My First Photography Post

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My first shoot as a D.O.P/ Director

Is Mr Governor going mad?

And he did it again. This time it is the honouring of Jacob Zuma's, that's the president of South Africa if you don't know, wife as a citizen of that state. I don't even know the woman's name and in all sincerity, I know I should be nice and courteous and not say this, I don't care. Mschwww

                                                                                                   

First it was the appointment of DPJ as a Permanent Secretary. Okay that comes across as being a duh statement right? Yes it sure does, up until when you realise that DPJ is the wife of a sitting president in one of the world's most corrupt country. Okay so already that defines the level of depravity that can rear its head in that Geographical space bothered by countries like Repubique du Benin and Cameroon, I need say no more.

I am sure at this point you are just as confused as I was, and still I am, about just how much madness can enter into man that will make him want to dance naked in the market square. I am thoroughly amazed that sane humans would go to the polls and elect, either by thumb printing or ballot snatching *shrugs*, someone with such an abysmal level of cognitive reasoning as one to head the helms of affairs of a state that definitely has at least a few good men who are capable of running that enterprise profitably for all.

I don't know why the few good men would stand aside while 'maraudering' puppets are hard at work ensuring that generations to come have nothing left to live on. *sigh*

I really am not interested in documenting the acts of madness that is erupting in almost quick successions. Nooo! My point is just to release some steam from my mind that seems to be in a temporary state of un-explainable and un-imaginable thinking over these perverted cases of man's silliness. #shikena

Here Again

*coughs*

I haven't entered anything here in a while because I have been very busy. Ouch! What did I do wrong? Why did you have to go and roll your eyes at me? Can't a guy be busy? Wa'eva! If I say I am busy, then I am busy. Haba! *sad face* Okay you really wanna know why I have been away? I have been lazy. *covering face*. I said it now, phew! What a load of unnecessary guilt to have to log around. So here I drop it.

I have been busy, really. Plenty things have been camping against my mind and the last thing I want to do is write. By the time you are done with reading this you'll know why. And it has nothing to do with not liking to write.

I haven't done any writing since my last post in here. Tisnt like I lost my mojo, oh no, my mojo is very well alive cos I have been doing a lot more creative stuffs of late. An example was me writing words and working with my good friend Qssense (Abayomi Sosan) in producing a track from it. One day soon you would be able to listen and judge for yourself if it was a creative effort or not. I confess though that he did like 96 percent of the work. And then my 9 - 5 has really taken on a more focused direction. So much on my table I keep asking myself when the plentifulness of the work would guarantee a million bucks, at least, a month. Pulease! Don't roll your eyes at me. A guy is allowed to dream big. Choi!

Anyways let me briefly talk about two things that irk me without fail - network and internet access - both are still shitty. And that's not putting PHCN in consideration. Ever since I got my prepaid meter I have totally surrendered praying for them to download brain. So long as I pay only for what I use *shrugs*. Sorry I digressed. I was saying stuffs about the mobile networks and internet access. 

The speed of connection is still at the best a nuisance. Okay you can say I am a little high handed with my praise, but I have been able to surf the net at the speed of light, close to it, and therefore everything comparably slower than that is a nuisance. #Period. The mobile networks are still trying hard to out do each other at who can Rob their customers the most. Next thing would be the excuse of the societal factors militating against provision of good quality service. *hiss* The same old rubbish story.

I am done for today... Gosh! All I wanted to do was just touch base. But the moment I start writting I never really want to stop. Bye and hopefully I won't be too long in coming again.

Ciao!

B​etween Boxers and Briefs - What's Good for My Sausage?

Okay so I sound vulgar, right? Well, wrong! And in any case I am talking about mine. *tongue out*. Just so you know, the headline is not my creation; I read it somewhere online and it took me straightaway to my early days. I remember once my mom, with my Aunty aiding and abetting the act, buying some goofy-looking pants; well I really can't call them briefs for in my own estimation there really wasn't much to cover hence the misuse of the word "briefs" in this case. Anyways they came back from the market this fateful day baring the 'goodies'. I didn't need much pesuasion to want to know what was in the bags they brought in - I was really inquisitive, nosy if u want to be mean - and I wanted to see what was there and what was mine. And so I got the shock of my growing years - a set of coloured pants with a goofy-like cartoon-like character right there in the front! I nearly cried. How was I supposed to live that up? Swore I would never wear it. It was so (wait a minute let me get the right word) LOUD! Yikes! That wasn't just me. Calling attention to my very-meant-to-be-private region? Smh

Well it was a lot of hard work because I eventually had to start wearing it. But I had to also begin to do calculations such that i don't wear it on the days of sports when you had to change from the school uniform to the sports wear.not like I was a sports person, naa, but tell me a young child who didnt relish abandoning book-work for 'jumping' around work.

