HYMAR: THE UNNECESSARY DEMONIZATION OF LINDA IKEJI

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Hymar David | Facebook

If there is one thing being a Nigerian has taught me, it is that we are a people of appalling (and annoying) double-standards.

You say: 'See that Igbo girl ehn, she like money die.' Meanwhile, you spend thirty minutes at the bus stop dragging ordinary ten naira change with the bus conductor. No be love of money be that? Abi na poverty?

Linda Ikeji has never been anything to me apart from some blogger who has this reputation of controversy. I first got to hear about her from this girl I used to date way back in the U of Benin. Bae followed LIB upandan with the devotion of a Alabi addict following live scores online. I am sure the morning she messaged me on Whatsapp to say 'I am tired of your shit', her browser was open to the day's amebo on LIB.

I remember the heat Linda got for using articles without permission, I even fired some potshots her way ( I be writer nah, she dey spoil awa kiri), and the 'she had it coming' shrug when her blog was temporarily shut down. Who I send?

The Pearl Osibu vs Onyeka Nwelue issh forced me to take a not-cursory-this-time glance at Linda Ikeji and at the criticisms trailing her wake. Personally I feel the heat is justified BUT the subsequent hate and sheer demonization of her personality is just petty and unnecessary.

I will tell you why.

You say Linda steals content but you buy remade-in-Alaba copies of October 1, Game of Thrones, 30 Days in Atlanta, motor park photocopies of Half of a Yellow Sun, Americanah, There Was a Country, etc. etc. Ole buruku, shee you no know say na stolen content dey your hand?

You say: 'in civilized countries,people like Linda would be behind bars.' I say: In civilized countries, people like you would be in psychiatric hospitals for coming to Facebook to defend thieves like Athiefwaju Tinubu, Olesegun Obosanjo, Bode George Bushman, Athiefku and co. Evidence abound that these people have looted your present, past and future and you are busy parading around in aso-oke with their faces on it. You are busy blocking your Facebook friends for insulting your role models. O ma se.

You gossip negatively about people you don't even know in your Facebook inboxes and come out to slam Linda for making not just money but big money for being a ITK and a tatafo. Use your gbeborun talent make money, you no fit, even to make money from beef, you no fit. Tinubu and GEJ dey flex jet anyhow and you no gree get heart attack. Even PMB no gree sell even one tyre for the 'presidental' jets and you no talk kpem, but ordinary jeep, you dey develop heartburn. Dey dia dey get bow leg on top vitamin D deficiency wey no be your own.

Linda steals contents but you stole your blog's name from a popular film (abi you want follow GEJ call am Ordinary Borrowing?). That story idea wey you call inspiration, you stole it from a book. I know, Mr and Mrs Original Writer, I have read that book before. I see the similarities. Oshee.

The thing is, if you really think it over, nobody has the moral authority to pinpoint amoral things in other people. We all have beams in our eyes. We all have fragile glass houses that should make us wary of stone fights. 

A writer friend once said to me: 'Hymar, about everything I write is taken from people and real life. Nothing I write I can call 100 percent mine' Yet the bobo doesn't understand why I look am bad eye when he starts talking about 'talentless people who steal stuff.' Issokay.

If you want criticise Linda, feel free, I will even support you, but biko no turn am to another thing. I take beg god you.

JUST ANOTHER DAY ON A LAGOS ROAD

Monday, June 22, 2015

Getting to work this morning was relatively easy because I was able to beat the morning rush that characterizes Lagos traffic. But then, I came face to face with one of the consequences of the mad rush by bus drivers as they waltz dangerously with decrepit buses on the Lekki-Epe highway whenever traffic is light enough to permit their combination of overspeeding and reckless maneuvering.

At Ikate roundabout, which is the third roundabout as you drive into Lekki from Lagos mainland, there was a small crowd gathered around a number of injured people. The injured had just been extracted from a Volkswagen Transporter bus which had driven headlong into a canal beside the ring.

The driver was said to have survived, with little or no injuries, and had promptly fled the scene. Some of the passengers had fractures of the limbs, others had very suspicious spinal integrity, and only a minority of them could boast of simple cuts and bruises.

People who claimed to be eyewitnesses said that in the early hours of the morning, the driver had been trying to negotiate the roundabout at a speed that would have inspired shock and awe in the most desperate of lunatics when the bus spun out of control, out of the road, and across the kerb into the canal that lines much of the highway.

As time went on, people contacted by the wounded passengers came to take them to seek medical attention. Shortly, a truck from the Lekki Concession Company LCC arrived to tow the bus away from the scene. Onlookers were aghast at the fact that officials of the government were quick to attempt a removal of the vehicle from the site without giving a thought to the humans who remained at the site, injured and unattended to. Several minutes and many loud protests from bystanders later, one of the LCC officials produced a First Aid box and proceeded to administer first aid to the yet-to-be-evacuated injured passengers.

There were police officers present through much of this period; their presence, in my opinion, was of very doubtful impact.

Just another day on a Lagos road.

Moore Numental - LIFE AND LIMBS

Monday, June 15, 2015

LIFE AND LIMBS

Moore Numental tells a story that highlights one of the core concerns of humanity on the 2015 World Day Against Child Labour. 

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