Senate President Godswill Akpabio has inaugurated an ad hoc committee of the red chamber to probe the N30 trillion Ways and Means secured under the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari.

Last month, the upper legislative chamber resolved to probe the loan, secured during the two terms of Buhari.

The Ways and Means is a loan facility through which the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) provides short-term financing to cover the government’s budget shortfalls.

Before the ninth national assembly wound down, Buhari had asked the lawmakers in December 2022, to approve N22.7 trillion his administration had secured through the Wways and Means.

The figure has since risen to N30 trillion, according to a joint committee of the senate.

Speaking during the inauguration of the committee on Monday, Akpabio said it should remain open to constructive inputs and feedback.

“The success of this ad hoc committee hinges on collaboration, cooperation, and a steadfast commitment to the common good,” he said.

“Let us set aside personal and partisan interests, focusing solely on the task at hand.

“By working harmoniously, we can ensure that the Ways and Means in Nigeria are managed prudently, efficiently, and in accordance with the law.

“Moreover, confidentiality is paramount to your work. The information and data we gather during our investigations are sensitive and must be handled with the utmost care and discretion.

“Adhering to strict protocols will ensure the security and integrity of the information you uncover.

“In carrying out your mandate, it is imperative that you engage with relevant stakeholders, experts, and organizations.

“Their valuable insights and perspectives will strengthen the credibility and comprehensiveness of your findings and recommendations.”

The senate president said the country must work towards having responsible management of the Ways and Means in the country.

The United Kingdom (UK) has banned health and care workers from Nigeria and other foreign countries from bringing dependants to the country.

The UK Home Office made the disclosure in a post via its verified X handle (formerly Twitter) on Monday.

According to the UK government, the measure was part of its plan to reduce migration into the country, adding that overseas care workers brought an estimated 120,000 dependants to the UK in the year ending September 23.

It wrote: “From today, care workers entering the UK on Health and Care Worker visas can no longer bring dependants.

“This is part of our plan to deliver the biggest ever cut in migration.”

Recall that the UK Home Secretary, James Cleverly, had proposed new laws to reduce migration in the United Kingdom.

A report by BBC detailed that the UK intends to raise the minimum salary criteria for getting a skilled worker visa, currently set at £26,000, the new barrier will be extended to £38,700.

Cleverly told parliament that the previous year’s application of the restrictions may have resulted in a reduction of 300,000 migrants yearly.

According to reports, people with health and social care visas will be exempt from the higher wage requirement.

However, overseas caregivers will no longer be permitted to bring dependents, such as their partners and children.

The inference is that until their new spouse earns £38,700, a UK person who marries a non-UK citizen cannot bring them to live in the UK.

The immediate past President of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, has rated the performance of his successor, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, barely a year in office.

According to Buhari, the former Governor of Lagos State, has done wonderfully well since the assumption of office nine months ago.

Naija News reports that the former president made this remark when he received the Comptroller-General of Customs, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi and members of the management team of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) in Daura, Katsina state, at the weekend.

It is no longer news that President Tinubu has faced wide criticism over some of his economic policies, including the removal of fuel subsidies and the unification of the exchange rate windows.

These policies, among others, have brought about untold hardship on Nigerians following the economic hardship, and the naira’s depreciation, which in recent times have led to protests.

Buhari, however, said Tinubu has performed well given the prevailing circumstances, but affirmed that Nigeria is a complex country to govern.

According to him, there is not much anybody can do about Nigeria. Buhari addressed Adeniyi and his team, emphasizing that Nigeria poses significant challenges, urging citizens to persevere through economic difficulties and back the initiatives of the present government.

“I thank you very much for coming. I very much appreciate it. I thought Tinubu has done very well.

“Nigeria is so complex. Really, there isn’t much anybody can do,” Daily Trust quoted the former president saying.

Adeniyi expressed his gratitude towards the ex-president for his exceptional support of the NCS Act 2023.

