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Author; Olodude Olukemi
Who Is A Leader?
•According to John C. Maxwell, a leader is someone who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way.
•In my opinion, a leader is someone who motivates, influences, and inspires with the sole aim of transforming lives.
•You can be at least a leader of two or many more. You are a leader over the people you influence, motivate, or inspire to be better than they were before.
•A leader Is someone saddled with the responsibility to perform.
A leader has a burden for people to be better than they were.
•A leader does not dodge responsibilities but takes on the duties without being told.
•A leader does not blend to be part of the multitude but bends to stand out, not to impress but to serve with humility.
•You can easily identify a leader by what they do, and how they react to situations. You know them not by words but by actions.
•I once heard someone say, 'Eno Sam is a born leader.'
From her story, I see that she grew to become a leader out of pressure. She discovered her area of grace and developed it.
•I can say that a leader is not just born but also made. It's of paramount importance for born leaders to be trained for higher purposes.
Kings are not just born but trained with special training to become top-class.
•As a writer, you are a leader, influencing, and impacting, people with your writings. You know that your pen is mightier than the sword.
•You can choose to be a good and great leader by what you do with your pen. Whatever you are writing should seek to influence people positively and not the other way around.
•As a leader, use your writing influence, to make lives better and not become part of the problem.
Today we have leadership problems and as such, our burden is to help our generation and make things better than ever before.
• It's good to know that we have good and great leaders.
A good leader is a servant of the people who bend to attend to the needs of the people. His burden and passion are to see others improve.
•Great leaders make others great. They raise the standard of leadership and raise prominent or should I say, top-notch leaders.
•When you are talking about good and great leaders, you can talk about John C. Maxwell who has raised millions of leaders also over the world and still doing so.
•Great leaders do not set out to make themselves great, no they don't, they only desire to make a difference in other people's lives.
•Being an example of what you read in your writings is paramount lest we become hypocrites.
Be resolute to live a life of influence in the right direction.
•Who knows the extent of the impact of your writings on this generation?
May our writings not stare us in the face and judge us tomorrow.
•It may be good to ask yourself this question.
What sort of a leader am I?
Am I part of the problem?
Am I a solution to other people's needs?
What do I want to accomplish in the lives of people?
EVERYONE IS A LEADER!
A man walked up to a conference meeting where everyone had been waiting for the conference speakers.
He looked here and there and saw no one to speak because they were waiting for these International leaders coming from the airport.
The flight was delayed a bit so we were told. He cleared his throat and went on stage. He declared to all of us, pointing at us, one after the other. His eyes were quite engaging, and piercing. Wondering what he was about to say, then he blurted out,
'You are a leader! You are a leader! You are a leader! Rise to your responsibility and be visible. Lead men and women, to their promised land.
He left the stage but we all stood up for him and began to applaud.
This kept me thinking about who a leader is.
Who is a Leader?
Any person that leads or directs.
One who has the authority to direct.
A leader is an influencer. You are a leader of at least one or more.
A man can influence as many as he can meet in its thousands or millions throughout his lifetime.
A leader is a model or pattern for others to follow.
All these definitions make you a leader.
A leader is both born and made. You can influence people as many as you want. The question is, will you influence them to do evil or good?
We must be careful not to misuse our leadership abilities but use them to lead positively.
There are diversities of leadership. Leadership at home, office, church, mosque, neighborhood, marketplace, and everywhere. We have students who lead others.
Discover Your Purpose.
Discover the purpose God created you for. If you don't know what you are created to do in the lives of people, you will abuse it.
How do you discover purpose?
•Your passion
What is your zeal? Do you love writing? What do you love writing about? Do you have a passion to see singles marry right?
Some have a passion to help people discover their purpose. That is a fulfilling purpose. Some are particular about niches. Area of concentration.
What motivates you the most?
•Burden
What is eating you up? What are the things you want to see? Some have a strong passion for youths based on what they've passed through. They want youths to become prosperous by making use of online to empower themselves. That is a purpose.
•Niche
If you are a multitasker, you may have to streamline and become a leader in a particular area. Some coach on leadership, some self-development, some are relationship experts, some digital, and so on.
Good to be known in a specific area to attract those who want to learn from you.
Let us explore what leaders do since you know that you have something you can do to make lives better.
Once you discover this then begin to work towards improving yourself along the line.
Many are potential leaders but do not know, so there is the need to discover YOU, as a leader.
To round this up, I will say that you are a leader to be made manifest. Release yourself to be equipped.
Cheers to your great leadership!
“Theory of the Self or Personality” by Franklin Kalisch
The Static Self
1. The Evolving Static Self : This self or personality is ever growing and doesn't alter it's being to another. It only grows and gets larger in magnitude.
2. The Changing Static Self : This self or personality changes it's being from that which it is to another and therefore becomes another self. It is more of a result of an influence of the dynamic self either multi or dual where the person imbibes different traits which were not part of his original traits under the influence of vices or virtues as it can change for the better or worse. Whatever it changes to and remains for a long time becomes the evolving static self.
The Dynamic Self
1. The Dual Dynamic Self : An alternation of a person between two different personalities simultaneously. This makes it difficult to balance vices and virtues in the both. This self makes it possible to be two persons to different people at the same time, for instance a politician or criminal who is always nice to their families but bad and wicked to others. In this instance there is no balance of self and he is neither good nor bad but a reflection of light and darkness that covers his soul, however the dark side always has more to it, if he continues to be bad to others for a long time then he is not good because evil corrupts the good within and he remains only nice to his family not because he loves them really but because he is afraid to lose something of value to him. However when the good is in more proportion to the bad then he is better off and can easily let go of his vices and when he doesn't let go of them then his vices wouldn't let go of him for everything a man does, every action comes back to control who has done it and the more you perform it the more it controls you.
2. The Multi Dynamic Self : An alternation of a person between three or more different personalities simultaneously. This self is hardly in an evolving static self and such personalities never really know themselves. These kind of persons can be so many different persons to different people at the same time, they mimic different personalities and are the real definitions of actors who never have one permanent role to act but always play different roles at different times. Therefore they lack a solid static self neither evolving or changing.
• NB: And we think we are in control but we are not really both of our body and soul, we can only control our choices of thoughts and actions, but after choosing we lose control and then they control us.
• We can become anything at will and the will is only that which we have control over, that is why the bad personality can always become good and the good become bad because the choices are always there to make.
• Although when one loses his control over his will then surely he is intoxicated of either virtues or vice. When with virtues he is well inspired, when with vice he is poisonously inspired because virtue is good and produces good characters such as philosophers, great lovers and musicians but vice is bad and produces the opposite such as tyrants and misogynists.
“How sweet is the taste of fire?” by Tiamiyu Adewusi
"She's just a girl and she's on fire
Hotter than a fantasy, lonely like a high way,
She is living in a world and it's on fire,
Filled with catastrophe, but she knows she can fly away..."