Thank God she got the message, I mean my mom, because she ceased from such laborious things that caused me pain - like those PanTS! We subsequently had white pants, like we used to wear till she was pricked by the experimenting bug. And then the happiest day of my sausage life was when she came home, I was in senior secondary school, bearing boxer shorts. It was like I had never seen anything like it. It was - check this out - simply amazing! Okay, only the guys would catch the drift. For a while after that I still vacilatted between the briefs, not that at this stage I had grown a little for the name pant to transform into briefs, and the boxers. By the time i was writing my SSCE, I was a lover of the boxers. First were the boxers with the Y shape in the front and later the ones with just enough opening to quickly take a leak. I loved them both.

I have seen some arguments against the boxers, and shockingly I have seen some guys proudly donning their pants at youth camp. Well maybe the boxers doesn't always have it right? Maybe you can't run wearing one as an underwear without doing some measure of damage to your 'popsicles'? Maybe like it is believed it is only for 'not clean' people because they wear it far longer than it is absolutely healthy to do?

In any case these negatives are just too weak to bunch a whole in that whole love-affair between myself and the 'boxers'. Was it YSL or Nike that sprung it on us? I don't know and really I don't care. Whoever though, this is my 'thank you' for giving freedom to the 'little man'. *grining*

Sharp and Short - not the pain though

I woke up a few mornings ago with a most horrible pain. The slightest of movement caused me discomfort that only someone who has experienced it can understand. It wasn't like it just started like that. Nope! I had gotten a soft massage the night before and I had felt a little relief and had gone to bed thinking that by the morning it would be gone - at least I would have had a little more time to heal. Phew!

Every single plan for the day was cancelled. The only thing I could do without feeling the pain was breathe. Every single movement, plus coughing and sneezing brought me exquiste pain that was delievered in 3D.

Thank God for moms - and then one who is in the medicals; please read my lips, or my typings properly - I haven't said medicine. I could hardly get up from the bed much less get myself to the hospital. One text to her and within a few minutes I was told what to do and what to take. Sixteen hours later I had  a reason to rejoice. At least I could move my neck and hand enough to lie down properly.

Anyways, this also serves as my launch into the world of shorty and sharp blogging. Hope you would be encourage to leave me your thoughts even as I saveyou a bit more time used in reading.... *smiling*

NYSC - BAUCHI 10: Is This Nation Worth Dying for?

It was a sunny Monday afternoon. Having had a great time at my place of primary assignment I left for Alhaji Omar Hassan’s residence where I teach his children (it’s popularly called PP-Private Paroll). Sooner than later I began to receive phone calls from house mates asking of my whereabouts. I could not place the extremely calm town and its warm people I used to know with the news of hostility and inhumane things that were reaching me. In little or no time, I rushed out of my host’s residence to find out that the roads have been deserted. So petrified and jittery, was I. At the peak of my desperation to get to a safe haven, a man who has just moved his family to the Army barracks rescued me; a stranded stranger.

How can I forget in a hurry how I fled for dear life from Zubuki village in Itas Gadau local government in Bauchi after I was given free knocks on my head and humiliated in my NYSC uniform at the polling station I was posted to as an Independent National Electoral Commission ad-hoc staff and later rescued by a God-sent motorcycle rider. Through it all I got to Bauchi at 11 o’clock at night. Few hours after, the town was literally on fire. Bauchi LGA INEC office was set ablaze, bon fires at major roundabouts, roads and wanton destruction of properties. The fear of these and unfavourable security reports and rumours locked me behind walls and gates for 3 days and 2 nights. Hot, consistent and persistent fear-propelled prayers and intercession flowed ceaselessly from my heavy lips and discombobulated mind.  

