PASSION: THE STORY OF SLEEK FASHION MAGAZINE PUBLISHER; SYMON OKHALE ADEJI

“Emma, if anyone had told me that at the age of twenty four I will have a million plus to my name I will not believe him. But today, the story is different.”
With this statement my relationship with Simon O. Adeji took a definite turn for the better. It was really our first serious meeting, but it was the first time I felt properly introduced to one that will be instrumental to my later success. I’d first met him a year earlier while on a visit to Kaduna at the home of the coordinator of Youth With A Purpose (YWAP), Dr. Charles Ononiwu, one of my mentors. We fondly call him ‘Uncle C.’ This is an interdenominational viz NGO that creates an enabling atmosphere where youth discover their talent and develop them for use under God, and for good. We got talking subsequently as he tried to help me secure a job with one of the telecom industries in the countries.
While at an eatery in Awolowo Road, Ikoyi, I knew that something had happened to me. From that time on we talked, shared and almost lived together. I saw the calmness with which he pursued his dream of floating a magazine, the type that has never been done in this part of the world. He was passionate about it. He exudes such confidence that my initial doubt on the likely success of his intentions dissipated with time and was replaced with believe and enthusiasms.
I’d closed from work and gone to see him in Ikeja one day.
“Four banks are jostling over whom to sponsor my project, Emma.” He announced in his usual characteristical calmness. I said nothing but within me I mused: “Go on, dreamer.” Then the phone rang. I was closed by and naturally picked it up.
“Yes, who is it?”
“Can we speak with Simon? Tell him it’s from the Zenith Bank.”
Probably more for my benefit he picked the call with me standing by. Zenith wanted to solely have it all. I was dumbstruck. Everything he’d said was true.
Today, more than seven or eight editions (as at the time I wrote this piece) editions of Sleek Magazines has been published. A coffee-table book collating almost all the speeches of Ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo was published. At the last count his company, Sleek Communications Ltd celebrated the opening of its London office in April 2008 with assets running into millions. But that is not my surprise. It is that he, Simon, remains humble, accessible and straightforward. During all my times with him and from later conversations with those who knew him before I did, one impression stands out: he has a yearning for excellence. Like he once told me while we were eating at Munchies on Awolowo Road, tapping his head, that the drives for success lies in ones desire to excel.
With him, the need to fill in a gap which is commonly used as in a quest to see a need and changed it is changed to, according to Simon, “create a need, fill the need”, and not “find a need to fill”.
One time we were driving through an almost empty Third Mainland Bridge on a Sunday afternoon, he pointed to his nomination slip by CNN as the “No.1 Fashion Magazine in Nigeria, Africa”. He, it is that built in me the desire to establish something. He was able to see into me what I couldn’t decipher. It was one of those evenings we were together. He was going through my book of collections which I refer to as ‘Savant’s Clippings’, when a small piece of paper slipped out and he picked it, read the content and asked: “Emma, what is this?” I shrugged, characteristically, in given situations like this: “Nothing. Just one of those insights I write. Nothing really.” You think so?” His question made no impact on me, but I showed mild interest, still. “Do you know you can make millions out of this?” “How?” I was bemused. “Stickers.” He doesn’t normally say much. He is précised with his words. That simple expression eventually led me to achieving another thing I never believed possible, that on business one can gain access to what is normally seemingly inaccessible if one acquires the right and correct attitudinal dispositions. With him, you don’t have to have a ‘leg’ to gain access to people, especially where businesses are concerned.
Today, a once timid me business-wise, one who never believed he has any iota of business acumen in him, now own his own business outfit – in publishing. I really wanted to walk under him but he simply encouraged me thus: “Emma, you have it in you. Do not be discouraged. Nobody got to the top on a platter of gold as such. You don’t need money to start, either. Have a marketable concept you can develop and with proper accentuation you will break even and penetrate market and become reckoned with.”
His advice, at a time when he has not even achieved anything to be physically seen became the testimony I can now share with the world. He broke into the market by ‘creating a need and filling it’ and I am right on the same track as well – at my own growing will and determination. I may not have matched his drive and speed but I am grateful we’d ever met. I may not be where I ought to be but it wasn’t what it used to be.
-Emmanuel Enesi Ajanah, Publisher/Editor-in-Chief, DeepRoots Magazine, and CEO, The Breathing Mind Ltd.


