St_Lupez retweeted
This afternoon, after lunch, I decided to visit the cemetery where our deceased priests are buried. I walked from one tombstone to another, reading the names of priests, some of whom died even before I was born. Many were names I had only encountered in books and historical records. I read their names, but their deaths felt somewhat distant.
Then I came upon one tombstone. It is the tomb of a priest I knew personally. He had visited our community in Nigeria on several occasions, taught me in class, and shared a number of personal encounters with me. Suddenly, the experience became different. I was no longer just looking at names on tombstones. I was standing before the grave of someone whose life had touched mine. His death felt real in a completely different way.
I think this is often how we view death. When we hear that someone we barely know has died, we acknowledge the news and move on. But when death takes someone we know, someone who has spoken to us, taught us, shared moments with us or touched our lives, something changes. The reality of death suddenly comes much closer.
Yet, the truth is that death was never far away. It is only our familiarity with some people that makes it feel distant. Every name on those tombstones once belonged to someone who lived, loved, worked, prayed, made plans and had people who mattered to them.
One day, others will walk through other cemeteries, stop before our own tombstones and read our names. To some, those names will mean a great deal; to others, they will be just names in history.
Perhaps we should remember more often that death is not merely something that happens to other people. It is a reality that awaits every one of us. The question is not whether our turn will come, but how we are living while we still have time.
Remembering our mortality should not make us afraid of life; it should teach us to live it more meaningfully.
Fr. Ugochukwu Ugwoke, ISch – at Vallendar, Deutschland
St_Lupez retweeted
I'm genuinely confused.
So after the inflation.
After the kidnappings.
After months of no light.
After tax and fuel hikes.
After terrible healthcare.
After salaries can't even keep up with feeding.
Election Day comes then:
You dress up, You leave your house, You queue under the hot sun, You vote for the same person again.
You are not normal.
St_Lupez retweeted
One day, I was scrolling through TikTok when I came across a comment under a Muslim post. It was an ignorant Christian boy who wrote that he admired Islam so much and wanted to become a Muslim.
I sent him a DM and asked for his number so I could call him. He sent it, and I called him.
During our conversation, he told me that all his friends were Muslims and that they had been telling him wonderful things about Islam. He said he particularly admired their unity.
I said, “Okay, but can I also tell you some of the things about Islam your friends won’t tell you?”
He agreed, so I started teaching him. But I didn’t just tell him things; I made him investigate the sources himself. He was shocked by what he discovered.
After that, I asked him if he had ever studied Christianity. He said no, so I began teaching him about Christianity too. He was genuinely happy.
At the end of our conversation, I told him to go back to his Muslim friends and ask them about everything I had shown him from their own sources.
A few weeks later, he reached out to me and said they didn’t deny any of the things I had shown him; they only tried to justify them.
I said, “There you have it!”
Then I asked him, “Do you still want to become a Muslim?”
He said NO!
I then encouraged him to subscribe to GodLogic’s channel and watch some of his debates with Muslims. He was so happy.
One thing he said that really stuck with me was that it was good to actually know about something before deciding to embrace it.
Don’t join Islam ignorantly please make your research first!
St_Lupez retweeted
If you can't pray for 30 minutes, pray for 10.
If you can't read a chapter of Scripture, read half.
If you can't pray a rosary, pray a decade.
If you can't give $10 to the poor, give $1.
If you can't stop sinning, stop excusing your sin.
Christ will perfect you. Just begin.
St_Lupez retweeted
Please, I've got cookies in my shop that's close to expiration so I've put them for sale at 50% discount
I've already lost two cartons to the same issue, there's been no sales
If you're in port Harcourt I'd really appreciate if you patronise me
They cost 3600 but now 1800 🙏
St_Lupez retweeted
IF YOU ARE 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28 or 29 years old
Here are fully funded Internships, scholarships & grants you need to apply for this November:
St_Lupez retweeted
Life is too short to love in muffled tones, to love tentatively. Love loud. Love boldly. And when it ends, love again.
St_Lupez retweeted
If you are looking to travel the world for work, conferences, competitions, summits, volunteering, workshops, education, and more across Pakistan, Nigeria, SA, UAE, Nepal, India, Ghana, the UK, the US, and beyond.