Our last moments at Gadau (where I was posted for the elections)

How can I also forget in a hurry how friends and acquaintances were sent to early graves like poultry birds? Like the brilliant and visionary ex-president of the Banking and Finance departmental body, Kehinde Adeniji who was my set in Adekunle Ajasin University Akungba-Akoko, Ondo State. We ate lafun (a local food made from cassava flour) and okro and stew prepared in the same pot. He later gave me his passport-sized photograph to deliver to another friend of ours in Bauchi LGA. I passed the night in an adjacent room to his, shared thoughts of our spectacular experiences and bade my farewell - and that was the last. As for Ayotunde Ebenezer Gbenjo and Anslem Nkwazema our paths crossed at Nigeria Christian Corpers Fellowship (NCCF). 

Ayo’s story is very pathetic in the sense that he with some other corps members was rescued from Tafawa Balewa LGA’s communal clash that claimed lives and properties and even a corpers lodge. Yet death was lurking around the corner and finally made away with him during post presidential election crisis. As for the gentlemanly Anslem, he ran for safety into a police station but was smoked out and butchered thereafter.

Should I wake the painful memory of the newly married and pregnant Gift Anyanwu who was badly burnt and gave up the ghost days after at the National Hospital Abuja?

Other lives lost are Teidi Tosin Olawale, Okpokiri Obinna Michael, Adowei Elliot, Adewunmi Seun Paul, Ukeoma IKechukwu Chibuzor and Akonyi Ibrahim Sule.

---

I called this politically motivated with religious colouring the height of man’s inhumanity to man, although I expressed an unusual optimism in an interview with a reporter with May 2011 edition of 234next online newspaper, which was attacked by many readers. I captured my thoughts in the poem I titled

‘TRIBUTE TO OUR MARTYRS’

“With shouts and doubts I greeted

The phone call announcing your home call

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Are probably three decades of gain and pain, sweet and sweat, favour

and    labour, thick and thin, ups and downs disappeared into thin air?

My mind replied me with full emptiness...

Dear Naija why drink the blood and sweat of them who served you selflessly

Cover your face in shame ‘cos you gave them no defence

Oh! Your parents and loved ones longed to have you in their waiting arms

But you have journeyed to the land of the quiet ones

You even returned home but ‘dead on arrival’

Oh! See corps members receive NYSC discharge certificates

But your exit gave birth to death certificates

Ocean of hot tears from bleeding hearts

Has refused to wake you up

Then our hearts are made up

To live our lives on purpose

Impact lives of people

And serve God with sincerity and passion

We remove head-dresses

Cos your nation’s clarion call you heeded

We remove head-dresses

For these great leaders, visioners, bread-

Winners, educationists, professionals, parents...

Who are gone into early graves

Courage and fortitude we ask you dear Comforter

Forever you are inscribed on our hearts

Good night! Good bye!! ” 

 (April 2011)

NYSC is compromised - A scheme that dances to the tune of the highly connected, mighty and wealthy. Their children and wards serve in choice cities like Abuja, Lagos, Kano as well as big companies or organizations while the other choice-less corps members wallow in despicable conditions. Wicked employers absorb cheap labour, some even serve ‘legislooters’ kolanuts during meetings at the National Assembly (The Punch; Mar Fri9,Pg 16). What of those kidnapped by militants? Or even the Osun ‘royal rape’? What of avoidable road accidents that claim lives… 

Little wonder the acronym NYSC is sarcastically redefined as ‘Now Your Suffering Commences’. What a compromised NYSC! It is a pity that the Gowon-conceived NYSC paramilitary and unifying scheme has become a laughing stock. The BIG question is this – has the NYSC over stayed its welcome? 

A year is come and gone, I do not want to believe that a critical lesson learnt is that you can perpetrate and sponsor evil and get away with it. What a nation! One that turns deaf ears to the sufferings of its citizenry. When will greed for money, fame and power become a thing of the past in this corner of the world? How I wish that those children tied to their mothers’ apron and fathers’ deep pockets wake up, face the realities of life and embrace hard work and shun mediocrity. 

However, all thanks to the scheme for the scattered Hausa language I speak, imparting knowledge and values into young Secondary School students of ATBU International Secondary School, adventure to the northern part of Nigeria but no thanks to the crisis for truncating my plan to visit Yankari Games Reserves. A nation that eats its future destiny in the present is not worth a drop of my blood (QED). 

