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03/11/2026

26 nights. One proclamation: THE LORD REIGNS. I’m late, but I must bless the man who sounded the trumpet.

Father, Nathaniel Bassey reminded nations that You sit upon the throne. Let that throne speak for him. Defend him, hear his unspoken prayers and replenish him where applause cannot reach.

Pastor Nathaniel Bassey , may the sound God placed in your mouth never cost you the song in your soul. May the mantle increase without crushing the man. May kings honour you as you bow before the King of Kings. As You promised in Psalm 132, let the horn of Your anointed flourish and his lamp never go out. May you never arrive at the harvest too weary to feast upon it.

We dressed like our miracles. Father, clothe him in what money cannot buy: wisdom, friendships without agenda, rest without guilt and joy that needs no audience. We declared THERE SHALL BE NO LOSS. Let there be no loss of health, peace, love or years. Let no assignment prosper at the expense of his home.

For Pastor Sarah Bassey , give her blessings that bear her own name. Reward the sacrifices nobody saw and answer the prayers nobody heard. Crown her with honour beyond the ministry the world sees. Let their marriage remain a garden of Your delight. Let their children know You as Father, not merely as the God their father preaches. May they inherit faith as a gift, never ministry as a burden.

Father, remember every soul at Hallelujah Challenge. You know the faces behind the lights and every sacrifice. They helped others dress like their miracles; let them walk into their own. May the congratulations they helped others rehearse become the news their families celebrate. IT WILL STILL COME TO PASS. Revive every promise they almost buried. GOD IS INVOLVED, THEREFORE IT WILL NOT FAIL. Enter even the matters they have stopped discussing.

And Father, let miracles follow them home. Give PN, his family and every hand that served testimonies no livestream could contain. May their children’s children know the King they proclaimed to nations as the God who was faithful in their own homes. THE LORD REIGNS.

In Jesus’ name. Amen. ❤️

01/11/2026

FROM THE INSIDE: 05

113 Heads of State and Government. 194 delegations addressing the General Assembly. About 166 events across High Level Week. 1,553 requests for bilateral rooms. Around 18,000 active delegate badges. Big numbers, until you stand inside the machinery that makes them possible.

One President leaves a bilateral and another is already on the move. Before the next walks in, the room has to become another country’s room. Flags are changed. Nameplates checked. Seating adjusted. Security and protocol are already several steps ahead.

Then you enter the General Assembly Hall and realise the same precision is everywhere. A President approaches the famous green marble podium. The guards take their positions. Interpreters are ready to carry every word into other languages almost as quickly as it is spoken. Names, titles, speaking order, movement and timing all have their place. Even who speaks first carries history. Brazil traditionally opens the General Debate, followed by the United States as host country.

Suddenly the scale becomes human. One flag, one name, one translation, one movement, one person standing exactly where they need to be, then another.

That was what I wanted to capture behind the scenes. Not simply the world arriving, but the thousands of decisions and details that allow it to arrive without feeling the weight of what it took to receive it.

Watching the people carrying that operation, I assumed many had been doing it for years. Yet some had only been specially selected and brought into the assignment 2 or 3 weeks earlier. They had been briefed, trained and absorbed into the rhythm so thoroughly that you could barely tell who had been there for years and who had only recently entered it.

That is when “plug and play” stopped sounding like corporate language to me. At this scale, it means building a system clear enough for someone new to enter, learn its rhythm and carry their part without becoming the reason it slows down.

Then those numbers at the top stop being numbers. They become thousands of tiny things being done correctly, over and over again, so the world can walk into a room and simply begin.

26/10/2026

Sometimes the clearest evidence of an idea’s power is what other people go on to build because they once encountered it. Years before Women Rise for All took the form we know today, Amina J Mohammed was already bringing women together across government, development, business and leadership. Anna Bjerde was among those invited into one of those early gatherings. Today, as Managing Director of Operations at the World Bank Group , Anna convenes annually the Women Leaders Breakfast at the World Bank and IMF meetings. An idea became a mirror of possibilities for another woman, and that woman went back into her own institution and created another room.

That is the thread I kept seeing while documenting Amina J Mohammed at . Women Rise for All has gathered Heads of State, First Ladies, ministers, CEOs, philanthropists and younger women building extraordinary things of their own. You could see DVF - Diane von Furstenberg in the room, and elsewhere Wawira Njiru , whose Food4Education has served more than 200 million meals and employs thousands across Kenya, sitting over lunch with the President of Namibia. And nobody felt ornamental.

Amina J Mohammed has created a room where seniority does not only speak downwards and youth does not only look upwards. People like us get to inherit the experience of our elders: what it took to build, survive difficult rooms, make decisions and carry responsibility. Our elders, in turn, encounter the audacity and imagination of women coming behind them. Both generations leave with their sense of what is possible expanded by the other.

She does not seem interested in access for access’ sake. Once the door opens, she expects something from you: step forward, know why you are there, bring your ideas, use the access and build something with it. And when you can, open another door. Anna encountered that possibility and created a room of her own. And the chain continues.