The CGC also visited the Emir of Daura, His Royal Highness, Dr Farouk Umar Farouk.

“This legislative milestone grants the NCS expanded authority to implement policies aimed at bolstering revenue generation and facilitating trade, thus contributing significantly to Nigeria’s economic growth trajectory,” Adeniyi said.

He also spoke about trucks carrying food items seized at the border, saying, “I will also use this occasion to brief you on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s directives that all trucks of food carrying exports across the border that were seized by Customs be returned to the traders with the hope that they would plough them back into the Nigerian markets.”

It should be noted that this was not the first time Buhari had remarked that governing Nigeria was a tough job for leaders.

In November 2023, during an interview with the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), Buhari said the country was difficult to rule.

“Nigerians are extremely difficult. People know their rights. They think they should be there, not you. So, they monitor virtually your every step. And you have to struggle day and night to ensure you are competent enough,” he had said.

The Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) and the Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU) have declared a 7-day warning strike.

Naija News understands that the strike was declared to demand the payment of four months of withheld salaries of their members, after the 2022 nationwide strike.

The decision was reached by the joint action committee of the two unions, after a meeting which held in Akure at the weekend.

This comes a week after the unions warned of potential disruptions to industrial peace in Nigerian universities.

The unions emphasized the unfair treatment and questioned the government’s rationale behind this selective payment.

According to the SSANU president, Mohammed Ibrahim, who read the communiqué of the meeting to journalists in Abuja on Monday, the decision to embark on the warning strike was taken as a last resort since several protest letters and other communications with the Federal Government did not result in the payment of the withheld salaries.

The statement added: “If nothing is done by the Federal Government to positively address this situation and respond to our previous letters to them, the members of the two unions may be forced to meet soon to take all lawful and stringent decisions on the matter”.

The company stated that the new price will be effective Friday, March 15, 2024.

It explained that the upward review is necessary considering the continued rising input cost in the country.

It stated, “As earlier informed, we will review some of our SKU prices effective Friday, 15th March 2024. This review has become necessary because of the continued rising input cost and the need to mitigate the impact.

“All open orders in our system at 00.00hrs on Friday 15th of March, 2024, will be invoiced at the new prices.”

The increment is coming barely a month after it announced an initial price increase on some of its products, effective Monday, February 19, 2024.

Naija News reports that in its 2023 financial report, the company revealed that it made a loss of N106 billion for the period compared to the N13 billion profit it realised a year before.

The company explained that the Nigerian business landscape, which experienced a significant shift in 2023 with a substantial impact on businesses and livelihoods nationwide, affected the company’s performance.

The fate of the suspended Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Dr. Betta Edu, remains uncertain two months following her suspension amid allegations necessitating an Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) probe.

Despite the EFCC concluding its investigation and submitting an interim report to the Presidency, Nigerians are yet to learn of any decisive action regarding Edu’s case.

Reports from Daily Trust indicate that the EFCC’s investigation, initiated after Edu’s suspension on January 8, has culminated in a recommendation to prosecute the suspended minister.

The submission of the interim report has sparked speculation on the next steps, particularly with some high-profile individuals and political figures rallying for leniency towards Edu.

Senate President Godswill Akpabio, among other influential personalities, is allegedly exerting pressure on President Bola Tinubu, advocating for a “soft landing” for Edu.

In contrast to Edu’s contentious situation, Halima Shehu, the suspended coordinator of the National Social Investment Programme Agency (NSIPA), appears to have been absolved of wrongdoing by the EFCC’s interim findings.

The source said, “The leaked documents about releases by NSIPA under Halima have been scrutinised by the EFCC. Those expenses are found to have followed standard procedures because all relevant parties endorsed their signatures.

“The monies were discovered to have been released for the purposes they were earmarked. Besides, Halima only continued the disbursements from where her predecessor stopped. And this was to avoid litigations, because the contractors had presented certificates of no objection.”