Nevertheless, I believe in the Nigerian dream of the emergence of a great nation. In Dr Tunde Bakare’s word “Nigeria will prosper in my lifetime”.                 

                                                                              

OLUDOTUN ADESUA

dotunadesua@gmail.com

                                                                                               

                                                                                                                                                               

                                                                                                                                                                                    

The Cab Driver

It was another good Friday, of cause you known that why it is called that is because it was the day that our Lord gave himself up as an offering that we might have life, well it was another day as such - a remembrance of that. I had a flight to catch and that meant I needed a cab to take me to the airport.

Coming out of my place to the main road I found out that massive traffic had built up. Nothing works wonders like the 'okada' at times like this but the sky was cloudy. Gosh! It was already looking like a day to just stay at home except that work had to be done. So we finally settled on the initial plan - a cab. We found one got in and began the slow drive to the airport.

It didn’t rain after all, just drizzles. However I realise why it all worked out so - we needed to meet with the cab driver. By now, except you are new to this blog, you know that I love to gist. And since I started claiming ‘like to meet people’ as a hobby, I have actually started working on it. And so I started discussion with the driver. Well truth is that he actually initiated the gist - he was surprised to find out i was Yoruba when I got into the cab and spoke the dialect. He said he thought that I was Ibo. He said it was difficult to identify people now without the tribal marks.

I was petrified - tribal marks? In this age? I told him if anyone does that to a child he should be flogged. He said the child wasn’t complaining. I said why don’t they wait a little till he was able to knock them around when they brought the disease infected blade close to his cheek. We had a good laugh then. And moved to the issue of why the traffic.

Why would people not stay in their homes on days like this when it was one for them to rest and enjoy the company of their family? We sited examples of the western world where holidays are taken seriously and folks actually take loans just to go on holidays. That was the trigger for the main thrust of our gist.

The brief story of the driver

I should have just loved to be at home if not for the useless woman that is my wife. She makes the house so un-conducive for me. I decided to leave the house for her. I am a pensioner with two houses and the trouble started when I retired and wanted to move to one of the houses I built. My wife refused to move with me, she said she wasn’t moving to the bush. Looking back now i should have been patient with her. I wouldn’t have found myself in this situation that I am in now.

It was after I left her to move to the new place, one of my houses, that I met and married this then 25 years old woman. That was three years ago. And the experience has not been really good. Just yesterday she said she spent 600 naira on beans for just two people (my thoughts as sheyhun was that it must be a hybrid super nutritious beans - i didnt say that out though. The woman apparently knew how well to swindle the man. *Lips sealed*)

One time we had an argument and she took a bottle and scared her own breast. She said 'that money you don't want to spend on me, you will spend it in the hospital'. The same day she came back from being treated in the hospital she still went ahead to wash my underwear. (Here I was practically rolling my eyes – RME)

She doesn’t go to church with me and if we don't have sex in three days she hints that she would go and get it outside. She doesn’t mind 24 hours of sex, but i can’t do that. I am in my mid-60s. If it was my former wife even if we didn’t have sex in three months it won’t be a problem. Ooo listen to me, your first wife is the best o. Let my experience be you teacher. I have asked her to leave but she wouldn’t. I am so grateful to God that she doesn’t have a child for me, probably I would be dead by now from the demands she would have made.

-----

Hmmm. I said to him you can’t change her you can only work on yourself. All I could do was encourage him to pray more. Prayers are powerful and effective. He was so profuse in his thanks and I felt so embarrassed.

But that is God's ways he wanted that man blessed, wanted him to know that there is hope to those who are alive and that no matter how trying a situation is, like I said to him (really what was I thinking giving a 60 something year old man advice on marriage) nothing yet has happened to us that is strange to mankind.

It was another ‘good’ Friday and my flight was beautiful

Just Another Parasite!

The day had started on a not too good note - but that is story for another day. This that I am going to talk to you about is just that nasty sort you really only want to hear about.  I am going to leave it to you to be the judge though.

I get to the bank on this said day to pay the over bloated estimated, ‘relieved’ bill of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria; they literally hold on to power and both businesses and households are at their mercy. At the bank I ask an officer if i could get the customized teller for PHCN. He answered “there is no customized teller. You can use the normal teller to pay”.