Fire, asides its physical and symbolic relevance including the aggressive nature it connotes either in its catastrophic deadliness or puritanical readiness and temperament in terms of the capacity of what it is able to achieve, be it good or bad in time and space, is a major natural force to reckon with as long as there is a place man will always refer to as the planet earth.To different cultures and different people, reading any meanings to fire as a phenomenon is to them in the same manner through which water is drawn from the brook before it could get into a man's gullet. That is to show the importance life has attached to "fire"in the culture of all men. In African culture for instance, and most especially amongst the Yoruba people, it's their belief that when the" fire" dies, it must be taken over by the ashes.In this instance, they are referring to the physical fire that must relinquish it's fierce and burning potential power to the remnants of the ashes in the end. In the same vein, they are also being sententious to refer to a new dawn that's expected as an aftermath and a departing gesture that is bid to a blossoming event that must flicker and quench in the end, no matter how long it lasts."Bi ina ba ku, a fi eeru b'oju". And in the culture of the white man too, you are definitely not distant from a looming and an impending danger or a seemingly damning trouble if you are being told in English language "not to play with fire"! Connotatively, and in this regard too, the warning signal is not about a burning fire, but rather a pathetic infringement or situations with damning consequences. Even in the Yoruba context, they will say, "O n fi ina sere", which means a person is playing dangerously. With fire and whatever it stands for, or connotes or symbolizes, it can be for bad, good and even the worse of it, depending on the context in which it is used.
If fire has therefore, becomes a dangerous force expected not to be toyed with by any, are we not also expected to become very curious why a poor writer like me has chosen it as an authorial concept in this article and better still, to adopt a gender frame as a portrayal factor in this fickle-like? First and foremost, the female gender is believed to be the weaker and the most vulnerable of the sexes that is regularly susceptible and freely open to all feasible social attacks, and as a lover of that gender, why not protect it through my art when it becomes affordable for me to do so rather than complicate it? Don't cast your aspersions on me yet. This is because the description of a girl purported to have been caught up in the web of a raging fire in my introduction to this article was not originally mine, they are sensationalized emotions of passion and embodiment of courage that were contextualized in a lyrical content form by Alicia Keys, a singer, to appraise the courage and virtues as inbuilt energy that must be created in the face of adversities! She could possibly be referring to herself, or any other person with that ability, but my research didn't cover that scope. What a way to describe a feat of virtue and that of valor in every human being irrespective of the challenges he or she is facing unminding the age and the size of the individual. I may disappoint you that I'm not writing about Alicia Keys. I only used her lyrics as an allusion here. But it may also interest you also to know about one little girl in the past, who, through the same similar efforts had reached her zenith in her chosen career.That is not even the import of this article. The article is about life, its challenges and how our environment can contribute to what we suffer in travail and in adversity and perhaps, letting go of anything that's holding us back. Telling the story of this little girl who rose through her own complicating ordeals and difficult odyssey may only add some aesthetics to my fledgling narrative, if you choose to call it so. I shouldn't bother you unnecessarily, let me quickly unveil her identity.
She's Angelica Hale. You remember her? The eleven year old Filipino-American girl who competed in the 12th season of America's Got Talent in 2017.Today, she's a full blown "sisi", (a blonde) but there and then, she was a girl child. That's the girl whose story you are about to read, but I would hurry on her story but slowly without boring you. Why is her story relevant and has become a special one? After all, here in Nigeria, and several years gone by, we used to have a kid singer too like Benita Okojie, who had sang"Osamudiamen". For you may not know, "Osamudiamen", in Esan language of Edo means "God stand for me". So, what then is it that is special about Angelica Hale in America? I have told you, this article is not about any individual, it's about the "fire of the world that is filled with its catastrophic deadliness"! However, let me quickly summarize the story of that little girl child, I'm sure it'll thrill you.
Angelica Hale was not born in Nigeria. No! She couldn't have been. She was born to an American father, Colin Hale, and a Filipina mother, Eva Bolando on July 31,2007. At the age of four, Angelica contracted a severe bacteria pneumonia that caused her septic shock and multiple organ failure. Not only that, both her kidneys and right lung also suffered permanent scaring which had left her medically placed on ECMO life support. Pardon me, I am not a science person, but they say it's Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation. - A system and technique of providing prolonged cardiac and respiratory support to persons whose heart and lungs are unable to provide adequate amount of gas exchange to sustain life. Angelica spent twelve days on ECMO and another eighty days in the hospital to recover. Let me shock you a bit, she spent a year and half on dialysis, and eventually had to go through life serving kidney transplant received by her through her mother on the 13th of September, 2013.
Her parents later enrolled her in singing lessons with a coach in Georgia.She showed up in season 12 of America's Got Talent in 2017 and received the guest judge, Chris Hardwick's golden buzzer for beautifully singing Alice Keys' "Girl On Fire" that same year and became the runner-up to the winner, Darci Lynne, that same year.
The most fascinating part of Angelica Hale's story was that she was a girl child in 2017. She was not just a girl child who had been on fire since four, but a girl child who had been on the "fire that was hotter than a fantasy" that was portrayed in Alice keys' song. "Lonely like a highway", she had lived in a world that was pestered with fire of sickness and fledgling ailments that were full of catastrophic strides, but she had trudged on, believing she would fly away, and she had indeed flew! I am afraid, she may not have survived her ordeals if she were to be born by an African parents and right here, on African soil. Go and ask from parents whose pensions and salary arrears are not being paid by government and private sectors in Nigeria, or any of the African ruled State. Or ask what poverty exactly looks like from average citizens whose daily incomes could not be guaranteed as a result of job insecurity, bad governance, insurgencies and un-enabling environment created and foisted on them by greedy and disgruntled political elements of Our land. You may want to go to town to conduct a general survey on our moribund medical facilities and ill-equipped hospitals if a serious case like that of Angelica Hale would have survived in a crusty and precariously disgusting environment like that of ours. Or are we still living in denial? Don't die of hypocrisy, the belly of the earth may decide to not accept your deceptive corpse.
Life has got its many vicissitudes, my people. They come in attributable sizes and shapes. The bad, the good and the ugly. This story has only become a good one only because it was about Angelica Hale, and was told of an American environment. It could have been a sour tale on our lips if it were to be about the story of one Anjolaoluwa, Halima or Adaku in a Nigerian environment and its enclaves. How many "Angelicas" has the African graves open up their bellies to, to swallow their emaciated corpses as innocent victims of circumstance? How many? Africa, a continent adjuged to have flown with milk and honey. How many of her innocent children have they buried? How many? Is it those ones secretly buried in the hollowed sherd-pot in the grompy sand by the river side at the obscure hamlets of the South, West, and hinterland towns, or villages in the East and across the African boarders? Or those hurriedly committed and gingerly taken down into the deepest heart of the mother - earth in the interest of their disdainfully conquered dignity? Or those whose pride was cut short in their prime by the pang of hunger or pelted by the pellet of bullets and swagged arrows of brutish dacoits and dare devil night marauders? How many have you buried? I am asking ? How many of your children you buried through your ugly fangs and irredeemable selfishness, Africa? How many? It is sadly, to our terrible shame and mortification, that things have terribly changed. Things have changed utterly for us that we now blaze the trail instead of trailblazing. Forget about the hurly-burly and the daunting raazmataaz that has always glazed our social life and has incessantly dotted our political landscape and has therefore, created an impression outside to make us appear as a people with a faintest leftover of dignity. "Na lie o"! It's a mere fluke. "Iya n je Esin, wa, e lo m'ere e sa"! We are suffering and at the same time focing a wrong impression on a stallion we ride at a dignity of falsehood!
