HAPPY DEMOCRACY DAY!



President Goodluck Jonathan

Nigerians today mark the 14th Democracy Day, commemorating the formal end to military rule in the country and the enthronement of civil rule on May 29th 1999.

Without doubt, government and party officials will reel out lists of they will say are their achievements since they took office. It is in the nature of politicians to indulge themselves in such chest-thumping, even self-glorification; whether their performance records support them is entirely a different ballgame. It would be truer to declare that celebrations are in order only because this tottering democracy has not collapsed, so far.

NGOZI OKONJO-IWEALA MAKES WORLD 100 MOST POWERFUL WOMEN

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s finance minister also makes the power list. The 58 year old Harvard-educated finance minister, who has spent one year in office after a failed bid for the World Bank presidency, moves down from the 81st position to the 83rd.

Joyce Banda, President of Malawi is up from the 71st position to the 47th and Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, President of Liberia also makes the list. She is at the 87th position, down 5 from last year.

MEET NIGERIA AND WEST AFRICA FIRST FEMALE MILITARY PILOT

 

Blessing Liman was commissioned as a Combat Flying Officer alongside 126 others who finished the Direct Short Service Course 2010/2011 Cadets of the 325 Ground Training Group at the Nigerian Air Force Base, Kaduna.

Present at the winging ceremony (badge decoration) was the then Chief of Air Staff, Air-Vice Marshal Mohammad Dikko Umar who described her training as a ‘very laudable achievement‘.

She was quite excited and proud to have made history and said: “It is very uplifting and I feel very proud of myself though it has been very challenging. Coming from the civil war and the civil mentality, the Air Force has done a great job because it has changed our orientation. I believe that all females have equal opportunity to dignify their rights in whatever adventure they choose they can do.”

As a first female pilot I would want to make a mark that would encourage other females to join the military because I believe that all females have equal opportunity to exercise their rights in whatever they choose to do, I believe that all female Nigerians who choose to become pilots can do it since I have done it.

This is a remarkable achievement, one that should drive our ladies to know and see themselves as been able to achieve the impossible and break the so called glass ceiling in any sphere you find yourself.

Blessing Liman was born 29 years ago and is an indigene of Zangon Kataf Local Government Area. She later attended the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology (NCAT), Zaria, Kaduna State. She was of the SP-24A set of pilots and they were referred to as the Knights of the Air.

ARE YOU SLEEPING AWAY YOUR LIFE?

On the average, most of us will spend TWENTY FOUR YEARS of our lives SLEEPING!

Whoa! I found that a hard pill to swallow so I did the math. If you are one of the believers in the magical powers of sleeping 8 hours a day (which represents 1/3 of your allotted 24 hours), in a week you’ll be sleeping 56 hours, in a month you’ll be looking at 224 hours and in a year, you’d be clocking in 2920 hours of sleep. Multiply it by the at least 70 years you’re hoping to live and you got yourself 204400 hours. Do the necessary long division and you have yourself 23. 39 years (and you didn’t add the extra hours you snuck in as a baby and all the extra snoozing time when you’re at retirement age). Wow. If you were earning a minimum wage of £6.19 (or the US minimum of $7.25) for every hour you’d have slept, you’d have earned £18,074.80 ($21,170.00) a year and £1,265,236 ($1,481,900.00) in 70!

Name	Job	Hours of Sleep	Note
Marissa Mayer	Yahoo CEO	4-6	Worked as many as 130 hours some weeks while at Google, recharging by taking week long vacations every four months
Jack Dorsey	Twitter founder and Square CEO	4-6
Donald Trump	Chairman of The Trump Organization	3-4	Quoted in The Daily News:”How does somebody that’s sleeping 12 and 14 hours a day compete with someone that’s sleeping three or four?”
Kelly Ripa	Host of “Live! with Kelly and Michael”	Usually sleeps between midnight and 1 a.m. and wakes up at 6:15 a.m.	Ripa also has three kids and a production company she owns with her husband Mark Consuelos.
Bill Clinton	Former U.S. President	4 -6 hours a night throughout his presidency.	A professor at Georgetown told him great men require less sleep.
Tom Ford	Fashion designer and director	3 hours	He does not attribute this success to talent, but says it’s due to his energy.
Indra Nooyi	Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo	4 hours
Martha Stewart	Chair of Martha Stewart Omnimedia	4 hours	Her company produces four magazines, Martha Stewart Living, Everyday Food, Weddings, and Whole   Living. She additionally has a TV show, radio show and product lines in stores

You snooze you lose 
Donald Trump is credited with saying: "I sleep very little, 3 or 4 hours a night. And that’s what I need. And I have friends that need 12 hours sleep. I say, 12 hours? What are you going to do? So how does somebody that’s sleeping 12 and 14 hours a day compete with somebody that’s sleeping 3 or 4? It doesn’t work that way".

Tell me about it. I realized that each moment I spent sleeping unnecessarily someone else was out there getting ahead, becoming better and gaining the advantage. Here’s something from the New Living Translation of the Bible: A little extra sleep, a little more slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest and poverty will pounce on you like a bandit; scarcity will attack you like an armed robber. (Proverbs 23:33-34)

Time is money and I became obsessed with shaking every penny from every second and used to go all crazy and try to strangle sleep. Once, I went from Thursday morning to Saturday afternoon without proper sleep, shuttling from work in the morning, straight to class around 5pm, to the house to shower by 6am and off to work again. 48 hour stints were common. For a long time, I never even really shut down…just hibernated, with my laptop next to me. People became worried and I got lots of lectures about how I was hurting myself and how it was not necessary to push so hard. Just to be sure I wasn’t digging an early grave, I did some quick research.

Less is More 
How many hours of sleep can I live on? I did a quick check to see if there’s any documentation for how many hours of sleep successful people get, and to my pleasant surprise, I found a couple of sites. Here’s the info on a few of the people I found:

Evan Williams, the founded Blogger (he sold it to Google for millions and then went ahead to start Twitter) has a reputation of regularly working 12-14 hour days; Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg is also known for working long hours and occasionally sleeping at his desk. Decades earlier, Microsoft’s Bill Gates was known for his incredible work ethic too.

How many hours of sleep do you get?
Wake Up! I have cut down on the madness now. Instead I have developed an understanding with my body. No more fighting sleep with Redbull binges and swallowing caffeine tablets like a druggie. Now I listen to my body. Still push it, but when it can take no more, I give in to her (yes, I have decided she’s female so I can treat her right…I am a gentleman). I have learnt the power of ‘power naps’ (20 minute stints) to drive up energy at the lowest points of the day. I like getting up early and depending on the intensity of work, get up between 1 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. and try as much as possible to get between 3-5 hours every day.

Like Aristotle said: Don’t sleep too much. If you sleep 3 hours less each night for a year, you will have an extra month and a half to succeed in. Key thing though isn’t just staying awake. It is what you do with that time. However, though we all have 24 hours in a day to succeed in, but taking Aristotle’s advice I get more time than most of you and even if we were doing the same things - I am at an advantage.