-          Mess up number 1 --- how can you work in a place and you don’t know what you have and then can’t know to confirm before opening your mouth to release fog from your mind.

I go ahead and filled in the teller. Queued up to pay had a little friction with the cashier because she paid someone on my time. Anyways I was done with that and was almost getting into the car when my phone rang and it was the cashier asking me to come back in.

-          Mess up number 2 --- she had stamped my teller and collected the money of course. But it was a wrong teller and wrong mode of payment. So I had to redo the process of filling the teller all over. Bloody nuisance if you note that I was also filling the teller for my neighbour.

Eventually, I am done. I get in the car and zoom off. I needed to get this sorted out or I would end up blowing money on fuel for the generator. Mad crazy driving and in 20 minutes I was in the zonal office of PHCN. And this is where the real story begins.

I was directed to the officer in charge and the first thing she would ask is an e-receipt. ‘E what’? I asked. Not because I didn’t know what it was but because no one had told me about any e-receipt. I looked at her weirdly and told her she really didn’t expect me to drive through all the traffic way back to where I had paid to get what she was asking for? She said yes. I was most perplexed. This was not only not interesting, it was sounding like a bunch of incompetent people doing business.

Just before I lost it I placed a call to one of the few responsible officers of that parastatal that I had come across. She was the one who had given me all the info I needed to ensure that the process was a smooth one. She picked on the third ring and I explained my predicament to her, handed over the phone to the 'lost' lady and quickly dashed outside to get more call credit - I wasn’t sure of how much of the airtime was left. Anyways by the time I came back it was sorted. She had 'enlightened the lost'.

That done I went ahead to make so many copies as required and went to have them signed, first by the senior manager marketing and the manager revenue. The first signed in about five minutes, the second? Mschwwww. He had gone, I learnt, to pray. I loitered around the office area for a long while.

After waiting and waiting I asked a man and he tried to direct me to the man's office. I told him I knew just where it was and that wasn’t the problem but the man not being around was the problem. He looked at me and said that I should wait a bit that they were just coming back from the ‘prayers’. I told him that I had been waiting for over an hour; he looked at me and told me “you should have come in earlier”. And I am like what the heck? Am I supposed to resume work with them? I had been there over an hour and it was almost 2 pm. So what was this ignoramus talking about? In my mind I was thinking how he would have been without work if the enterprise was a privately held one. I had to rein in my temper at this stage.

It wasn’t long after this that someone who had seen me hanging around directed me to a place where I could have it signed. I got there and the man who was supposed to sign looked at it and declared “I can’t sign this.  You still have to wait for his boss.” Why he didn’t understand the documents I had brought in, documents authorised by their head zonal office, I didn’t understand.  I couldn’t help shaking my head.

I waited another hour before the manager (believe me the word manager is not what’s on my mind) eventually shows up. And guess what he didn’t understand it either. I was directed back to the senior manager marketing who seemed to be the only person in the entire complex who understood anything. The funny thing was he was so sure that he had communicated what had to be done in such cases to this manager who had ‘block-headedly’ not taken anything in and in the same vein passed nothing to his subordinate who was working with him on this type of issue.

So we finished there with the ‘senior’ guy and then back to the manager who promptly delegated his responsibility to his guy who he asked attend to me. The guy, more like a middle aged man though, took me to his office and then realized that he couldn’t sign because the proverbial e-receipt wasn’t included. Gosh I almost lost it there and then. What the ‘*’ was wrong with the bunch of incompetent id***s. I was so red in the face that I could have knocked him flat and feel no qualms at all.

It was in the process of storming off that the woman who had previously attended to me came to my rescue. She saw me furious and wondered why I wasn’t done and gone. I related the story to her and she spoke with the man. He didn’t believe her I guess because up he went again to the ‘senior’ guy upstairs and I went with him. The guy recounted the e-receipt tale and was promptly set on the right course.

By this time it was already past 3pm and government workers have a bad habit of closing before the official time. And the day being a Friday, they took the closing early a notch more seriously. And I needed the documents signed so I could get some credits for energy use over the weekend.

By the time he was done signing and I was done making the endless copies as required and she was done sorting them in preparation for vending, it was about 20 minutes to four. I get to the door where I would do the vending and lo and behold it was locked. They were closed for the day!