Confidence gives birth to confidence. There are reasons to have faith...especially where faith inspires faith. Thanks, Symon.

RAPTURE! ...and what about the children?

“When a kid goes wrong, which factor is responsible, his heredity or his environment?” The answer is: “It’s a toss-up”. The Bible says exactly that! We are sinners both by heredity and environment; both by nature and by nurture; both by instinct and by practice”.

The picture that’s being painted from a lot of Christian movies in recent times concerning the rapture can be as confusing from a careful study of the Scripture. This is in relation to the fate of children on the subject of rapture. Would infants be raptured automatically? At what age is a child qualified to make heaven, or go to hell? In some of these films children were portrayed to have been raptured. Only few were exceptional, yet the question that bugged a careful observer of some of the verses found in relation to Christ’s second coming and the events likely to herald that time or day leaves a lot of unanswered raised brows.

How about the comparison to the days of Noah? Only eight people eventually entered the ark. Eight! The question is: were there not children among the people in Noah’s time? It is also possible that many of the women were in different stages or trimesters of pregnancies, and some were in the process of giving birth (that is, in labour) and so on…. Let your mind be as detailed as can be and you’ll get the picture clearly. Yet, they didn’t make it into the ark. Therefore, they PERISHED in the flood in as well. Is God this wicked or should this be seen as wickedness at all? J. Boyd Nicholson, in his book, ‘The Watered Garden’, made some interesting statements concerning the one hundred and twenty (120) years it took an ‘amateur’ Noah, who, in obedience to God’s instructions, built the ark. Now the question is whether God would have sent the flood in the first place if the whole world of that time had hearkened unto Noah. I believe, as Nicholson puts it, that ‘the ark wasn’t built to save the people IN the flood. It was build to save the world from the flood, if they would repent in time. It is not the sailing of the ark that is emphasized in scripture, but the “preparing” of it. Every plank was a sermon, every hammer blow a warning, and as the structure grew, so did the responsibility of the viewers’.

I sincerely chose to believe that every one of us owe a great deal to our offspring. I’d pondered on Noah’s sons’ wives being with pregnancies or even children at the time. I won’t be wrong to say that such children will have been saved as well, unless they chose not to follow ‘dadda’ or ‘mama’.

Sometimes ago I walked into my study group at our Church’s breaking of bread and the question was being asked on when a child is intelligent enough to give her or his life to Christ? My thoughts went wild. I simply asked the question on when a child is qualified to go to hell. The answer is the same. As long as we dwell in this nature called flesh, then we are bound to receive its wages. David says, ‘…in sin doth my mother conceive me…’, and Scripture is very clear on the wages of sin: DEATH! It doesn’t matter how old we are. After all, what wrong or sin has a new baby, or the yet unborn, committed?

So, invariably, am I saying that children too will go to hell? Look at this Scripture with me. “Just like in the days of Noah….” The comparison is obvious, isn’t it? That’s why the Bible is emphatic on the role parents play as leaders in their respective homes. If any of the women in Noah’s time had ventured near the ark to ask Noah if she can join him with her children, assuming she was with some, I believe the answer will have been a resounding YES. But none heeded the warnings given over the years – 120! Can you imagine the length of time that was? The point is: where are you leading your children to? Many of us provide them with the benefits of our privileged world – the little luxury we can afford – but never helped them to face the hard but realistic issues of life; either because these are realities we have well chosen to ignore (to our own peril) or we are not as bothered. Unfortunately, they then get to the age that we cannot reach them anymore except to dance to their tunes. By then, they are adults in their own right.

Nicholson further posited that “the ark was not built by Noah to save the population, but “to the saving of his house,” after the world rejected his preaching (Heb.11:7)”. Yes, God will have mercy on whom He will have mercy, but which would you think is preferable: isn’t it obedience, which is better than sacrifice? It is better to know for certainty than to live in the island of unproven assumption. The result is always fatal.

So, eventually, the question is not as much on whether children will go to hell but that we need to ask ourselves where we are leading them to? According to C. Everett Koop, M.D., “Life affords no greater responsibility, no greater privilege, than the raising of the next generation”. And Scripture definitely agreed with that, as recorded in Proverbs 22:6. Invariably, your arguments may be termed pointless if YOU ARE NOT RAISING SOLDIERS AND USEFUL HANDS IN THE VINEYARD OF THE MASTER!

“Train up a child in the way he should go…”, “Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate.”