How sweet, therefore, is this taste of fire, burning down through our lips, tongues and fingers?
“Why we don’t need the Armed Forces” by Franklin Kalisch
Intro
This is not an article that means to say that self defense or defense; of yourself, home, workplace, friends needs to stop.
Rather it is an article which aims to explain why the armed forces need to be non-existent in order for peace to reign for a reasonable period of time between humans and other conscious or subconscious forms of nature.
Main Thesis
Did you know that Prodicus the greek etymologist, once discovered the true rules of art and said it has to be neither too long nor too short.
Having said that, i aim to make this piece as short and elaborative as it can be.
In relation to what Prodicus said, which is not being on the extreme side or angles but rather finding a balance in between them is the right way to go.
Now these two extremes we would have here is as follows;
Not having the ability to defend ourselves against external aggression to us directly or to our abode as a whole.
The second is having too much of this ability and then we use it to attack.
The 'armed forces' as i term it here includes every member of the military, paramilitary.
Firstly we would discuss crime, because one would say instantly, why should the police force be scrapped entirely when this would only exacerbate crime of all kinds?
When you look at everyone, you would see we live the same life literally, but just have different wants, needs and desires. These three things are what are physically and mentally driving us to think and act. I want to make my opinion known on this topic, that's a want which has directed my thought and actions towards writing this article. You want to have an idea on topics like this that is what directed your engagement in this article, our wants, needs and desires have different values and the higher the value the more we would want to perform this action or think a particular thought.
At the end of the day we see its mind control, if people are committing crime with guns then why do you keep making them? If governments are committing genocides with wars and bombs, then why do we keep on paying them? why do we keep on making them(bombs)?
Why do we keep on encouraging the act of war? This is a very good question and i would answer it directly, the reason is because there is an innate desire to become aggressive and this aggression has always found a reason to occupy mind (talking generally; mind a whole; universal mind) at some time or the other.
This is mostly due to needs and wants which are either physical or mental, and in order to get them sometimes we overvalue the desire and undervalue the effects of achieving this desire. For example, a man feels the need to overeat and overdrink everyday. He overvalues the food and drinks in contrast to the pains he has from being obese or having irregular body parts.
Conclusion
If a leader wishes to go to war, he overvalues the joy of winning and undervalues the lives and properties of his people and of his opponent to put in a nutshell.
“The costly perils of human hubris” by Tiamiyu Adewusi
In the year 2014, at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, it was a struggling moment that came with alot of other compounding challenges for me as I strove to get my second degree from the said institution after my two other colleagues,'Bunmi and Dr. Nihinlola were done and had left me behind because I had some difficulties in giving my written Thesis and Administrative Forms the last push it deserved to qualify me for graduation.Those who went to OAU in Ife would understand and appreciate what Administrative Forms are! Forms 'A', 'E', 'F' and 'Abstract'! It was hell for me! There and then, and coincidentally too, that same year, before a large university audience within the confines of the universe in the university environment where I almost lost out completely academically, stood a man to discuss something centripetal to the topic I'm about to dwell on in today's article.
Benedict Mobayode Ibitokun, from the English Department of the University, now retired, is Professor Emeritus with quite a number of schorlarly and international publications to his credit. He was to give a lecture, but a valedictory one, and the title of his paper was; ''Homo sapiens and the mirage of self-plenum''.
Those familiar with the language culture of B.M Ibitokun and his disposition to ontic views, know him that being a man of robust compactible capacity and infectious oratorical felicity, Ibitokun is a man with artilery of rich delectation and ratiocination for ideal pedagogy and intellection for his art-craft; a deliberate act or art he has always designed and built to mure his audience to raptness when teaching. If you think I'm lying, go and do a study of his '' SOPAISAN: WESTING OODUA''.
According to Ibitokun, ''Homo sapiens is wise, and intellectual, isn't it?'' In that lecture paper, he spoke further by affirming to interprete ''a paradox of inflationary and deflationary worth of man'', as gloating, and by parading himself in a ''geocentric conclave'', ''a self-proclaimed lord of the manor''; whereas the manor does not belong to him! In fact, the catchword, Homo sapiens, is ''a jingo of self- delusion'', '' a twettering reverberation of self-derision and self-counterfeit', so wrote Ibitokun, in that lecture paper.
Man is homo viator, a wayfarer, on earth! I mentioned something similar to this briefly in my last article, 'Igbo Olodumare' and Nigeria's Allegory. The article, which though suffered alot of editorial errors which came as a result of poor co-ordination and impatience. This is regretted though. Today, while taking a quick glance at the last edition, I couldn't help it, but also to refer to the metaphysical thrust of human estate and his essence as emptiness while striving to achieve self-plenum as existential counterpoise, in the thematic details of Ibitokun's valedictory lecture given in 2014, the same year I was exiting Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile- Ife. I left with an experience never to be forgotten in a hurry.
Man's quests for self-definition and to maintain psychological equilibrium and ethereal heights often come with nightmares and tragedy! But with these fears and precarious circumstances, must man fold his arms like a frog with no clothes and does nothing to strut through the rain? The subsequent cost of such social immobility would be tantamount to what was once described by late Dele Giwa as a risk of not taking any risk at all! Whatever it is that must happen, man must take his risks! How dangerous is the risk taken in whatever that he does is part of what this write-up will talk about. Take your own risk, and let me take mine! Die your own death and let me die mine! ''Go ye in alone! Lose no time''! ''Don't add your death to the bitterness of mine''! Those are words of encouragement from Charles Dickens, the man who wrote A tale of Two cities.
Chief Daniel Orowole Olorunfemi Fagunwa, popularly called D.O. Fagunwa has uniquness in his identity as a character, even in his death that was shrouded in mystery. A man of adventures that he was, Fagunwa, in one of his adventurous voyages had his canoe capsized and got drowned in the process on December 7, 1963. On the third day after Fagunwa's dissapearance, his lifeless body was found floating at the exact spot where he had drowned with his clothe intact and unruffled, with his cap on and his pair of glasses firmly stucked in his hand. The wife, barely 31 at the time of Fagunwa's mysterious demise said in an interview with the Tribune in 2017. What a sad way to die! You see, life provides its victims with a lot of distress and terror! it carries us, drives and scudds us away where fate and fury of life's wind directs! Besides the terror of the storm in which we must wade through as ''homo sapiens'', some of us will die of calenture and feverish delirium associated with sea voyages, while many will be washed overboard, and some tamed through hunger and thirst! In the end, man becomes ''tomorrow's food'', according to Ken Webber! I know you' re muttering some words of prayers, but that is the reality associated with death. It comes with its own strange peculiarities and fate catalysts!