I went to the manager's office hoping he would help out since it was him that actually helped to waste my time. Albeit he couldn’t. He sat there with a tooth pick in his mouth perusing the day's paper.

Dejected and full of deep resentment I left the place hoping that eventually I would be rid of all of their problems. I finally did - 5 days after my encounter with their royal punk asses.

Love - As I see it...

The mysterious ambiguous and multi dimensional word. A lot are confused by what this word offers. Though short in length its effect cut deep, that deep that even when you blindly fall in, it has a way of opening your eyes to realities beyond your imaginations; victims who were once convinced they understood what it meant find out dey were dead wrong.

No definition justly qualifies this word for it encompasses so many things to different people; passion, sex, oneness, God to the religious, security to d lonely, a fairy tale to the immature, a desire by the single.

Everyone wants to be cared for and know that another sees them as a priority. But can love offer this? Why is love so selective of those it favours? It makes one smile and another it leaves broken - what differing effects.

So many doubts around love. So why bother falling in love? Maybe that is why people get broken-hearted, because it is a fall!

This four lettered word could weaken one's logic and make one feel like a rocket set to take of from the earth when around the one you love. It is unexplainable.

Love could appear as a trance u don't want to recover from. It doesn't matter whatever may come to mind, nothing in life is flawless. We all get to taste of life's thorns and its fragrance. Same for love. Weigh both sides, and I'm certain, that the scales wil tilt in favour of the joys and gladness love brings to a livng soul.


Ay
runsewe_ayomiposi@yahoo.com

This camel's back is broken!

Okay so officially the back bone of the camel is broken and it can take the load no more. Maybe it is not broken, maybe it is strained or maybe, just to stretch the possible scenarios a little further, the camel has just about had enough of the same of the same role and just wants to have things done in a different manner.


I really was just going to shut my mouth, as against keeping quiet, when a good friend of mine shared an article that he had written and titled 'why blame the president?' It was very insightful and much more than that, very disgusting. Oh not the writing, that was splendidly done with his opinion well balanced. The disgust was the fact that everything he wrote about was so so true.


I had tweeted only just some 3 days earlier that if anyone thought that the issue on ground was that of the fuel subsidy removal, then they needed their heads evaluated by a competent mind doctor. Of course twitter only allows you 140 characters so you had better be making the best use of it. And that I tried to do. The issue is not about the fuel subsidy removal, even a blind Bartemeus knows that. But I think like the proverbial hay stack that broke the camels back, it was one issue to much for 'this' camel to take. Apparently 'this' camel loves life - you don't get to live much, if at all, when you lose your back bone.


In a country blessed with over a hundred and fifty million people across six geo-political zones, on a land area of 351649 sq mi, with several precious minerals and crude oil, it is shocking that the majority of her people live on two dollars a day or less! Yeah I know this is where you twirl your nose in disgust. No one would blame you. We Nigerians not on twirl our nose in disgust at the sorry state of the economy, we shake our heads in despondency at the laughable title "Nigeria, giant of Africa". A hiss at this point would not be out of place.


In my thirty something years I have heard enough promises by successive governments - now I know they were just mouthing of air for nothing of those promises have seen the light of day. Now they say "we want to remove fuel subsidy so we can provide for you good roads, hospitals...." and I am like what the ****! So you must rob the poor  to make resources available to the rich? Well how else would you interpret a government saying that they would have to take away the mat that provides some sleeping comfort for you from the sandy ground, so that they would be able to provide you with a mattress, that may never come, sometime in the future. For crying out loud only a 'yabaleft' head thinks like that. Hmmm I guess I am starting to heat up.


The education and agricuture sector are in desperate need of funds. Not too long ago a state in the south west 'proposed' a hike in school fees to somewhere between two hundred and fifty thousand Naira and
three hundred and fifty thousand naire, in a country where the majority of the parents of the students and prospective students eke out a living in a very pitiable manner. Is it a mother and father who can barely pay for a rent of their one room apartment with their two children that would be able to afford that amount, or is it just another ploy to keep the children of the 'masses', as they are wont to call them, out of the commonwealth that partly is theirs? We can barely feed our people. Why? Don't ask me ask the freaking government that would always come up with one excuse or the other for the inability of Nigerians to have food, in spite of the arable land mass available in the country.


