DOOMSDAY

Category:Uncategorized

One preacher is just doing his thing in this bus where I am sandwiched between this fat woman and this other not-so-fat woman, both reeking of fish in different stages of decomposition.

This preacher has just told us, his unwilling audience, that God has decided that Man has 6,000 years to live on Earth and that that allotted time expired on September 14, 2015...and that the "blood moon" of two days back was God's way of notifying us of that expiry and of the imminence of Doomsday.

I dunno if the two fat women between whose armpits I am sandwiched believe him. But the smell oozing from them seems to make a compelling case for the Doomsday argument.

OUTDOOR PISS AND OFFSHORE TALES

Category:A Set Of Random Thoughts

Here in Africa, forget Africa, here in Lagos, we guys have the license to pee anywhere. Into toilet bowls at home or in a friend's house, into gutters facing the roads or backing them, into bushes  while standing with legs spread wide apart and hips thrust forward, by the front tires of little buses and back tires of huge trucks, standing behind open passenger doors of saloon cars, legs together, feet apart, and in some really interesting cases, we pee right out in the open, standing side by side with other non-peeing guys who are drinking, smoking, gisting, and getting ready to pee.

It appears to me that we feel more comfortable with our outdoor pee-pisodes. I have had friends who have come visiting and who, as they left my house or office, turned to the nearest bush or gutter and unzipped their fly. Mind you, I have clean toilets in my house and office. I have had times also where I had just left a house where I could have asked to use the urinal and instead sought out the comfort of the privacy of the back tire of a parked bus to do my wee business.

So why do we like doing our wee business outdoors? It would be interesting to know. Definitely something a psychologist may have an opinion about.

As I am no psychologist, let me take this opportunity to wonder - why does this president prefer making important announcements from outside Nigeria? For instance, why did we have to learn from articles in foreign media that Nigerian government ministers would be appointed in September? 

Speaking of, today is September 29. And as they say, 30 days hath September. 

[Edit:ADD Sept 30, 2015, 1100HRS]
And why is it that I now hear that the president communicated his decision to be his own petroleum minister to another foreign media house, ehn? This president should learn to pee inside the house na. If the toilet bowls are dirty, let us clean them and use them. 

Why litter everything outside with our pee just because there are maggots in the loo which we built inside the house with our hard-earned naira and its not-so-visible kobo!!!

AS NUMBER FOUR TAKES HER ROYAL TURN...

Category:Uncategorized 

Why does Nigeria issue driver's licenses to 18-year olds? Why does Nigeria register 18-year olds to vote? Could it be because 18-year olds are adjudged as having reached the legal age of consent? Could it be because at 18 years old, a boy, no, a man is expected to be able to decide for himself what is right, what is wrong, and what is right or wrong depending on prevailing circumstances? Could it be because at 18 years old, a girl is expected to say no when she means no, and to say yes when she is sure she can handle the consequences of her fiat?

Could that be the reason our former chief banker and now good emir (Sai Turanchi) is now said to have married an 18-year old Adamawa princess?

Maybe.

But let the emir beware.

The princess may be able to accept his nuptial hand; her vagina may be able to sate what remnants of his passion still trickle down the legs of his first three wives. But her young pelvis may not be able to withstand the live consequence of that residual passion.

Let the good emir beware vesicovaginal fistula. It does not necessarily recognize the 18-year benchmark for independence. 

But what do I know sef? Abeg lemme park well. 

THE BEAUTY OF ATHEISM

Category: A Set Of Random Thoughts

The aloofness of religious leaders to the real circumstances of their followers has gradually lent to atheism a beauty it neither truly possesses nor truly merits. It has led some people to a reactionary rejection of all things that are not readily explained by Science.

Yet Science is not at cross-purposes with God's plans. God created logic and expanded the human brain enough to develop a mind capable of abstract reasoning, from which resource all things scientific have been made, and all technology has come forth. Science is ultimately God's weapon placed in Man's hands, or, more correctly, in Man's skull, with which Man is to conquer the universe and, hopefully, create a fate for mankind different from that which has befallen the dinosaurs.

Atheism is a shadowy mist resting on borrowed canvas. Bereft of substance, its beauty is like that of the moon - lent to it by rays stolen from the sun. It is an irrelevant ball of darkness in the absence of that blazing star.

Do not be fooled by atheism, or by atheists.