Another source said, “But a strong personality in the Villa was not happy with the report from the EFCC and therefore told those who brought it to take it back and review the report further.”

The EFCC spokesman, Dele Oyewale, spoke with the platform about the claim that an interim report had been submitted to President Tinubu and said an investigation into the matter is still ongoing.

Asked when the investigation would be concluded, considering that credible sources had confirmed the submission of an interim report, Oyewale declined further comments.

The spokesman of the Senate President, Eseme Eyiboh, when reached out to on the allegation that Akpabio was working hard to secure “a soft landing” for the suspended humanitarian minister, said, “Betta Edu is never in the legislature and she is not a minister appointed by the president of the senate.

“I recall that she was suspended by her appointer and not the president of the Senate. This was intended to pave way for an official public service procedure. There is no way the president of the Senate could have or can influence the determination of the fate of any minister and particularly Dr Betta Edu.”

A septuagenarian, Engr Hadi Usman, has recently been honoured with an honorary doctorate in Science from Gombe State University.

Naija News understands that Usman’s recognition is a result of his remarkable inventions in academia, which reportedly include a fuelless generator, a stove that operates on water, and a Vespa engine helicopter.

The news of his achievement has garnered widespread praise and admiration from Nigerians on various social media platforms.

Confirming the development, the Senior Special Assistant on Media to the Governor of Gombe State, Safianu Danladi Maringa, remarked that Usman received the prestigious degree during the 10th, 11th, 12th, and 13th combined convocation of Gombe State University.

According to Vanguard, Usman, despite not having a Western Education, is also a lecturer at the same university.

Naija News understands that in addition to his other inventions, Usman has also created a radio station, a radio transmitter, and a handset.

In a recent interview, the skilled inventor revealed that he comes from Jekadafari Ward in the Gombe local government area and has been creating inventions for more than five decades.

He said, “I received education, but not Western education. I received an education in Qur’anic Studies. Afterward, I was sent to a village in Borno for further studies, completed the programme and graduated when I was 12 years old, and thereafter came back home and performed the ceremony.

“I have been inventing things since 1971, and I have 78 inventions. However, none of my inventions took so much time for research, like the construction of the stove that uses water to produce heat energy. I spent three years on that research and I wondered why there was no lightning and thunder in the dry season.”

It is worth mentioning that Nigeria has recently witnessed the emergence of skilled inventors who have developed innovative gadgets to assist individuals.

One such inventor is Yusuf Shamsudeen, a 30-year-old Chemistry graduate from Kano State University of Science and Technology (KUST), Wudil. Shamsudeen’s remarkable invention includes a water-powered stove.

As the bank relationship manager of two leading agro-based companies in Nigeria, namely: Presco Plc and The Okomu Oil Palm Company Plc, I made several visits to the companies' plantations in Benin, Edo State between 2000 and 2003.

The sight of several thousands of hectares of oil palm plantation was always a beauty to behold. I particularly found the fully automated oil refineries of the two companies awe inspiring. At the end of each visit I came to appreciate the immense potential of the country as an agricultural powerhouse.

During one of my visits, I made an observation that the heartbeat of the companies' huge operations is the nursery. At the nursery, thousands of oil palm seeds are planted and nurtured into quality seedlings for about a year. The nursery serves to protect the seedlings until they can withstand harsh weather conditions. From time to time, oil palm seedlings from the nursery are transplanted to virgin or old plantations that have been cleared of bushes or old oil palm trees. The nursery guarantees the continuity of the business. To this end, the companies make an enormous investment in the maintenance of the nursery.

With the benefit of my plantation visit experience, I always wondered why we pander to the dictates of Bretton Woods Institutions along the line to offer no protection by way of subsidies to our fledging industries and vulnerable citizens but to open our economy to the vagaries of global economic conditions. Bretton Woods Institutions' economic pills fly in the face of the law of nature - the inherent attribute of all classes of animals to nurture and protect their young ones until such a time that they can stand and fend for themselves.

