deliverances. You carry the solutions that other people seek. When a man carries divine wisdom (solution), he becomes is the answer to global problems. Pharaoh offered everything to Joseph because he was a rare gem when pharaoh said in the scriptures: “Where will one find a man like this in whom the Spirit of God is?” which simply means that, if this man called Joseph leaves, our answers, fruitfulness leaves with him.

There are those are people who opportunities naturally look for them while so many are all out searching for opportunities and not finding one. Pharaoh and the entire Egypt saw Joseph as an opportunity, but Joseph did not see him as one. That means Joseph knew that his answers were not in any man but in the grace of God, and that grace found expression through divine wisdom.

Simply imagine Joseph’s appearance was like a job interview, but pharaoh began to look at Joseph as his breakthrough…if this man (Joseph) should go away, things will fall apart/breakdown. Pharaoh, therefore, made Joseph over his house, while he (pharaoh) only retained the title but Joseph was the one in charge of the affairs of Egypt!

Divine Wisdom gives relevance. Harnessing your empowered Zero gives you relevance locally and globally through the unction of divine wisdom. Proverbs 8:15: “By wisdom kings “rule” and princes “decree” justice. In every group of people or society, there must be somebody to rule. What wisdom does for us as believers is that it makes a ruler out of us, and the ruler is always needed, he is always in demand. And concerning Joseph, the bible says in Psalm105:17-22: “He sent a man before them, even Joseph who was sold for a servant, whose feet they hurt with fetters, he was laid in iron until the time that his word came.” The word of the Lord tried him, the king sent for him and loosed him, even the rulers of the people and let him go free, he made Lord over his house and rulers of all his substance to bind his princes at pleasure and teach his senators wisdom. In other words, no gathering or meeting held in Egypt without the presence of Joseph during this period, because he was their answers. So, he was always in demand. Even Daniel in the scripture was relevant for 65years without running for any election, because the man of divine wisdom is a rare gift to any generation. There was unhindered release of unique wisdom upon his life which he applied!

Divine wisdom guarantees triumph. We can also see this in the life of Joseph; he triumphed over the evil intentions of his brethren. “They saw him afar off, and they said behold this dreamer cometh. Let us destroy him.” [Genesis37:18-20] But wisdom did not only preserve Joseph, but made him the preserver of their lives! “God has sent me to preserve life and to give you posterity” [Genesis 45:4-8]

Joseph became the answer to their problems. They planned to kill him, but the wisdom of God which he harnessed preserved him. Divine wisdom brings about sweat-less victory. “A wise man scaleth the city of the mighty and casteth down the confidence thereof.” [Proverbs21:22]

“He would unfold unto us the manifold wisdom of God to us to the intent that on principalities and powers may be known the dominion that God has ordained for us in us.” [Ephesians3:8-11]

Wisdom is the divine secret for continuous triumphs. Wisdom scales the city of the mighty. It is not only the strong that wins, it the wise that wins continuously…Be wise!

Ensure that you are harmless like the dove and be wise as the serpent because no matter how harmless you may be physically when you have wisdom, you are as venomous as the serpent and most dangerous to any opposition that may rise against you.

When you know to do, you become dangerous to the enemy! Having studied the lives of David and Solomon, I have realized that David having been wise as an angel, but it was recorded in the bible that his son Solomon was the most-wise in his generation (Old Testament). David was a fighter, but Solomon was a diplomat (a wise man). All the days of his life, there was no war. Not that there were no enemies, but the wisdom of God on him scared the enemies off him and his environment. Even with the biblical description of the armies of Solomon; it says, he built cities for his armies…The wisdom of Solomon scared the enemies. It means, while the enemies were planning on how to attack, they began to observe Solomon and they became so afraid of him. Even the queen of Sheeba entered into his Palace and there was no more spirit left in her, because “wisdom scales the city of the mighty.”

Although, these stories of wisdom are fascinating, but they are not yet God’s best, as he has packaged for us.” Those are examples and patterns of what God has in stock for us. “But with to which are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men. And the weakness of God is stronger than men.” [1Corinthians1:24-25] “In Him (Christ) dwelleth all the fullness of the God-head bodily.” [Colosians2: 9]

These stated scriptures above, means that Christ is the Wisdom of God and the Power of God; Secondly, Wisdom is the fullness of God inside Christ…The Wisdom of God is not partial, but in full in Christ. “And you have the mind of Christ.” [1Corinthians2:16]

So, by potential, the wisdom of God, God in His totality is available unto every believer.

God cannot be stranded; He cannot be in a position of not knowing what to do. He can never scratch His head looking for answers. Since all of the wisdom of God is in Christ Jesus, it is all available to you! That means you should never be without answers initially, which is God’s redemptive package for us in redemption.

A believer who is working by divine wisdom, even on his worst day is better than the best sinner! The day he would be counted or regarded as foolish, he would be wiser than the wisest; in as much as he is walking in his full potentials for the benefits of mankind and to the glory of God.

Wisdom cannot be acquired, it cannot be caught, it cannot be taught, but it is only received. God gives wisdom. Joseph said to the king of Egypt: “it is not in me but God shall give pharaoh an answer of peace.” So, wisdom comes from above. It is the wisdom that comes from above, that is above all. Therefore, wisdom is the latest currency for buying and wining all things, all through. Proverbs 8:15 (KJV) reveals,
“By me kings reign, and princes decree justice”.