That is what I saw permeate Women Rise for All: women gathered to celebrate a woman who has spent years affirming women, but also expecting more from them. Not simply, “Come into the room.” Come in, make your presence count, and make sure you are not the last woman through the door.

23/10/2026

FROM THE INSIDE: 04

If you’ve watched The Devil Wears Prada, you probably remember “The Book.” Every night it arrives, it is reviewed, marked up and returned ready for the next day. Not the character, the ritual.

Long before that, ancient civilisations had scrolls that preserved records, instructions, decisions and the workings of enormous systems so knowledge was not lost as the work moved forward. I found myself thinking about that while watching H.E. Amina J. Mohammed work.

She has a book too, and it goes with her. She only has specific windows to sit with it, yet somehow seems to know what is inside it by heart: the feedback, what needs attention, what must be carried forward, the speeches, the questions, the decisions and what tomorrow needs from today. Her excellence has a system, but the system does not end with her.

She asks questions. Proper questions. She will go through a speech and ask, “What are we actually saying here?” “What is the major goal?” “What is the one thing we need to get out of this room?” That was when the book became something else entirely for me. It was no longer just a record of the work, but a way of teaching everyone around her how to think about the work. Senior staff, junior staff, everyone has to be across it, not simply completing tasks but understanding why the task matters, what the room requires and what success should look like.

The more I watched, the clearer it became that she was doing two things at once: preparing for the rooms she was entering while preparing the people around her for the rooms they may one day enter themselves, and through the way she showed up, teaching them what those rooms require.

I love being challenged, so I recognised the value of that immediately. There is something rare about a leader who can see where you are going, hold you to the standard required to get there and make your growth part of the work itself.

In my head, I started calling it The DSG Papyri, one living record inside a much bigger system of excellence, making sure the work moves, the memory remains and tomorrow begins before today has quite ended.

The Book

DSG Amina J Mohammed lays down her book on the office table

T

14/10/2026

FROM THE INSIDE: 03

There is busy, and then there is whatever I watched Deputy Secretary General Amina J Mohammed do during UNGA. I genuinely thought I understood what work rate looked like, but Amina J Mohammed gave that definition an entirely new meaning for me.. Somewhere in the middle of that week I remember thinking, Omo… Tolani, you have work to do.

Let me show you why…..

It wasn’t just how much she was doing. It was how purposeful all of it felt. During General Assembly week, I watched her move from meetings to speeches, conversations to bilateral engagements, across subjects that could each consume an entire day: the SDGs, development, Africa, AI, women and girls, financing, diplomacy, partnerships and reform.

On some days, I counted 4 or 5 speeches, sometimes 6, even 7, and that was just the speeches. There were also responsibilities delegated by the SG, bilaterals with world leaders alongside him, podium duty, meetings, conversations and everything else the week demanded.

About 80% of our days started at 6am and very often ended around midnight. I genuinely started asking myself: when does she sleep? When does she wake up? Because you don’t get ready for a 6am start at 6am.

But even that wasn’t the part that burst my brain. It was the command. The subject could change completely from one room to the next and she wasn’t simply arriving with talking points. She was completely across the work: the context, who was in the room, why the conversation mattered and what needed to come out of it.

That kind of command doesn’t come from effort alone. It comes from mastery.

And perhaps that is why excellence can look remarkably calm when the work behind it is unrelenting and extraordinary.

12/10/2026

If all you know of UNGA is that one week in September when presidents, prime ministers and motorcades seem to take over New York, you’re not wrong. You’re just seeing the most visible part of it.

The General Assembly is one of the main organs of the United Nations and, in many ways, the closest thing the world has to one room where every country gets a seat. There are 193 Member States, and every one of them gets a vote. Nigeria gets one. The United States gets one. China gets one. Rwanda gets one. However big or small the country is, the vote is still one. That alone is quite something when you stop to think about it.

The Assembly deals with everything from peace and security to development, international law, humanitarian issues and the UN’s budget. It is also one of the few places where countries that may disagree on almost everything still have to sit across from one another, argue their positions, negotiate, vote and, sometimes, find common ground.

And UNGA is much bigger than the week most of us see on television. The General Assembly session opens every September and the work continues long after the motorcades leave New York. What most people know as “UNGA week” is the high-level period around the General Debate, when Heads of State and Government arrive in New York and take that famous green marble podium to tell the world where their countries stand.

That was the part I had seen for years: the speeches, the flags, the arrivals, the photographs. But being inside it made me realise that the speeches are almost like the front door. Behind them is an enormous machinery of meetings, negotiations, bilaterals, resolutions, committees, diplomacy and decisions all moving at the same time.

So when you hear “UNGA,” don’t just think about presidents giving speeches. Think about 193 countries, with different histories, interests, problems and ambitions, all trying, however imperfectly, to figure out how to share one world.

11/10/2026

UNGA81, from the inside. 01

100,000+ photographs, and somehow nothing quite prepares you for stepping inside one of the most powerful stages in the world. The speeches, arrivals, handshakes, motorcades, meetings and rooms are familiar because we have all seen them before. After a while, you think you understand the choreography. But seeing it from the outside is one thing. Experiencing it from inside the offices carrying the institution through the week is another entirely.