A THANK YOU NOTE TO AN UNLIKELY LOT

Category: As I Was Saying...

I have on occasion been guilty of one sin: the sin of dismissing every single Nigerian policeman (and policewoman, mind you) as just another member of a thieving, inefficient, ineffective, corrupt lot, whose specialty is harassing motorists as the latter try to negotiate their way through the motley of death-traps on Nigerian roads. I have often held that the only crimes that our police officers have taught themselves to fight are hawking on some streets in Asokoro, riding okada in some parts of Lagos, parking a vehicle "wrongly" in parts of Onitsha.

But today, I woke up to the news that the police had rescued the patriarch of my family friend's home, less than 24 hours after he had been kidnapped from his residence. The kidnappers roughed him up some, but the men and women of the Nigerian Police Force got him out. Alive.

Kudos olopa.

Change is here. 

PAPA FRANCESCO: MORE LOVE, LESS LECTURES

Category: On The Wall

Pope Francis Inside A Philadelphia Prison, Sept 2015

Notice how this pope has, with his choice of tour sites during his 2015 visit to the US, called attention to the world's homeless and to the world's imprisoned.

He has been making a difference in our world, not with pompous words of canonical self-righteousness, but with deliberate action that calls on us all to return to the fundamental principle on which Christianity was built: LOVE

THUS SAYS THE LORD...TO 'THE LORD'S CHOSEN...'

Category: On The Wall

I have just received a message from the Most High. Someone please take this message to the leaders of The Lord's Chosen:

Thus says the Lord:

In the beginning, I created Time. And that was the beginning of the Beginning. I created everything out of nothing. I have created things you have seen and things you cannot fathom. I have given you capabilities so that you can use them to fend for yourself.

You sin grievously when you give murderous instructions to those who choose to come to me through you. You belong with the Father of Lies when you tell my children that I said they should not take medications, when you stop them from getting medical help when they are sick, and instead lock them up and needlessly pollute the atmosphere I created with the noisy ruckus that you like to call prayer.

I created man. I created all men. There is a reason I created Newton. And Fleming. And Shakespeare. And Florence Nightingale. And Ben Carson. And Lionel Messi. I have given each man his own gift, each man his own talent. I have even given you - some of you - the gift of oratory. Do not misuse it by employing it to lead other people to needless deaths.

I will hold each of you responsible for every single death you cause. Every single one. This caveat applies also to your colleagues at Faith Tabernacle.

If I were anything like some of you, this is where I would use what you people like to call an expletive. But, you see, I am not.

One more thing. I have chosen everyone, and appointed to different people different roles. Do not keep telling my children that they are the ones I have specially chosen. That is pathetic. None of them - and none of you - is even a non-Gentile!!!

NOTE TO THE WAILING WAILER: WOULDN’T YOU RATHER WAIL PROPERLY?

Category: As I Was Saying...

This afternoon, I read a Punch article titled “We’ll Never Hang Buhari’s Portrait In Our Offices”. It appears to be a statement credited to Olisa Metuh, the National Publicity Secretary of Nigeria’s opposition Peoples Democratic Party, the PDP. Many lame comments have been attributed to that same man in the wake of the transformation of the PDP from a ruling party to an opposition group - the said transformation of the party status to opposition being the final masterstroke dealt the party by the then Nigerian President Goodluck Ebelemi Jonathan as part of his Transformation Agenda. God bless the end of his godforsaken regime.

I think that most self-respecting men, and perhaps President Buhari would cringe at the very thought of their portrait hanging in any of PDP’s corruption-infested nooks. It is the kind of putrid 11AM thought that makes one retch as he vomits all his breakfast and postpones all further thought of food indefinitely. Few people who appreciate the extent of that party’s rottenness would be proud of an association with anything remotely connected with it, while their level of rot persists.

But … what was that journalist’s own sef? Was this report made for lack of sensational stories to publish? Isn’t that journalist aware that the Chibok girls are yet to be found? That a dollar still exchanges for over two hundred naira? That power, though better, isn’t yet at its best? That we still have no trains? That the refineries are not yet all working at 95% capacity, whether they be domiciled in the plains of the 97% or in the forests and creeks of the 5%?

