Arinze MD

USMLE step 1✅ USMLE step 2✅ OET exam ✅ Match into US residency ✅ Visa denial and finally Trump ban❌ Tale of a Nigerian doctor

If you are a UNICAL Dental student who just got transferred to OAU and you need guidance, especially if you're a female, send a DM. OAU is not easy to navigate. You need expert guidance.

WHY I CAME BACK HOME After almost 30 years in the United States working as an Interventional Cardiologist, people still ask me why I returned to Nigeria. Every day at Tristate Hospital, Lekki, I am reminded that my return to Nigeria was not just a career decision. 1/8

How to upgrade your self-image in 1 day: Close your eyes. Become aware of the sensations in your body. Focus on how it feels to breathe slower. Do this as you slowly relax every muscle in your body. Head to toe. Within five minutes you'll notice a tingling sensation in your palms while you relax. Once that sensation arrives, you will be able to visually go within yourself to create permanent changes in the subconscious: transforming who you believe yourself to be. Now for the next few minutes, allow yourself to mentally recall a time where you won. The first time you felt truly loved. A risk you took that paid off. The first time you realized you were capable of more than you thought. Experience the scene fully. You might notice warm feelings in your chest as you replay these memories. This is the good part. Fly to the future and imagine the greatest version of you. Notice how ASSERTIVE they stand. Notice how they appear. Sense their confidence. They've overcome the things that keep you up at night. They've built what you've only imagined. They live life knowing exactly who they are. Allow the image to become bigger, brighter... Time will slow as your subconscious examines every detail. Now imagine how it would feel if this was you right now. Picture yourself in their shoes. Can you feel it? Linger there for five minutes. You find yourself softly smiling knowing this is the happiest and most relaxed you have felt in a long time. Lie there for a while. Enjoy this moment. Know that you can return here whenever you wish, exactly to this place, where you feel exactly as you do now. All you have to do is close your eyes and imagine yourself back here. You feel rejuvenated by that thought. Open your eyes and interact with the world from this state. Believe it or not this is what you are eventually supposed to feel every single day. You will begin to notice that all the things you want to be are already within. Few take the time to practice this. Do this daily and you begin to rewire your mind. Change your beliefs. Think, act, and become the person you've seen glimpses of throughout your life. This is Self-Hypnosis. This is Psycho-Cybernetics. This is how you do it. I've released a full PDF 8 week workbook including 20+ exercises on how to do this on my substack. (Link is in tweet below) —Cogito Ergo Sum

22 years ago, in Enfield, London, I met this Nigerian guy whose job was to wash celebrities' cars at a very high-end car wash. Everything he made, he sent back to Nigeria to invest in property. He was not well educated and didn't know of any other assets to preserve wealth. At the time I met him, he was saving a lot and regularly sending home millions of Naira. His clients and patrons were very generous, and he was very hardworking. The first thing I asked him was why he didn't take all the knowledge he had gained to set up a similar business back home. His answer was - "They will rob me blind if I am not there." He wasn't ready to leave his cash cow in England, and he also knew that setting up a business at home was a risky endeavor. I see this pattern repeated with many successful Nigerians outside Nigeria. Trust is rare, and many have been burned. The surprising thing is that when Nigerians do the reverse and try to set up businesses abroad from Nigeria, they would most likely choose other Nigerians to run them. I have seen this with banks and churches. Some are successful, and others are not, but they keep doing it anyway. What happens to Nigerian trust locally, and why is it different when things are abroad? The simple answer is systems. A Nigerian doing business with another Nigerian abroad is protected by the rule of law and the systems in place there. There is also something deeper that I stumbled upon. Nigerians typically choose other Nigerians to run things, even though their products are originally Nigerian products or products largely meant for Nigerians in the Diaspora. When it is a universal product, they would choose others, but would still likely choose Nigerians first. It is a paradox. There are many times when choosing a Nigerian to run a Nigerian business outside Nigeria is a very bad idea, especially in those places with xenophobia, and where Nigerians are despised, but the reason Nigerians choose other Nigerians is that Nigerians abroad work hard. They know what they are running away from and put everything into it so they don't go back. I always joke that I have more relatives in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, than in Benin City, and it is likely true, as a family reunion there once had 200 people. One thing I noticed was that the family members almost always employed other family members in their businesses, and those businesses thrived. One of them even ran a car wash, employing his brothers, who later set up their own car washes. These were informal arrangements without any contracts, but everyone behaved and played their part. The interesting thing was that they never tried to do the same thing back home in Benin City. The answer seemed simple: maybe desperation and greed led to bad choices by those at home, but why? I have always wondered why the same family bonds abroad that bring people together and help them do well disintegrate when they get back home. The only people I have seen who have kept these family bonds in business, tight at home and away, were the Igbo people. The interesting thing was that the car guy in London was also an Igbo man, but he couldn't leave a business with his people back home to run. I later asked why, and he told me it was a high-end, personalized service that took years of apprenticeship to perfect. He was cleaning and detailing Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and other high-end cars for footballers and bankers. If he tried to train people to do that, they may end up taking the business away from him. I finally got my answer. Trust is multifaceted. You have to first trust yourself before you can trust others. I have a barber in Lagos called Chika who has absolutely no fear that I would choose others over him, as we have had a relationship for decades. I have the same relationship with Chika as I had with my late co-founder, because we were always truthful with each other. It was something that grew over time. I have followed Chika from Ikoyi Hotel to Victoria Island, to a shed when his shop was demolished, and finally to his current place, where he has operated for the last decade. I have even begged him to come to Accra, as I still don't have a regular barber here after 17 years. Many others in Lagos have the same relationship with him, and there are more of them there than in Accra. Chika is that good. He has also been unable to transfer that skill to others, making his business less scalable. It will always remain a niche luxury service. The type of business we try to do matters. High-trust businesses with a personal touch require the founder to micromanage everything. In Ghana, I once lost a $ 330k-a-year deal because someone (a Ghanaian) was too laid-back to respond to an email on time. Another Nigerian took the deal. Nigerians are more aggressive in doing business than others. So, I understand why people hire Nigerians abroad, especially in other African countries. They have more hunger. Nigerians choose Nigerians because they are easier to micromanage. Hunger at home can easily turn into greed. A Nigerian guy I recruited in Lagos for a project at MTN Group in the early days had tried to circumvent me with my South African partner. I was lucky to have seen the email he wrote to that effect when he left his screen open in the office. I became more cautious about who I worked with. It repeated itself much later, when I saw that our internal company emails were being read in the Ericsson office before they poached a lot of our people. Could these things have happened outside Africa? Maybe the probability would have been much less. The hunger is the same, but the greed is less, as many of the needs are usually already met. This is the same for Nigerians working in other parts of Africa. You don't need to worry about diesel for your generator, fuel scarcity, or security. When those basic needs are met, Nigerians become very different people. This is why I keep telling people recruiting from the diaspora not to bring them to Nigeria, but to allow them to settle in other African countries for now. Trust is enhanced when people worry less about basic things. This is a simple and pedestrian explanation, but trust me, it works all the time. There are people I know who would love to work for Nigerian companies but would never want to live in Nigeria. Hire them, but don't let them come back home unless you are ready to treat them as expats. Nigeria is the problem with a lot of people; it is not because they are Nigerians but because they are in Nigeria.

Chelsea Football Club is delighted to announce the appointment of Xabi Alonso as Manager of the Men’s Team. The Spaniard will begin his role on July 1, 2026, having agreed a four-year contract at Stamford Bridge. Welcome to Chelsea, Xabi!

Everyone is fighting a battle, you know nothing about. Be kind… ALWAYS