Has God ever deceived you? I asked this question in my “Practical Christianity” class and some people were outraged. They initially thought I was being sacrilegious. But I have learnt not to be diplomatic with God. God is our Father. It is a waste of time pulling punches with him. He knows our thoughts in any case without our even having to express them verbally. So let me be so bold as to repeat the question. Has God ever deceived you?

Mutual distrust and suspicion between local communities and herdsmen is probably Nigeria’s most recent internal security challenge. To specifically address the subject, the Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase has developed a strategic initiative of convening town hall meetings throughout the country to enhance the process of reassurance policing and the need for peaceful coexistence and sensitivity of each community’s value, space and interest. The goal is to utilize all Police formations in their respective locations to counter misinformation, anxiety and animosity being generated in relation to the challenge. If police operatives that are deployed in every locality in the nation purposefully follow the directive, so much can be achieved. It is thus no doubt a well thought-out design of public enlightenment which many state governors have also been patronizing. For instance, both at Abesan on October 06, 2015 and at the City Council Hall on January 19, 2016, Governor Ambode of Lagos used the strategy to get many Lagosians to appreciate his administration. It is gratifying that our Information Minister, Lai Mohammed has also joined the group.

If you are ever in doubt of President Muhammadu Buhari’s steely determination, the world sat up and took notice of PMB and he gained millions of admirers around the world, including the British Prime minister, David Cameron who caused a major diplomatic faux pas at an event in which the British monarch was present. David Cameron had earlier being overheard that: “We’ve got some leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain… Nigeria and Afghanistan, possibly the two most corrupt countries in the world”

Our focus this week is on keeping a joyful home. In addressing most issues in life, the foundation is crucial. What is the foundation of that marriage you are into? What is the foundation of your search for a life partner? Or even the foundation of the home filled with children?

By making morality a matter of acting according to rules purportedly set by a divine being, faith-based ethics ignores the most important component for developing moral consciousness or awareness, that is, making children learn appropriate moral principles through practical examples from parents, teachers and adults generally. If the humanist approach to morality, which gives primacy to the well-being and happiness of individuals on earth not to an imaginary blissful existence in paradise, becomes widespread, eventually a new generation of more reasonable human beings would emerge equipped with inner conviction that the rightness or wrongness of a given action cannot be rationally decided without considering its effects on sentient beings that might be affected by that very action. Moral absolutism, which posits God as the ultimate foundation of morality, is clearly untenable. Thus, it is essential that each individual should periodically re-examine the moral principles he or she lives by, based on the recognition that morality is the product of human evolution and does not transcend the existential conditions peculiar to human beings in this world.