Also, the second-best theory of welfare economics states that if all distortions in the economy cannot be eliminated, you cannot tell whether eliminating or reducing a particular distortion will lead toward or away from equilibrium. Of all the distortionary factors there are, the most pernicious for our economy is corruption. Even in our administration of subsidies - introduction or removal - corruption is embedded. We carry on as if there is a corruption-embodied economic growth model to bequeath to the field of economics. Given our peculiar situation, what we need is help with taming the hydra-headed demon of corruption not the disproportionate preoccupation with subsidies.

The conclusion of the matter is that subsidy is an integral part of life, nobody pays the full cost of living!

Whatever happened to catchy governance phrases, of which this country had a surfeit in the last 50 years? Why are governments at all levels today regurgitating dry phrases such as “palliatives”, “reforms,” “it’s the fault of my predecessor” and “we see light at the end of the tunnel,” which could be an oncoming goods train? Maybe that is just as well because if one quarter of the catchy governance phrases spewed in the past had delivered on their lofty promises, Nigeria would have been an Eldorado by now.

Today, Nigerians are complaining about food. Governments at all levels are talking about palliatives. Some people are even looting warehouses and waylaying food trucks on the highways. Whatever happened to Operation Feed the Nation [OFN] that military Head of State General Olusegun Obasanjo launched in 1977? Nearly 50 years before a Farmer Governor surfaced in Niger, Obasanjo enjoined everybody to cultivate every little space around his house. The Head of State himself was seen on NTA slugging a hoe, cultivating a maize farm right inside Dodan Barracks. Three years later President Shehu Shagari launched the Green Revolution. How come, after 50 years, we cannot feed the nation and many of our farms are parched, not green?

Whatever happened to the Directorate of Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure [DFRRI] of the IBB era, headed by Air Commodore Larry Koinyan? In the wake of his unpopular Structural Adjustment Program [SAP], IBB rolled out a palliative, not of free rice, but of rural infrastructure that will assist farmers to move their produce to urban markets. It was a classic case of teaching people how to fish rather than giving them fish.

Probably no peacetime program in Nigeria ever received quite as much trumpeting by government officials as Health For All by the Year 2000. Billboards, flyers, radio and TV jingles, endless interviews by government officials all trumpeted it throughout the 1970s and 1980s. How come that millions of Nigerians are still sick today, cost of many drugs has tripled in recent months alone and our health workers find a reason to go on strike every now and then? Not to be left behind, Federal Ministry of Agriculture, prodded by UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, promised us Food for all by the Year 2000. Federal Ministry of Housing followed suit with a promise of Shelter for all by the Year 2000. Twenty-four years after the deadline, millions of Nigerians are still looking for health, food and shelter.

In the 1980s, Federal Ministry of Health led by Prof Olikoye Ransome-Kuti promised to combat the “Six Childhood Killer Diseases” through the Expanded Program on Immunisation, EPI. Every mother in Nigeria was taught how to mix sugar and salt in the Oral Rehydration Therapy, ORT. Those two extremely important programs saved millions of children’s lives. Why are they not being trumpeted anymore? Where is the Rural Water and Sanitation [RUWATSAN] program that we heard so much about in the 1980s? It promised to deliver boreholes and running water to all towns and communities, a very good idea because water-borne diseases account for a large chunk of our health care budgets. Forty years since Ruwatsan, why are we still talking about open defecation in Nigeria?

One of the catchiest phrases in Nigerian history, which also fell very short after nearly 50 years, was Universal, Free, Compulsory Primary Education, UPE. In  the early 1970s, endless radio jingles and billboards trumpeted it. Although it was General Gowon who conceived it, General Obasanjo launched it with great fanfare in 1976. Twenty-four years later when he returned as civilian president, he expanded and relaunched it as Universal Basic Education, UBE. It turned out not to be universal because we have a guesstimated 15 million out of school children today. It was not free because millions of kids today are in high-paying private schools while public schools too found various ways to fleece parents. It was never compulsory because many parents do not send their kids to school. It is even doubtful if it is education, since many of its products today cannot read a book.