Good road networks are a farce. For a jouryney of twenty minutes, you may end up spending some two/three hours and yet they stupidly, that sounds to mild, senselessly took away the respite for the Nigerian who has to go from one end to another to provide daily sustenance to the family. The rail system? Do not even go there. I see what they call trains and even when dreaming I would never get on one.


Hospitals - *deep sigh*! I never knew the extent of the rot in the 'public hospitals' till i really got down to gisting with friends who work in them. Doctors now augment their salaries, as fat as it is, with selling of consumables to patients! Yes yes I know it sounds ridiculous and funny, but believe me it is the honest truth. While I was still fuming at the incredulity of it all another friend in another public 'service' hospital says to me "oh that place is even better". Case closed! I dropped the topic because there was no way I
could start arguing with not just two good friends, but two workers within that establishment.


Now the question I would want to ask is 'where the heck has the income over the last thirty something years that I have been alive gone to?' Okay so maybe not thirty plus years let's do a twelve year period; the length of this dispensation of civilian 'dictatorship'. If in that period of time you couldn't utilize the money judiciously, "what would change if we gave you our rights to the commonwealth on 'this' platter
of gold?"


*gisting - talking and speaking to one who is close to you

Are we safe?

The drama ended abruptly on Monday the Sixteenth of January, when the Federal Government shifted grounds and instead of the previous raise to one hundred and forty-one Naira, it moved it to ninety seven Naira. Organised labour capitulated, well some still insist that it was a sell out, and the industrial action was suspended - we know better.

Whether the action taking by Nigerians who came out in their multitudes to denounce governments wastefulness is a success would be hard to tell. Especially knowing that the government is a good negotiator and would have had it in mind to shift grounds somewhere along the line when the mess of the removal of the subsidy hit the fan.
For a much detailed expository of my thoughts on the issue please refer to http://sheyhunsays.blogspot.com/2012/01/why-blame-president.html.

I won;t bother trying to explain the already explained. Only that I have so many questions I wish would be answered by those who are styled as leaders but who do little to advance the emancipation of their people from slavery - leaders who would rather spend their days devising ways to keep the led in perpetual mental and physical captivity. But then I have these questions I can't ask  the leaders- what would they have to say that would convince us otherwise of what their actions tell us? Can I ask the led?- their perspective is already tainted by poverty, lack of education, repressed psyche and lack of objectivity in gathering information.

Now I am getting so far ahead of myself it is becoming difficult to stay focused. How the heck am I supposed to keep focused or calm when the government can't deal decisively with threats to lives of citizens by the terrorist fanatic sect in the Northern part of the country, but it can unleash the military to tear gas a group of harmless demonstrators protesting the anomaly  of governance. How do I keep a focused mind when after having paid for a pre-paid meter, five years later you still haven't seen it because there is a conspiracy to make you pay up to 4 timesmore than the amount you have used up. How do I shut up when a thirty one year old guy, who could have been me considering that I also work in the media, was shot dead while at work as a journalist gathering information for his employer. How the ....... Okay let me just bone. The more I write the more furious I seem to be getting.

Yes I do love this country. But with the rot that is eating into the very nerves that connect the body parts to the heart, it is becoming increasingly very difficult to really stay the love. Gosh!

God save Nigeria!

Why blame the president?

It's been more than a week of multitude display of emotions in words and actions by friends and fellow countrymen at home and in the diaspora over the recent fuel price hike. We all sound so passionate and eloquent in baring our thoughts. If words and emotions have brought regimes to a halt/demise in the recent history of the world ('Arab Spring' in mind, which happened just about a year ago); the present Nigerian government would have been history within the last couple of days. Well, with the on-going nationwide protests over the fuel subsidy removal, the outcome of the industrial strike action is labouring in the womb of time. Nevertheless, from ensuing arguments and counter-arguments across the numerous social media sites, I cease to pass the bulk of the blame on President G. Jonathan alone for the present situation in the country. Simply put; do I blame President G. Jonathan? No!

While the current president appears weak and clueless in the face of the anomie beguiling the nation, I blame Nigerians; you and me for our present predicament. It is the misplacement of our priorities over the years that has enabled the rise of the quality of people at the helm. My country has had, for a long time, this 'insensitive' hike amongst other things coming her way. This is the dividend for voting with so much bias, sentiments of all sorts that eventually lead to political 'selection' rather than viable 'election'. Times without number our reasons for going to the polls are not based on sound judgement and clear articulation of the needs of the nation. We think with our 'stomachs' in contrast to the warning signs in our heads. History they say repeats itself but with Nigerians it means nothing because we are too fickle-minded to remember, not to talk of learning. Hence charlatans and intellectually barren politicians hold sway over millions of us year in, year out.