Aside this, life is full of many adventures for man to explore. The Adventures of Moni Mambou by Guy Menga told a story of a young Congolese man and his talking parrot who battled an evil King, corrupt officials and a tribe of cannibals.The book was my first taste of Literature in English in my first year in my secondary days. May God repose the soul of the teacher, Mr Akinwande, now late, who actually pathfound the ways for me. Like many of its numerous victims, death killed my teacher too! In life, we crush some of the obstacles met in the course of our adventures, but many atimes, man becomes a victim of such circumstances. Unlike Moni Manbou, Fagunwa, like many other countless victims never made it through their adventurous voyages.
The Titanic is a story that has stirred a lot of inspirations from books, articles and films, including the 1997 movie by James Cameron.The film, which starred Kate Winslet and Leonardo Di Caprio is a cautionary tale about the perils of human excessive hubris, his frailties and errors of technological infallibility. According to History.com review of the Titanic story, ''...Titanic was a British passanger liner that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in the early hours of 15th April, 1912, after colliding with an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New york City. The immense hull was the largest movable object in the world at the time it made its way down the River Lagan in Belfast. After four days of uneventful sailing,Titanic began to receive sporadic reports of ice from other ships, but she kept on sailing on ''calm seas'', under a ''moonless and clear sky''. But at about 11;30 pm, a lookout saw an iceberg coming out of a slight haze, then rang the warning bell and pulled a telephone call through the bridge. The engines were quickly reversed and the ship was turned sharply. Titanic gazed along the side of the ice berg, sprinkling ice fragments on the front deck. ...Unfortunately, the iceberg had a jagged underwater spur which had slashed a 300- foot gash in the hull below the ship's waterline''. Water began to pour into the compartments and the Titanic was about to sink! Tragedy in anticipation!
Just a decade earlier, Morgan Robertson, through his novel, had told the story of a strikingly similar tragedy titled ''Futility'' or ''the Wreck of the Titans''. The book is a fictional story of a ship whose wreck bears same striking semblance with that real life event of 1912.
One Hundred and eleven years on, human trips to the said Titanic wreck seem to have had alot of mysteries, myths and theories trailing it. The Titanic ship in whose belly more than 1,500 of the estimated 2,224 passengers and crew board had perished, with their bodies that equally dissapeared mysteriously, either into the 'fangs' of ocean animals, bacteria or salt water, has become a subject of controversy that is riddled with the intrigue of gratuitous epiphany for religious extremism and mysteries. Some have said that God has been angry with the designer of the Titanic because of the blasphemous statement alluded by him that, not even God could sink that largest ship ever created by man! And that for insulting the magnificiency of God's immortal essence, He must always punish mankind, or kill them for making further attempt to ridicule His ultimacy by making deep oceanic expedition to the site of the Titanic wreckage that is seated and is resting in the Atlantic ocean floor around 12,500 feet below sea level! How true this is, I do not know because I'm only a poor writer, and nothing more.
'' Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth...''
Those are the wise thoughts of Robert Frost in the ''Road Not Taken'', a poem about the danger of nature. It is best interpreted as an allegory for the choices we make in life and the consequences thereof. The ''ideas of death, transcience and nihilation of being'' is a threnodic disposition that should hunt the soul of any humans! Man's ''chequered commercial activities'', his ''combativity and heroism,'' as most efficient panacea for the notorious transitoriness and contingency between birth and death, may not be sufficient enough to calm the trajectory of death! Ama Ata Aidoo, the late amazon and Ghanian professor of theatre studies had also explored this in her play text, The Dillema of a Ghost! No wonder she wrote, ''If nothing had scratched at the palm fibre, it certainly wouldn't have creaked!'' Truly, Yoruba would say, 'bi itakun ko ba ja, owo 'o lee te okere'! 'Bi osan ba ti ja, orun d'opa nu un'! How do I intereprete these sophisticated Yoruba sayings without distorting their Yorubanesse and textual originalty! How?
Soren Aabye kierkegaard, a Danish theologian, first existential philosopher, poet and social critic also expresses the experience of death with starkness by saying the following; ''Actual death confronts the human person with the dizzying possibility of nothigness, his not existing at all. As such, it is the impenetrable limit of his real existence. it is the actual act to be lived through by the individual alone''!
The OceanGate submerssible Titan that was making an attempt to reach the wreck site of the Titanic was said to have ''catastrophically'' imploded, and its five passengers got killed in the process! You must have heard? Sad! Would you say? The tragic sojourn was said to have cost each person close to twenty five thousand US dollars!Whao! What a whopping loss! The victims, British millionaire, Harmish Harding, French diver and maritime expert, Paul-Henri Nargolet and Pakistani businessman, Shahzada Dawood, his 19 yearold son, Suleman, were said to have all perished inside that vessel! The fifth person, Stockton Rush, who was the CEO of the OceanGate also died along. What a tragic way to die! The vessel was said to have submerged on Sunday, the 18th day of June, 2023, and after loosing contact with its mothership, had sparked a frantic search in a bid to save the people on board, but unfortunately, the search and the rescue mission have become chimerical and a mission un-accomplished!
James Cameron, the film maker of Titanic made his first trip to the wreck site in 1995 in order to capture the footage for the Oscar winning movie. In total, he has made 33 dives. Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French maritime expert who also died in this oceanic expedition had made several visits to the wreck site untill the last one he could not make, along with his other victims.
God! you stand for mightiness and excellence! Whatever it is we have done a miss, forgive us! Can I also end this piece in prayers the same way Ibitokun had ended his valedictory lecture at the Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile- Ife ?
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be Thy name;
Let your kingdom come;
Thy will be done on earth
as it is in heaven,
...
“Theory of Memory and Perception” by Franklin Kalisch
Main Thesis
Memory is akin to perception and perception is akin to the senses;
That is to say knowledge is gained through perception of ideas and ideas are perceived through the senses in their physical forms, for instance beauty is perceived through looking at a beautiful object or figure e.g a young girl. This young girl is beautiful because her physical body partakes in the idea of beauty, for this reason she is called beautiful because the idea of beauty is reflected through her.
She(the y. girl) is not beauty for she cannot be beauty itself which is merely an abstraction of the absolute beauty.
Now we have established how the ideas are perceived through the senses, and whatever that perceives must have memory, and whatever that has memory must also think. So upon this inference we go further to make two propositions;
1. The lesser the senses perceive ideas, the smaller would the memory become and vice-versa.
2. The more an idea is not perceived by the senses, the more this idea would be difficult to recall from memory and vice versa.
For the second proposition this is very true because when we see an object everyday we tend to recall the form of that object very easily but when we see it once in a week or month it becomes difficult to recall the very same object which was once easy to recall.
From this proposition is the basis for why we forget our dreams, because they are brought to us by our subconscious mind and then we awaken to our conscious mind and then this overlap cannot be maintained because the more awake we stay and become, the more the ideas perceived in the dream sinks into our subconscious memory, and we don't dream the same things everyday so we are likely to forget what we dreamt previously.
And this occurs simply because the perceived objects are no longer there for our subconscious mind to perceive them and take into memory hence we leave a trail which we have no idea of its origin except we are to become subconscious and go through our subconscious memory then the forgotten ideas(perceived objects) can be found or recalled. We cannot easily recall these subconscious experiences with our conscious mind, and this brings us to the bio-chemistry of organisms.