Where are the Gifted Children’s Schools that Education Minister Professor Jibril Aminu created in the 1980s? His idea was to pluck especially gifted kids out of the normal school system and concentrate them in special schools that could breed Nobel Prize winners. Pray, where is the Nomadic Education program that Aminu also created? All the pastoral kids that we see today rearing cattle, were they not supposed to have been injected into that program? By now the cattle must be in ranches for lack of herders.

Innumerable times, successive Federal Governments set target dates to end gas flaring from the oil fields, complete with threats of hefty fines and license revocations. One newspaper reported at one time that the oil giants found that it was cheaper to pay the fine than to invest in the technology to end gas flaring. What about the environmental cost of flaring and the health of people in the surrounding communities? These days, government’s economic team speak so much about “reforms”. Some people see these reforms as reincarnations of Babangida’s Structural Adjustment Program, SAP, only that it was not preceded by a Babangida-style “national debate on IMF loan.” CBN Governor Yemi Cardoso’s “merger of exchange rates” phrase is not as catchy as IBB’s “Second-tier Foreign Exchange Market, SFEM”.

Whatever happened to the 1980s phrase “local sourcing of raw materials”? In that era when foreign exchange was very scarce and you could get jailed for hawking dollars around, government officials spoke everyday about the need for industries to locally source their raw materials. Dr. Yusuf Bala Usman said in 1982 that the dollars and pounds spent by Nigerian industries to import raw materials exceeded the value of their produce, meaning they were simply siphoning funds abroad. In the 1980s government also propounded the phrase “export-led recovery.” Import-led collapse is more like it, with everything from toothpicks to razor blades competing for scarce forex.

Central Bank, where is your early 1990s program of “respect the naira”? CBN-sponsored radio and TV jingles admonished market women, butchers, taxi drivers and gamblers to stop mutilating the naira. A cartoon in The Triumph newspaper depicted a fat CBN official telling a crowd to respect the naira. One famished Nigerian in the crowd said, “Respect? Oya, release that one for your hand and see. We love the naira!”

Since the 1980s, successive governments have been promising us 10,000 megawatts of electricity. Some of them, such as Obasanjo II’s, Jonathan’s and Buhari II’s even fixed deadlines, only to breach all of them. Obasanjo’s first Power Minister, Chief Bola Ige, promised stable power within six months. President Umaru Yar’adua promised to declare a State of Emergency on Electricity, which he never did, instead he said his predecessor spent $16 billion on power “without commensurate results.” Poor me, I even offered Malam Umaru a [naïve] advice at the time, that why don’t you go to Ukraine, hire a 4,000 KVA floating power station, sail it to Lagos, of the kind they use off the coast of Arctic coast, connect it to the national grid, then you get a respite while you tackle the power problem?

Why is Nigerian society bedeviled today by kidnapping, banditry, child trafficking and baby factories? Wasn’t General Obasanjo’s 1977 Jaji Declaration supposed to have taken care of all these? When ace broadcaster Adamu Augie interviewed him on NTA, he said the goal was to make Nigerian society “fair, just, humane and African.” Unfair, unjust, inhumane and un-African is more like it these days. Shagari continue from where Obasanjo stopped by launching the “Ethical Revolution” in 1982, I think. He even created a Ministry of National Guidance in 1983, a concept borrowed from Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser. Buhari/Idiagbon regime capped it all with the War Against Indiscipline [WAI] in 1984.

Are we no longer doing “new breed politics” that Babangida promised in the early 1990s when he banned “old breed politicians” from participating in his transition program? Everyone who held a governorship, ministerial or other high political office was banned and only the young were allowed in. only that, new breed politicians ran behind the scenes to the old breed and sought for “endorsement,” very much like school and job applicants ask older folks to be their referees because neither school principals nor employers trust a new breed without a record of his own!