An average Nigerian is so conditioned by decades of austere economic measures that he/she has developed a thick skin towards the problems or wellbeing of his/her neighbour, and the nation as a whole. We are solely concerned with our household alone. This reminds me of a Yoruba chant by supporters of one of the political parties during the Second Republic: 'I'm well fed (x2), I don't know/care if my neighbour/anyone is hungry'; i.e. once my family is well fed, I don't care about others. Is this social behavioural malaise the fault of President Jonathan and his cabal at the FEC? The absence of genuine love and humane predisposition to one another is part of the cancer that has eaten into the fabric of our nation. It is our way of life that enables the powerful and those in government manipulate, at will, the lot of us at the lower rung of the national ladder.

Nigeria is a blessed country and her people are so religious and full of piety. However, these religious sentiments that equally clouds our reasoning and obscures our vision of followership does more harm than good to the nation. In the spate of recent protests and outbursts by all and sundry, a large percentage of our spiritual leaders have been mute; save a few whom we heard joined the protests. Where are the shepherds when the flock needs their protection and guidance from the wolf? This is just true of what has befallen our society today. We flock around one another in times of plenty and quickly take to our heels when adversity sets in. Sadly, it is everyman for himself in Nigeria. Religion is ridiculed; our genuine faith in God is questioned. This is the jungle we have made our country become. We have become Babel of voices, disunity reigns supreme. And like J.P Clark's The Raft, the nation has been teetering in turbulent waters for decades.

We are responsible for this great disservice to Nigeria. Our unhealthy habits: of nonchalance towards our state of affairs as a people, our self-centred attitude over the years, disenfranchising ourselves at the poll for "handouts" from politicians and communal heads at city/town hall meetings, our continued celebration and veneration of mediocrity because the candidate is my brother, sister or friend; baseless expressions of tribal or religious sentiments on state and national issues. We are too busy in our own world to ask viable questions about how we are being governed. The differences among us are being manipulated to exploit us. The diversity of the multi-ethnic peoples of the nation should be a great bonus to Nigeria; instead disunity, distrust and insincerity are the orders of the day in our diversity. We have made it become so easy for the government to set cats among the pigeons to achieve ends that continue to subjugate the populace.

So why should I blame President Jonathan and Co. for taking advantage of our incessant myopia? Obviously, this is a character who has been riding on the back of his superior officers' agenda ( Alamasiegha and Yar'Adua), until fate gave him his day/tenure to chart a positive developmental course for his fatherland in a rapidly revolutionizing world. But like a true mediocre, which piggybacked his way to the top, he has been found out as a stooge, an opportunist (with sermonizing stories of a shoeless childhood); and his display of gross ineptitude and incapability. Yet we cast our votes for the same lame duck, who failed in his first term of about 2-years after the demise of President Umar Musa Yar'Adua in May, 2010. He made promises of constant power supply and improved standard of living in the latter part of the Yar'Adua regime which he inherited but he never made good his promises. In contrast, when he raised the motion for fuel subsidy removal, it was swiftly implemented within a short space of time. More so, without adequate consultation and temporary palliative measures in place for the good of all. These are the kind of characters and degenerating situations that selfishness and 'I-don't-care' attitudes often displayed by citizens of a nation towards personal, communal, national affairs and citizens' wellbeing breeds.

Our collective responsibility for one another has to be re-ignited. We need to cultivate the feeling of brotherhood, shun tribal sentiments and above all religious manipulations and blind followership. The time is now, to wrestle the reins of leadership from President *'Esu and his vagabond FEC minstrels'. God save Nigeria!!!

*The Raft is a play written by J.P. Clark; it is a metaphorical play about the state of a nation on the brink of disintegration.

*Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels is a play written by Femi Osofisan; where Esu is characterised as 'the trickster' deity in the Yoruba pantheon of gods. In the play, Esu deploys his manipulative powers over the minstrels in their tribulations and wanderings.

Muheez
(Twitter: @m_careca5)