I spent hours during the weekend finding companies abroad that are actively hiring and funding and compiled them into one sheet.
Application links, eligibility criteria have been added, so all you have to do is review the sheet and apply.
drive.google.com/file/d/1zSJ…
St_Lupez retweeted
This sweet girl was sent home from school for wearing a nun costume. Listen to what she says!! Hahahaha! 👏🏻👏🏻
She’s spot on! 😂😂🙏❤️✝️
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
This video is a skit produced by Tracy Turnage on Facebook, who frequently uploads satirical videos featuring her daughter.
facebook.com/share/1CyntNah…
St_Lupez retweeted
Lived experience, dismissed. Courtesy, dropped. Professional ethics and plain common sense, thrown out with them. All of it traded to win an argument on this app, while women keep dying in childbirth.
This week a woman wrote that pregnancy felt like a death sentence for her. Other women replied under her post describing the same severe sickness. Days without food. Nothing staying down, and barely any water. Vomiting until there was blood, then a hospital bed. The timeline answered with a quarrel over semantics, and some of the corrections came from health workers, statistics in hand.
A figure of speech needs no proof. Nobody asks a man to show a burst skull when he says a headache nearly split his head open. A woman who says her pregnancy felt like a death sentence is describing what she lived through, and she is the only witness to what it was like.
The whole fight is about a number and a word. How many die, and whether the figure is inflated. Whether a grandmother who had eight children, or a woman not yet 35 with four or five of her own, cancels it out. Whether "death sentence" goes too far when most mothers come home.
Ask the husband outside the labour ward whether the number matters. Ask the family that buried mother and baby together, the child whose mother went in to deliver and did not come home, the parents who lost the daughter they raised, the compound that heard the wailing that night. Ask the mothers who survived the birth and whose lives never went back to normal. For each of them the count is one, and one is the whole of it. None of them is arguing over whether "sentence" is too strong a word.
Numbers have an honest use. They tell a government where women are dying, how many of those deaths could have been stopped, and whether the budget means what the speeches say. Quoting them at a woman describing her own pregnancy is not among their uses.
Argue the figure and the word with the people who hold the money. The government. For the woman in labour tonight, one question matters. Will she come home ??
"Pregnancy is a death sentence for women in Nigeria." (1/2)
Once a year somebody posts that line and the timeline burns for a week. Out come the stories of parents and grandparents who had six children, some eight, and lived. Then the statistics and the insults. Then silence until the next round. The stories are real, and they come from another generation. Women in urban Nigeria now average fewer than four children.
The line is wrong by one word, and the word is "sentence". It convicts every pregnant woman in the country. Most women survive their pregnancies, but by UN estimates about one Nigerian birth in a hundred ends with the mother dead. What each pregnant woman carries is a risk, and no nation on earth buries more mothers. In 2023 an estimated 75,000 Nigerian women died from pregnancy and childbirth, about 29 per cent of all maternal deaths worldwide. In their 2017 estimates, WHO and its partner agencies put a Nigerian woman's lifetime risk at 1 in 21, against 1 in 5,400 in high-income countries. Over a lifetime, her risk is more than two hundred times higher.
I spent almost ten hours in the room before my son arrived. It shook everything in me, and it looked like nothing I had ever seen. I was only the one watching.
Our mothers knew before the data told them. In Yoruba homes, a prayer said over a woman in labour runs A ó gbọ́hùn ìyá, a ó gbọ́hùn ọmọ. We will hear the mother's voice, we will hear the child's. A prayer that asks for both to come through tells you what people fear.
The fear shows in the habits too. Many women hide their bumps, skip parties and keep the pregnancy off social media until the baby arrives. Some fear that the more people know, the more evil can reach the pregnancy. Others would rather grieve quietly if the baby is lost. There are women who will not walk in the sun at a certain hour of the afternoon, and women who hook a safety pin to the underwear over the bump. One ties a mantle around her stomach, another anoints herself, and another takes holy communion for the pregnancy. Those are the ones I know, and other faiths and cultures bring more. Swap the faith or the culture and you get a different guard on the same fear. A people does not build habits like these around something safe.