In 1991 when going to Hajj was cheap, the late Hajiya Bilkisu wrote a column titled “Hajj For All By the Year 2000. This year when a hajj seat costs nearly six million, Hajj For Few By the Year 2024 is more like it.

I said something earlier about the catchiest peacetime phrase. On the other hand, there was no catchier war-time phrase in Nigeria than the one propounded by General Yakubu Gowon in the late 1960s, “To keep Nigeria One Is A Task That Must Be Done.” Everywhere you turned, there was a large billboard with a picture of the youthful Commander-in-Chief Major General Yakubu Gowon, clean shaven except for his dark mustache, looking intently ahead at God-knows-what. Why don’t we have a catchy phrase to address Boko Haram, ISWAP, Ansaru, bandits, communal warriors, IPOB, Yoruba Nation agitators and secession advocates masquerading as “restructuring”?

Since 1975 when General Gowon and other West African leaders created ECOWAS in the mold of European Economic Community [EEC], one of the catchiest phrases in Nigeria has been “free movement of goods and persons.” After 49 years, what we had in recent years was free movement of coups instead, with constitutional rule overthrown in four ECOWAS member states. A fifth one narrowly escaped by postponing presidential elections at the last minute.

Our foreign policy too is now lacking in catchy phrases. Where is “Africa is the centerpiece of Nigeria’s foreign policy,” written into the 1999 Constitution? Look, where is “Concentric Circles foreign policy” launched by Foreign Minister Prof Ibrahim Gambari in 1984, or the “Concert of Medium Powers” launched by his successor, Prof Bolaji Akinyemi in 1985? Can’t we find another catchy foreign policy today, such as, “Knock the Sahelian bums” or “Throw out the Yanks, Limmies, Gauls, Russians, Nippon and Chinks”?

Moses

   When the children of Israel rebelled against God and the leadership of Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, God was angry and decided to destroy them.  But Moses ‘wrestled’ with God to change that decision.  He went as far as rejecting an offer to make out of him a great nation instead of Israel. Yes, an intercessor must always be selfless, unselfish. Moses argued and showed God the reasons why he should not destroy Israel at that point in time.  At last, he succeeded in convincing him.  Let us read it:    “And the Lord said to Moses, ‘How long will these people reject me?  Will they ever believe me, even after all the miraculous signs I have done among them?  I will disown them and destroy them with a plague.  Then I will make you into a nation far greater and mightier than they are!  ‘But what will the Egyptians think when they hear about it?  Moses pleaded with the Lord.  They know very well the power you displayed in rescuing these people from Egypt.  They will tell this to the inhabitants of this land, who are well aware that you are with this people.  They know, Lord that you have appeared in full view of your people in the pillar of cloud that hovers over them.  They know that you go before them in the pillar of cloud by the day and the pillar of fire by night.  Now if you slaughter all these people, the nations that have heard of your fame will say, ‘The Lord was not able to bring them into the land he swore to give them, so he killed them in the wilderness.’

   “Please, Lord, prove that your power is as great as you have claimed it to be.  For you said, ‘The LORD is slow to anger and rich in unfailing love, forgiving every kind of sin and rebellion. Even so he does not leave sin unpunished, but he punishes the children for the sins of their parents to the third and fourth generations. Please pardon the sins of this people because of your magnificent, unfailing love, just as you have forgiven them ever since they left Egypt.’   “Then the Lord said, ‘I will pardon them as you have requested.”  Numbers 14:11-20

  My God! Excellent and successful intercession! Great Moses! Look at the sweet result. This is a typical ‘wrestling with God’.  Some men are indeed great. Read the above passage over again. Moses did a wonderful job here.  He went on, putting forward every reason under the sun why God should change his mind on destroying the people of Israel through a plague for their faithlessness, disobedience and foolishness. He practically threw God’s words back to him. He achieved his aim by making God to rescind that judgement. Great success! Great Moses!  Listen,    God said, “Come now, let us argue this out.”  Isaiah 1:18.  Yes, he is looking for men and women that will hold him with reasons why he should do what we want him to do.  And this is what wrestling with him means. How many of us are ready for this? Can you stand between him and the people??