Conclusion
Organisms therefore act the way they act as a result of what they have consciously perceived and actions they have performed as well for longer periods of time which are then engraved into their subconscious and makes them to become what they are, the senses would be built to perceive and act to what was previously perceived and done.
“The Ravening Clouds in Africa” by Tiamiyu Adewusi
Africa! My Africa is a beautiful world of the black that I'm proud of. A continent of the black race written by poets and lyricists as being seated ''on the banks of the distant river''! The pride of ''warriors in ancestral savannahs'', where the bird sings in the morning for you to hear the water splash down the hills with a kind of blissful roaring! Africa! My africa! A place where the sun goes down, and the people as they go by, without any frown in their hustle, jostle and bustle whithout infringement to any traffic impediments! In Africa, the belief is that it doesn't cost so much to buy some ''tubers of yams''! And when you miss steps and your legs are made to trip down below, your neighbours are up there to strife and pull you up from your quick fall of stumbling! Amidst all your troubles in Africa, you will still hear the sound of the cockcrow at dawn!
Yes! Above is an attributable statement of facts about Africa that provides a mixture of both hope and despair as a complex and genuine portrait of life in a black continent. Afterall, life on its own is a complex connundrum that spares no particular race of this world of its ugly venom that is regularly charged with the morbid fear of piercing torture as a natural dose!
Choosing to write a difficult topic such as we have it related to a continent of Africa is, but a difficult task! Africa! ''Afirika fe!'' - Meaning, Africa is largely wide and elaborate! Gbenga Adeboye, the late stand-up comedian, singer and poet once comically and tersely uttered this statement while throwing banters as comic relief in one of his debuts. Africa is not only largely wide and cumbersome, it is a continent of deeply rich culture and tradition. Her people are gifted and ''greedily'' talented! There is nothing you seek to find either good or bad that you won't find in Africa! Above all, it is home for robust intellectual capacity on one hand, and on the other hand, energies for frivolous excesses! And because this write up has nothing to do with the finesse of academic rigidity and class-room profoundness, I will restrict myself basically to what is ''itching my heart'' on Africa as a continent presently. Besides, I'm not a good historian, but I feel it when I see history warming up to repeat itself before our eyes!
Africa, in its study, has its own history, both pre-colonial and colonial periods. The post colonial, demography, culture and politics of Africa as a continent must be carefully studied, therefore, before a conclusion is drawn as to why its development continues to vaccillate and pussy-foot in a receeding manner. Aside this negativity, Africa also has its own diverse languages and religions as well. First and foremost, we must also know that the history of Africa had started with the emergence of hominids - a primate of a family (archaic humans) around 300,000 years ago. In all of these, the African continent and its development have always remained as stagnant as the pool of waters that can easily be found in a lake without any sense of direction in terms of its economic and socio-political drives.
The reason for this may not be far-fetched. The colonial culture, in its utmost manner and despicable nature had dealt a heavy blow on the African space by its calculated attempt and introduction of the principle of fear and silence as a coercive instrument which had subjugated the black nations of the world to the whims and caprices of their white oppressors! This, which came in various means and capacities, and was carried out through ''menaced truncheons'', ''nailed boots'', ''teargas'' and ''death whistling bullets'', were calculated exercises in psychological terror, aimed at breaking the strength of the black people into smithreens! It was a bad memory to recall, anyway!
The colonialists had pillaged, plundered and had murdered the blacks with reckless abandon in Africa! Over the period of the Atlantic Slave Trade between 1526 to 1867, that I wouldn't want to talk about, because it was a bad and tragic nostalgia that may culminate into a melancholy and melody of threnody, and, or a distasteful history, which may tend to have an ''encore'' with capacious terror and tremor that were brought on the poor blacks by their rapacious and callous slave riders during the period! - The callous whitemen were people who saw and exploited the opportunities of the ''lethargy of guilt and responsibility'' incubated in the heart of the black race which they had capitalized upon. The black people of Africa themselves were enemies, who had brought such a calamity upon themselves, as European slave traders had generally depended and relied on a network of African rulers and traders to thrive in their slave trade business. Scholars had provided various explanations to why African traders were willing to supply ''enslaved Africans'' to Europeans for the trans-Atlantic trade!
According to Steven Mintz's 'Facts about the Slave trade and Slavery', some 12.5 million captured men, women, and children were put on ships in Africa, out of which 10.7 million eventually arrived and made it to the Americas. The Atlantic Slave Trade era was ''likely the most costly in human life of all long-distance global migrations'', according to that report.
Meanwhile, I have not come to discuss about that dark ''culture of hedonism without morality''! ''A culture of legalised brutality''! ''A racist ruling-class culture of fear''! ''The culture of an oppressing minority desperately favoured to impose total silence on a restive oppressed majority''! No! That is not the import of this article! Rather, it's a quick way to reflect on the reflex of the sad lessons of the candour of mischief of that period, which, of course, have continued to haunt the black people endlessly, even in the face of tyranny that is more often than not is arbitrarily orchestrated by the ''neo-colonialist'' black emperors of the present age!
I said I'm not here to bore you with history, but, like an excited subaltern, I have come with the lessons that history teaches - Consequences and repercussions thereof, of acrid and elegant grandstanding of self-centredness as a culture, and, ''phoenix'' of odoriferous fragrance from the ''ashes'' of colonial mentality that has always spurred our inanities in Africa!
Those are the lessons in today's history, and they can be felt like bad odour around us; and wherever we go to too, as a black people! Even in our little homes, communities, little ''mushroom'' public offices, as executive officers, directors, teachers, or bankers! Or even as chairmen of Local Government, Governors, or Administrative heads or even Presidents! The contagiousness of the ugly culture of ''selfhood & self-centredness'' taunts and trails us like ''a fetid sore that has defied all manners of curative measure'', and also, like a gangrenous cancer!
Some of us, whenever we are adorned with the regalia of public instrumentality, we behave and treat other people around us with disgust! An act likeable to what ''inventive and magical'' headache giver, Wole Soyinka, would describe as ''the prevailing ethos of moral entropy'' in one of his books! The situation in Africa is that, when you step into these grounds, (public office) it is essential that you forget what you are, who you are, or were, but to think of yourself only as all inclusive seeker, because it is our way of life to do so. We are a continent of people that is always seeking, but blindly into the blightful wrong directions of mischief and staggering!
Remember, Nigeria is a West African state too that cannot be exenorated from the blight of this ugly and trending phenomenom of ''self''! That is why it is a possible game for someone who could not fairly string a correct sentence together without committing a lexical and structural blunder in that straight effort of the English language; a medium of expression in the award of university degrees in Nigerian universities, and for that same person to have the audacity to ''tongue-lash'' and refer to the personage of another academic as a ''nobody'' to be respected as a ''professor'', because the latter, according to him, never had a ''PhD''!
Very unfortunate! Or you have not heard? That the great ''iroko'' tree that fell in the forest had incidentally killed someone at the precinct of the palace courtyard? ''Have you not heard'', like Soyinka's ''Elesin Oba''? ''Nje e ti gbo''? Wi pe, igi da loko, o pa ara ile!'' Ati wi pe, aja jin, o pa ero ona''! Nje, e ti gbo bi''?
