He was a Masters degree holder from Cambridge University. I know by now, you will have started thinking he was from a rich family. No, far from it. He was from a wretched family. He battled his way to the top by wining scholarship after scholarship through hardwork.
After badging his Masters, he came back to Nigeria and secured a job with a prominent bank as the zonal manager. He got married to the love of his life and they begot three children.
Some years later, he was wrongly indicted for fraud and was condemned to seven years imprisonment.
After serving his jail term, he found it difficult to secure a job due to being an exconvict. That is not the end of life, he thought. He decided to learn a skill when he was already in his late forties. He sought link for where he could learn POP work and a friend gave him a number of a man who is well expertise in POP making.
Alas! When he would meet the man, he turned out to be his junior in secondary school. He was not deterred anyway. He was determined to learn the work quickly to stand on his own again.
His apprenticeship was not a sweet story to write about though. He came with a lot of insult, stress and ridicule but he was not deterred. Not even some polite and harsh insults from his once upon a time junior in school would make him back out.
One fateful day at site, he was working in the site with his boss when he mistakenly broke one of the POP makings in the presence of the man that owned the house. The man was so furious and started raining insult on him. Despite all his pleas, the man did not stop. All of a sudden, the man said a word that broke him. He said, "Look at him. You are using your old age to learn work when you have toyed with your youthful days. I am sure your parents would be advising you then but you heed not their advice. What you should have done then, you are now doing it with grey hair. Leave my site immediately for I am not the reason for your misfortune."
Without saying a word, he left the site and headed home. His wife was not at home when he arrived. He took a rope and hanged himself to the fan.
A man who survived being born in a wretched family, a man who rose to the top against all odds, a man who survived being indicted wrongly and was not broken by jail term, a man who damn the ridicule of learning work from his junior in school was broken by tongue!
Only if we all knew how powerful our tongue is, only if we knew our tongue can break or make anyone, only if we knew the words that come out from our mouth may be the last straw that will break the camel's back for a man that is already fighting a lot of battle, only if we knew word of our mouth is capable of giving a hopeless soul hope, probably we would choose to watch how we use our tongue and speak good always.
Some people have unknowingly killed many souls with the words of their mouth. Some people's tongues have committed much more atrocities than every gun in the whole world.
Please, let our tongues be the reason hopeless people see hope in living. Don't let us use our tongues to break people.
Always remember your tongue is a powerful weapon you can decide to use to help humanity or to kill generations to come.