Jacob

   Another man that taught us that we can actually hold on to God and struggle with him in prayer until we receive what we want from him is Jacob.  Jacob is a perfect example of a man wrestling with God. They had the match at midnight prayer.  There is no situation that wrestling with God in the midnight cannot change. True!     I have repeatedly said this in my book / audiobook Power of Midnight Prayer that any man or woman that masters this act of midnight prayer will remain unconquerable throughout their life.  This does not in any way mean that challenges of life will not come, sure they will, but you will always be on top of the situation. I say this by personal experiences and also testimonies from others.  When Jacob was coming back from exile and was to meet an angry and well armed brother – Esau, he was afraid, confused and was trying every trick to escape the rage of a brother who was coming to pay him back for his (Jacob’s) treachery.  In that precarious situation, Jacob wrestled with God and changed the entire situation to his favour.  Praise God!  Please let’s go through this very interesting account of Jacob’s wrestling with God:

   “But during the night Jacob got up and sent his two wives, two concubines, and eleven sons across the Jabbok River.  After they were on the other side, he sent over all his possessions.  This left Jacob all alone in the camp and a man came and wrestled with him until dawn.  When the man saw that he couldn’t win the match, he struck Jacob’s hip and knocked it out of joint at the socket.  Then the man said, ‘let me go, for it is dawn.’ But Jacob panted, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me.’ ‘What is your name?’  The man asked, he replied, ‘Jacob.’ ‘Your name will no longer be Jacob,’ the man told him.  ‘It is now Israel, because you have struggled with both God and man and have won.’ ‘What is your name? Jacob asked him.  ‘Why do you ask?’ the man replied, then he blessed Jacob there.’ Jacob named the place Peniel – ‘Face of God’ for he said, ‘I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been spared.’  The sun rose as he left Peniel. ‘Then, in the distance, Jacob saw Esau coming with his four hundred men.  Jacob now arranged his family into a column with his two concubines and their children at the front, Leah and her children next, and Rachel and Joseph last.  Then Jacob went on ahead as he approached his brother, he bowed low seven times before him.  Then Esau ran to meet him and embraced him affectionately and kissed him.  Both of them were in tears.” 

   What a reversal of fate! There are things I would like us to note about Jacob’s attitude towards this particular encounter with God.  Jacob was persistent; he made sure that the man (God) did not win the match and he also refused to let him go without blessing him.  And he got his blessings at last.   The sun rose upon Jacob and his fears were immediately tuned into favour. When we follow this same principle, we are sure to receive the same result.  This is exactly what wrestling with God is all about - persisting until you receive your blessing from him.   Find the above story in Genesis 32:22-31, 33:1-4.   Now also look at the way Hosea puts it, “Before Jacob was born, he struggled with his brother; when he became a man, he even fought with God.  Yes, he wrestled with the angel and won.  He wept and pleaded for a blessing from him.  There at Bethel he met God face to face, and God spoke to him – the Lord God Almighty, the Lord is his name!”   Hosea 12:3-4.   That is Jacob for you!  He started wrestling right from the womb. He wrestled with his brother, he fought with God and he also wrestled with the angel and won. And I want to add that he also wrestled with his father-in-law to get his wealth and wife of choice. He understood the game perfectly well. It is called wrestling Match! Yes, that guy was determined right from the womb to make the most of his opportunities. He was determined to see all the promises of God come to pass in his life. So, he wrestled! Fight for your destiny. Fight for your vision. Fight for the promises of God for your life. Don’t give up! We will continue. Share this message with others.