The rotteness of the ''roughness'' in the culture of the ''self'' is like a cancerous ''last straw''! A leprosy misconstrued as a boil, and which has stirred up a controversy in Pierre Meunier's play, 'The Last Slave Traders'! Such social cancer has spread its unhealthy tentacles across board with unfettered checks, and has also eaten deep even into the fabric confines of the ''universe'' in our universities! Nigeria, an African country of shades and colours of different garbs, like her other African countries, is a desert of hope where everything has refused to grow! And that's why the annual Bar Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association could be enmeshed in such a stirring dust of confusion as to why a ''Zazu'' crooner should, or cannot perform at the august ocassion! It is a sad story of a house that is divided against itself that must not stand, and by now, I'm more than convinced where ''Buga'' judgement originated from! From the ''stinking'' temples of our justice system, because ''truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter any more''! Because of our sordid way of doing things, we are like ''the thunder- god that feasts in his grove as termites that dwell under ground''! We have perpetually remained a confused continent that knows not which way to go..! So so confused!
We plant trees with billion of money in Africa, whilst our refineries, hospitals, including schools lie helplessly in dire comatose! Rice palliatives in ''dereca tins and congos'' are been distributed in Nigeria as we speak by the Federal Government. This comes as a relief of the effect of subsidy removal, while at the same time, a minister at the capital territory was busy hurling insults and casting his brimstones of anger on the poor ''street corn sellers'' in Abuja! Africa is a big joke!Africa is in big trouble! The troubles, not the ones unalienated with the travails of the colonial rules, but the one solely brought unto us by our greed and pettiness! Our numerous travails that keep moving repetitiously in the same sad circles of needless religious ''hysteria'', ''political cynicsm'' and ''economic cannibalism'', that Wole Soyinka alludes as, ''perspectives'', change with modernity in Africa! And like a contracted marriage of inconvenience with which we have managed to cope, we continue to trudge on in the same repetitive putresence, and also in a gratuitous manner too, as we gladly eat our bread of sorrows in peace without complaining! Africa is a continent of intelligent people led by moronic goons who run a berserk system that is tantamount to a zoo business by a mad zoo owner! In it, like ''animals trapped'', the people are being ''tamed'' by ''taunts'' and ''terror! The African continent seems to have been taken over by ''political cholera''! The pandemic canckerworm has eaten us up! We no longer see beyond the nose! You see, in life, no matter how bad, puerile, or sad, a situation has placed on our laps as 'history', it does not obviate us, or vindicate our sense of selfhood, or our greed, or avarice from the consequences and repercursions of the circumstances! And, for your information, writers, as ''headache givers'', in their loud voices, would continue to chime it like the luring siren of the ''flutes and xylophones of the poets''!
There is already a warning of storm in the air, but African leaders appear to be singing 'Asake's' ''Lonely, lonely, lonely at the Top'', without minding the protocol of fury that may elicit from the starved and hungry poor whose throats are already dry like the drought of the harmattan period, and whose horrible shadows in the terrible recess of the gullotine always cry, and hopelessly for help that may be far from distance!
Ali Bongo of Gabon wanted the poor he had humiliated and impoverished for years by his misrule to make noise, but,''Is there any noise in the streets now?'' Charles Dickens had asked! And I ask the dethroned Gabonese president in my own little voice too, is there any noise in the streets now?
When you give a little power to an average African opportunist, what becomes of it in his hands is an instrument of coercion to oppress the helpless! He becomes such a rudderless and ruthless ''tin god'', who behaves like an uncontrollable Ceaser that eats others for dinner, like a ''ravenous wolf that had been starving a fortnight in the snow''! Africa, a ''land of misery and ruin'', is a beleaguered continent that actually needs help to caution her feet against treading the ''path of thunder'', and no matter the kind of ''noise'' we're encouraged to make ''out there'', to ''friends all over the world'', now referring to the odious outburst and cries of the ousted president of Gabon, Ali Ondimba Bongo, we shall forever remain ''maggots, probing still her monstrous womb'', because the world ''out there'' we're made to cry to cannot be fooled anymore!
It is a sad thing to hear when you see people throng to the street to jubilate over coups or ascedancy of military rule in Africa! But the words of counsel of the elders have taught us that it is when money is scarced that people are made to rejoice as they take to the use of cowries as percuniary alternatives! ''owon owo nii mu'ni na owo eyo''! Africa is a lamb that is always in love with a lion; and why must one tell the blind about the emptiness of the market place when it is expected of him to ''see'' by hearing? But this is Africa, a common ground for ''asa'' (hawk) and ''eyele'' (pigeon) to cohabit together and pretend to be two unseperated allies!
The story of Walter Rodney, the Guyanese revolutionary scholar and activist that was tragically killed and murdered in the summer of 1980 is one that will draw tears from the face of its readers! And this is where history lessons should take up their cues from. For those who, perharps, do not know or may care not to know who Walter Rodney was, he was an African first class historian and author of high repute, who, had died through the ''explosionary test signals'' of the bomb in Guyana! It is always a kind of death known around the world to evoke ''sharp memories'' of both colonial distraught and neo-colonial subjugation and tyranny, for which many had fallen catastrophically, and had become cannons in their fodders, and also had been ghoulishly devoured through such ravages of repression! But to the very many dead ones like Walter Rodney,''death is nothing at all! It does not count! he has just slipped into the next room, and nothing has happened''! That, to Henry Scott-Holland, is the true definition of death; a permanent subdue force that took Walter Rodney away at the prime age of 38!
Frantz Fannon, like Walter Rodney, had also admonished that, for humanity to advance a step further above that which the Europeans had shown, discoveries must be invented in Africa. But if I may ask, what inventions have the Africans ventured into? For humanity sake, Africans have yielded not to the warnings of Fannon, and the ''death-trap'' of the likes of Rodney seems to have been a futile sacrifice! Walter Rodney, like Frantz Fannon had said many things that this platform could not contain, but, we must not allow the lessons fritter away by sheer negligence! He had encouraged that Africans should begin with themselves by ''tearing down'', and by ''building up'', and by ''laying the foundations''! He admonished vision creations, but the African leaders have remained rudderless and visionless! And unto the victim (s) in the fiction of the Kenyan author, Ngugi Wa Thiongo, which we Africans depict symbollically in the story, the ravening clouds have perpetually remain victorious as they continually possess our sky! And for those kisses on the beach at night, they can no longer remove the tears in the wobbling cheeks of the African child!
Now, ''it is in our hands to break the shackles of the past and to redevelop, to find humane and a creative fearless way of dealing with those who presently oppose such development'' in Africa, because we live in perilous times!
And with this, I have to seek redress in the soulful lyrics of Bongos Ukwe's ''Cockcrow at Dawn'' of 1981, where he had asked of the African continent of the following posers:
''Will he, (Africa) ever get there?
Will he, (Africa) ever make it?
Will he, (Africa) ever hear the sound of the cockcrow at dawn..?''