This was the final UN General Assembly of Secretary-General António Guterres and Deputy Secretary-General Amina J Mohammed in those roles, and my assignment gave me a very different vantage point: telling the story and documenting the people carrying the institution for 11days.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, I started thinking about buildings.

A building may be recognised by its walls, but anyone who understands buildings knows there is an entire architecture carrying its weight.

That became one of the most interesting things to watch up close. I saw SG Guterres carrying the political responsibility of leading the United Nations through heads of state engagements, diplomacy, global crises, difficult conversations and decisions. I saw DSG Amina J Mohammed carrying a different but equally demanding set of responsibilities across development, reform, coordination, partnerships and implementation.

Different responsibilities, different pressures, different kinds of leadership, one institution.

There was a phrase the SG António Guterres once used about her that kept coming back to me. He described her as “the centre of management and strength to make things happen.” Watching them work gave those words a different meaning.

I left a note in my thoughts that week: leadership at this scale is rarely a solo photograph. Institutions this consequential are held up by different kinds of leadership working at the same time.

Perhaps that is the thing about great architecture. You rarely see everything holding it up. You simply know that it stands.

16/09/2026

Yesterday was her birthday and all I could do was smile thinking about so many little stories.

Like the man I watched standing outside the FT Weekend conversation because it was completely sold out. He had one of his favourite books with him and was hoping someone could somehow get it to his idol to sign.

Someone did.

But she didn’t just sign it and send it back. She asked for his name, wrote him a personal note and made sure the book got back to him.

His idol was Chimamanda Adichie .

That story made me think about so many others. My brother loved one of her books so much he wrote a song named after it. My mum, sister and siblings basically lost their minds when I sent home copies she had signed for them. The day she came to visit Prof at the Presidential Villa, the entire place was buzzing because almost everyone was a fan.

Then there was the Kennedy Center.

This was just days after the Met Gala, where she had made us so proud again, representing Africa on one of the biggest stages in the world. I saw she would be in DC and asked if I could come document the day. She said YES with so much excitement.

The funny thing is, it was her stage again. Her event. Her moment. Yet somehow she spent so much of it turning the light on me. Introducing me to people, speaking so highly of my work and making sure everyone knew what I did. I was there to tell her story and somehow she kept telling mine.

That is the part of her I keep thinking about. She celebrates people. She roots for people. She makes people feel seen.

So for her birthday, I thought it would be nice to give some of that back. If something she wrote ever made you smile, carried you through a hard season, gave you courage or simply made you feel understood, leave it here. A line, a book, a moment, or just what her words did for you.

Chimamanda Adichie has given so many of us words over the years. Maybe today, we can give some back.

Big Sis, may all the love you have poured into people find its way back to you.

11/09/2026

Looking back now, I understand why Thanksgiving was what I had before Atlanta even began. I thought it was simply the story I was meant to tell, but somewhere along the way it became the way I was meant to see. It made me pay attention differently to the people behind the moments, the work nobody applauded, the conversations that changed things and even the parts of the story that did not go according to plan.

This film is part of that gratitude. Gerard, Jojo, Aunty Afolake, Lamide and our HOD Yusuf Yerimah, thank you. The long hours, the eye, the care, the photography and the films. People will return to these moments long after Atlanta, and this story does not look this beautiful without you. The devil tried, but GOD restored.

And I think that may be the lesson I’m carrying most. Thanksgiving is not pretending everything went perfectly. It is refusing to become so consumed by what went wrong that you miss what God still made possible. Before SOR, I asked God what story He wanted me to tell. He said Thanksgiving. I thought He was giving me something to say. Turns out, He was teaching me how to see.

And after everything Atlanta gave me to see, I can only say one more thing: God bless America.

10/09/2026

It was almost midnight after the Sunday service in Atlanta and AJS was still seeing people. Somewhere in the rotunda, one of the workers had come with her little boy. He was tired, a little cranky and wanted to run around while his mum was in the meeting. Then I noticed Omoniyi, one of the leaders, pick him up. No fuss. He just carried him, patted his back and cradled him until his mum was done.

It looked like such a small thing, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Because it is one thing to build a workforce that can execute. It is another thing entirely to build one that notices people.

And I kept seeing versions of it. An elderly man and his wife came to see AJS and rather than make them remain standing in line, he asked them to sit and told everyone waiting that he would need a few minutes to go to them instead. Nobody announced it. Nobody made a thing of it. It just seemed normal.

AJS often says he has been blessed with the gift of men, and watching the team up close, I began to understand another side of what that means. It is not only having people who are competent enough to carry the work. It is having people who have learnt to care about the person standing in front of them.

You can teach people a process. You can give them a checklist. But empathy is different. Somewhere along the line, people begin to mirror what leadership consistently makes important.

A great workforce can get the job done. An exceptional one makes sure people are not lost while getting it done.

Excellence can impress you. Empathy makes you feel seen. And the rare thing is finding a team capable of both.

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