Medicine keeps its own list of guards, starting from the first test. Iron tablets, malaria prevention, tetanus injections. Blood pressure checked, blood sugar tested, scans booked, fruit pushed onto her plate. Almost every item exists because something can kill a mother or her baby. The latest national survey found that more than a third of women with a recent birth never saw a skilled provider during that pregnancy, and only about half made four antenatal visits.
When the hospital costs more than families have, they fall back on what they can reach and afford. Poor women end up with the chemist, the unqualified hand, the prayer house or the traditional birth attendant, or give birth at home. The same survey found that more than half of Nigerian births happen outside a health facility. Among the poorest 20 per cent of households, the figure is more than eight in ten.
The federal health ministry's own report says deaths recorded in health facilities fell from 904 in 2024 to 460 in 2025, and that progress deserves its credit. Now set 460 beside the 75,000 estimate. The years differ and the counting differs, yet the gap is more than a hundredfold. The 75,000 is modelled, so some of that gap may sit in the model. Not a hundredfold of it. Either most of these deaths happen outside the building, or the building is failing to count them.
St_Lupez retweeted
"Pregnancy is a death sentence for women in Nigeria." (1/2)
Once a year somebody posts that line and the timeline burns for a week. Out come the stories of parents and grandparents who had six children, some eight, and lived. Then the statistics and the insults. Then silence until the next round. The stories are real, and they come from another generation. Women in urban Nigeria now average fewer than four children.
The line is wrong by one word, and the word is "sentence". It convicts every pregnant woman in the country. Most women survive their pregnancies, but by UN estimates about one Nigerian birth in a hundred ends with the mother dead. What each pregnant woman carries is a risk, and no nation on earth buries more mothers. In 2023 an estimated 75,000 Nigerian women died from pregnancy and childbirth, about 29 per cent of all maternal deaths worldwide. In their 2017 estimates, WHO and its partner agencies put a Nigerian woman's lifetime risk at 1 in 21, against 1 in 5,400 in high-income countries. Over a lifetime, her risk is more than two hundred times higher.
I spent almost ten hours in the room before my son arrived. It shook everything in me, and it looked like nothing I had ever seen. I was only the one watching.
Our mothers knew before the data told them. In Yoruba homes, a prayer said over a woman in labour runs A ó gbọ́hùn ìyá, a ó gbọ́hùn ọmọ. We will hear the mother's voice, we will hear the child's. A prayer that asks for both to come through tells you what people fear.
The fear shows in the habits too. Many women hide their bumps, skip parties and keep the pregnancy off social media until the baby arrives. Some fear that the more people know, the more evil can reach the pregnancy. Others would rather grieve quietly if the baby is lost. There are women who will not walk in the sun at a certain hour of the afternoon, and women who hook a safety pin to the underwear over the bump. One ties a mantle around her stomach, another anoints herself, and another takes holy communion for the pregnancy. Those are the ones I know, and other faiths and cultures bring more. Swap the faith or the culture and you get a different guard on the same fear. A people does not build habits like these around something safe.
Medicine keeps its own list of guards, starting from the first test. Iron tablets, malaria prevention, tetanus injections. Blood pressure checked, blood sugar tested, scans booked, fruit pushed onto her plate. Almost every item exists because something can kill a mother or her baby. The latest national survey found that more than a third of women with a recent birth never saw a skilled provider during that pregnancy, and only about half made four antenatal visits.
When the hospital costs more than families have, they fall back on what they can reach and afford. Poor women end up with the chemist, the unqualified hand, the prayer house or the traditional birth attendant, or give birth at home. The same survey found that more than half of Nigerian births happen outside a health facility. Among the poorest 20 per cent of households, the figure is more than eight in ten.
The federal health ministry's own report says deaths recorded in health facilities fell from 904 in 2024 to 460 in 2025, and that progress deserves its credit. Now set 460 beside the 75,000 estimate. The years differ and the counting differs, yet the gap is more than a hundredfold. The 75,000 is modelled, so some of that gap may sit in the model. Not a hundredfold of it. Either most of these deaths happen outside the building, or the building is failing to count them.