Do christians date? by Olukemi Olodude
"You know nothing about me, Newton," I voiced out,
"What do you mean?" He retorted as he narrowed his eyes.
"Don't ever think I will start a relationship with you just like that ." I was determined to teach him some things about it.
"I'm ten times better than that fool." He retorted with a smirk on his face.
"You think so?"
"I know so. Can we have a date tonight please?" Newton announced to me as if he was doing me a favor.
But I declined. I needed to sit my ass down and think. I became confused when an opinion came forcefully,
You are going to be twenty-eight by January next year and not yet married. Why can't you use the opportunity you have while he's enthusiastic? A time will come when no one will glance at you. You will become an old maid!
I held my head in discomfort. To make matters worse, Newton asked,
"A penny for your thoughts! You seem lost somehow."
"Hmm, I'm fine," I mumbled.
"Fine, get ready for us tonight. I will pick you up at seven."
"Not so fast, thanks for the invite but I have some questions to ask you."
"Say on babe"
"Can two walk together except they agree?"
"Nope, why do you say that?"
"I thought so too. I don't believe in dating at the beginning of a relationship."
"I love to learn. Please tell me what you believe."
"Why Can't I Date?
A lot of young singles ask this question
✍Dating is a form of romantic courtship according to the dictionary.
"How will I know who to marry?"
You will allow the holy spirit to lead you. You cannot know the will of God in the flesh, It has to be by praying.
✍Christians don't date, they find a wife in God's favor. Proverbs 18:22. "He who finds a wife finds a good thing And obtains favor from the Lord. ".
✍Christians marry according to the will of God by waiting on Him to direct and lead them. Proverbs 3:5-6 "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding, In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your path.
Jeremiah 10:23" O Lord, I know the way of man is not in himself. It is not in man to direct his steps"
✍Dating exposes you to temptations. You may be confused to choose among so many you have dated.
✍Dating can lead you to fornication. You may end up sleeping with multiple men and women. This can turn you into a prostitute.
Human desires are insatiable.
✍This thing called dating is trial and error. The lady or boy that is later rejected may be bitter and cause harm. Hmm.
✍Dating in courtship is good but you must be disciplined enough to keep yourself pure.
✍Dating in marriage is highly recommended. Take your partner out. It renews and refreshes your relationship.
✍Don't date to know the will of God. Date after you have known the will of God.
So Newton, go and pray" I lectured.
(Culled from my book, Anu's Dilemma)
©Kemi Olodude
Rhythms in time, space, sound and matter by Tiamiyu Adewusi
How the ‘Frog’ had found her way into the cunny ‘womb’ of the corn-pudd is a mystery that should confound a philosopher but because of the circumstantial complexity of life, this, which should bemuse us in a tangled world of confusion where making sense out of life becomes a futile effort, we’re all must be made open to a night, and its gothic nightmare of shame where everything comes to this sharp point like a boil; yet only with our eyes keeping vigil through that night to watch every move, and every twitch of pain spread much, like a disease that haunts our human soul. How did we get to this level of mockery and despondency, shame, unceasingly? How?
Things are already falling apart at the center of Nigeria’s consciousness. Some string had snapped in the very center of her be-ing! With a mixed feeling of nausea, contempt and hatred, our patriotic sense, muted and killed with ‘’drunken violence’’ of casualness of indifference, should attract pity and attention! We are a people at the ‘’death-bed’’ of “a sadness verging on despair’’! A sadness so harrowing in its sensuality that blood could not be felt again trickling through the artery of her wounded and pierced heart! A nation at a state of exhaustion, a fatigue, desperately torn by strange emotional scorn and pain. We have been caught in- between a smile and a shudder! Caught in-between a foul and wicked purpose, ‘cherishing’ the more rigid order of principles guiding our fierce and bitter contempt of disgrace, rather than that of a grace, with a customary garb and emblem of guilt and torture. Our birthmarks are nothing, but bruises left on us by ‘elves’ of rigid and severe ‘apparitions’ of rottenness!
There seems to be a huge pang; a sting, and an ever-recurring agony ongoing, and persistently navigating its way in large and dark quantum of melancholy depth, amidst our troubled-joy! It’s what a writer and author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, refers to as “a red symbol of disgrace’’, which sears our bosom with a caress, so tender! “What a little bird of Scarlet plumage may this be?’’ The author had asked. And I also ask, if we’re to weep for Nigeria, talking about the corruption of the ruling class and ‘grabbers’, who, ‘’strut the nation’’ and “scoop wealth without sweat’’, while the ‘witchcraft’ of the poor masses, needless of “old woman’s broomstick’’, fly withal, portends a tendency of doom condemning them to a ‘hovel’; as may have been put it by Ola Rotimi, a late professor of theatre and playwright, who wrote, If- a tragedy of the ruled-
Both the elitist rich and the poor, alike, in Nigeria, is akin to a ‘Necklace’ story by Guy de Maupassant. Mathilde Loisel is poor but has a strong desire and lust for wealth and luxury. One day, she got an invite to a fancy ball and because she is without a suitable dress or jewelry that could match that occasion, she borrows a necklace from a rich friend.
At the ball, Mathilde feels like a queen as she suddenly becomes a cynosure, a center of attraction at the party. But when the party is over, she discovers that she has lost the necklace she has gone to borrow for the occasion. In panic, she and her husband spend the next ten years of their lives working hard to pay off the debt in buying a new necklace for the owner.
After ten years, they finally pay off the debt and meet the friend who had lent out the necklace to Mathilde. It’s at this point of reversal of recognition that she realizes that the necklace she borrowed was a fake one, and that it was only a fraction of what she and her husband had paid for the new one.
It is a story that explores the destructive power of vanity and the illusion of wealth and social life. Mathilde has come to realize that her pretentious life of luxury and wealth is nothing but a charade, and that the borrowed ‘Necklace’ was never real!
Mathilde’s life of fakery is synonymous to the opulence of wealth displayed by Nigeria’s heroes who surpass other heroes. Those who borrow billions of monies to mortgage the future of unborn generations of the Nigerian population, while they share the loots amongst one another! They are the ‘Swallows’ that disappear in the clouds while others disappear into the abysmal chasms! They are the sons of ‘Mazi’! ‘Vipers of Ndaba’! ‘Fathers of the Cock’! ‘Zulu Chiefs of Shaka’! Their poor counterparts, are like the character of Ntaya, described in Peter Palangyo’s novel, ‘Dying in the Sun’, as “counting his fingers and waiting for his silent self-birth of re-organization in the dark forest of his soul’’! Peter Palangyo was a Tanzanian novelist and diplomat. David Cook, then professor of English, University of Ilorin, Nigeria, and formerly Professor of Literature, Makerere University, Uganda, in his book, African Literature: A critical View, discusses the lead character of Palangyo’s novel, ‘Dying in the Sun’, as “a lost seed on a wilderness of burnt grass’’! And that is exactly what the poor in Nigerian space represents today. The plight of the poor is tantamount to the helplessness of an impala shot with a rifle of politics, and of corruption, impunity and mis- governance; and they, the poor, are the one that must fall down cataclysmically, staring at their hunters! The poor must always settle their account in tears with almost everything to regret! Whatever it is they must have learnt or unlearnt, casts good and bad shadows at them!
And that is why last Friday in Dogarawa, near Zaria, in Kaduna state, BUA truck transporting cartons of noodles became a ‘victim’ in the pilfering and violent hands of the poor, immediately after a Friday Jumat service. That incident was never to be reported as a tale of spotless feat carried out by heroes that we read in books and action-packed films. It was rather a villainous ‘bickering’, flawed with gloriously human ‘messes’, ‘warts’ and ‘ridiculousness’ of Friday’s sight of the ‘low-naked’ show! A lowly show of the greedy 'friars' and hypocrisy of Nigeria’s religiosity without godliness! “A sea-change into something rich and strange’’!
Why their rich elitist and political class steals billions, both in Naira and in Dollar, and also with reckless abandon and impunity, in the dark recess within the rock of power in Abuja, cartons of noodles were the optional embezzlement and sleaze opportunity created by fate for those religious louts and criminal food-looters of that unfortunate Friday incidence.
Like I wrote in my last article, titled, ‘Ona-ofun’ and the narrow path, hunger is an “outcaste’’, “an imp’’ and “a witchcraft’’ of every distraught society. A hungry people are a “broken’’ people, damaged beyond repair. That action of Friday, “a midsummer madness’’, goes beyond the loose taste of being referred to as ‘sacrilegious’, it was shamefully pitiable, unwholesome and should be condemned entirely. Now I know better, that of all bad men, religious bad men are the worst! The Friday incident has just confirmed that. But, there is a community in suffering, and our leaders must find some meanings in these sufferings. That is what Peter Palangyo wrote, as he describes Ntaya’s plight and pitiable condition in ‘Dying in the Sun’! The poor are hungry and are bleeding! This is a revenge that must follow their plate that is been poisoned by the ailing society which has failed them. And could this looting ‘protest’ be seen as being ‘’too much’’? I think it is, and perhaps, I’m wrong. The reason the FCT Minister of State, Dr. Mariya Mahmoud, has declared that looting is not hunger, but criminal!
Remember that the warehouse in Gwagwa-Tasha in Abuja was also on Sunday, raided, and its grains and other food items looted, like that of the Friday of BUA truck of noodles, in Kaduna State. The Minister revealed that the unfortunate incident occurred when the Administration was restocking its warehouse with a view to meeting up with the directive of Mr. President to distribute palliatives to all the six Area Councils in FCT. The Minister described the incident as a bad situation. She alluded that somebody that is hungry cannot move out to remove all the roofing, the doors, the windows, and also the gates. The Abuja looters did not only cart away the grains, they advanced a career in criminality by carrying the bar of gates and doors of iron!
Events happening to us in their current and tragic successive spate reminds me of Christina Rossetti’s popular Carol song of the bleak mid-winter, where Frosty wind is made to moan, as Earth stood as iron, and Water, like a stone, though, we’re not at Christmas period! Majek Fashek, of blessed memory, claimed in his ‘Send Down the Rain’ thriller that he was a hungry man and that he didn’t want to be angry, the reason why the misty cloud must send down the rain! There is no rain of relief yet, but the rain of looting in cash and in noodles! The poor are hungry and the President keeps saying, “E lo f’okan bale’’! My mother had a way of ramming a particular proverb in my mouth when I was teen, and the philosophy in that witticism had stocked in my heart at a tender age. A dry dog- meat will taste well in the mouth, but it takes a long while for a child to starve to death by waiting. The poor can no longer wait while they cook ‘stones’ of patience at the seat of power in Aso Rock, and the result is what you saw on that Friday. We live at a perilous time of distress, described by W.H Auden as a “midnight’’, when the “moon and sun” dismantled, can never come to any good! The omen, signaling a worse tragedy to come, except we take prompt action, is an “Ogun Awitele’’- A war foreseen situation described in Adebayo Faleti’s crime story book of 1972, published by Oxford University Press. In that story, a gang of audacious armed robbery squad had sent an “iwe abami’ (a strange letter) to a village, informing them of an impending attack. This panicky signal should send jitters down the spine of any community of sensible people, right? Panic should reign supreme in such a people, and they should begin to flee in different directions, looking for a way of abating the impending danger, ‘abi’? That is what those who love do, to organize effectively, as those who love war, but, Nigeria is a community of people with a brazen rigidity for laxity when it comes to security alertness. ‘B’ole d’ogun k’o d’ogun, b’ole di’ja ko di’ja! Koko la wa s’oju’!
Democracy is a good and best system that should provide a relatively best atmosphere for the poor to breath and have their constitutional rights to a better life protected by law, but that seems to have suffered countless harmful tripping and tumbling, without any sense of sympathy from those who reap the best from our nascent democratic process. In an article by John Stephen Piper, an American Reformed Baptist Theologian pastor, and chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Piper had given room for a question of how evil had begun to be raised by the said scholar.
The president should not have made that ‘careless’ speech of ‘subsidy is gone’ on Monday, 29th day of March, 2023. That unfettered speech of Mr. president threw ‘sand’ into the ‘gari’ of the poor he was meant to protect. Even when the intention of a leader is good, the counsel of elders admonishes that such a leader should have enough space in his stomach to keep some secret. Mr. President did not only lack that admonishable prowess that day, he spilled the ‘soup’ that his good intention was made not to ‘stir’ in his stomach on that day, and here we are with our burning fingers, because spoken word has its consequences. He should have known since June 12 Saga of 1993 that Nigeria is a complex country to rule, and I pity anyone who would want to wangle his way into position of power to rule Nigeria, if truly the intention is to salvage it.
The president must guide his utterances! His silence is golden, as his ‘sneeze’ could make the citizens catch cold! His Qatar investors’ report, and the open outburst of Mr. President is a thing that must not haunt the corporate existence of the country further, and not again, at this disposed time of our national and spiritual confusion when looting of noodles is as good as clinching to our prayer mats, as catechists would endue themselves with their sacred rosaries. When a president tells foreign investors in the open to report officials that ask for bribe, it speaks volume of an integrity lost to the carefree attitude of the head of a household who lacks the capacity to put his house in order. Even if an elder will ‘shit’ at the center of the market, such a despicable urge should not purge his running stomach quickly in the burning eyes of the public, and in a broad day light. It should be done in the secrecy of the night.
However, no matter how bad life is, it is always better than death, and therefore, my sympathies must be ferried to the families of the late ‘Sisi Quadri’ and ‘Mr Nbu’, whose sudden death news came to us as a rude shock. It was two deaths hitting us in recent times in that quick succession.
A sorry pass in this time of our sorrow and double tragedy, in want for peace and happiness. What a time and era to live in! These were veterans, who, despite our inadequacies in characters and morals as a country people, have always put smiles to our faces, in order to ease down the heat caused by this our man-made tension!
Our men have fallen, and they have gone the way of the flesh never to be seen again. They did not perish though, they have gone to meet their maker! They had touched our hearts in times of our sadness and joy. Their short time here was a blessing, their memory, a treasure!
Good bye!
Tiamiyu Adewusi is a creative writer and culture enthusiast, from Osogbo, Nigeria.
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