Some people in this wailing business just have no idea how to do their wailing job. They suck at wailing properly, just like they suck at most things else. Rather than learn to wail properly, they whine and whimper and look to their paymasters for encouragement, for approval, for acknowledgment that they have tried in the discharge of their wailing duties; yesso, for acknowledgment that they have tried.

That kind of mediocrity was the old normal, the status quo that the wailing wailers had come to love and had fought so hard to maintain, the state of progressive deformation they had called the Transformation Agenda. To them, debilitating mediocrity was a goal, a peak to be attained rather than a trough to be avoided.

Thankfully, 15 million other Nigerians thought different. And every hour that goes by, yet another Nigerian gets around to seeing the PDP chiefs for the shining examples of corruption that they really are; yet another Nigerian who doesn’t have to buy petrol for his generator every evening comes to understand that good governance has no creed; yet another Nigerian who is surprised that his local health centre is suddenly dispensing essential drugs begins to appreciate the fact that good governance has no tribe.

Buhari’s picture has no business being in that photo album. His portrait has no business hanging in that decrepit Hall of Shame.

But what do I really know? I’m after all only human.

THE PARADOX THAT IS THE PEACE-LOVING HUMAN

Category: Uncategorized

I have often wondered how it is that we strenuously maintain assurances of our love for peace and quiet happily-ever-after coexistence, yet derive all our entertainment from stories that carry in them at least some degree of conflict. 

Source: http://www.dscript.deviantart.com/ 

Yea. Whether it be a Hollywood thriller, a Bollywood love story, a Nollywood comedy, one of those genreless I-go-dye shows, a gripping football match from Old Trafford, a sizzling whatchamacallit from the Kardashians, there is always a side contesting AGAINST another side, an actor AGAINST another, a player AGAINST the other. The againstness of it all is the conflict. The conflicts in them all provide our entertainment because we want to see who gets to win, who gets to have the last laugh,  how it all eventually ends. We want to see conflict resolution but only after we have seen conflict development, the clash of wills, the flash of steel, the thuds of leather boots.

Yet, the only thing conflict has in common with peace is the letter c.

So maybe being people of peace doesn't necessarily mean that we are averse to conflict.

But then, what do I know? I'm just a human.

PERSPECTIVE

Category: On The Wall

I pray everyday that in my quest to expand the frontiers of my own knowledge and to cultivate in my friends the habit of asking questions without borders, I may not forget the reason I set out on this quest.  

Image source: http://www.pinterest.com/

That which I seek may appear to some to be a shadow at the moment, yet it is my objective, my goal, my substance struggling upward and outward from its many surrounding shadows.

And sometimes, the difference between this substance and that shadow is made by the lighting.

WE MAY - ALL OF US - BE TERRORISTS

Category: A Set Of Random Thoughts

I recently read accounts of a papal bull issued in 1452 by Pope Nicholas V. That bull (which is sort of like an Act of a National Assembly or an Edict or Decree of a government) was named Dum Diversas. Dum Diversas means ‘until different’. That bull was addressed to the kings of Spain and Portugal. The part of that document that caught my attention is this:

We grant you by these present documents, with our Apostolic Authority, full and free permission to invade, search out, capture, and subjugate the Saracens and pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of Christ wherever they may be, as well as their kingdoms, duchies, counties, principalities, and other property … and to reduce their persons into perpetual servitude.

This is not a leaked facsimile of the drunken rants of a highly placed church official caught in a moment of indiscretion. Nope. It is an official church document, dating back to 1452, issued at a time when the church commanded loyalty with the bible and with arrows, issued to kings to permit them to persecute all infidels wherever they may be, issued to Christian political leaders charging them to reduce all non-Christians to perpetual slavery, for as long as they remained non-Christians. You can check out what Wikipedia has to say about Dum Diversas here.

This document is one of the many documents that illustrate how, over time, Christians moved from being the ones who were persecuted because of their faith (in the first few centuries AD) to becoming the ones who persecuted every other person, group, principality, region, or country who did not share the belief that Jesus is Lord as well as those who did not share the prevailing belief about the exact manner in which Jesus' lordship was conducted. It is another illustration of the view I hold about the potential tyranny of faith, the dictatorship of every ideology that deliberately divorces reason from ALL of its convictions, the totalitarianism that invariably results when religion mixes so closely with politics that both become a homogeneous entity. After all, one reason Jesus Christ was murdered by the Jewish authorities was that the message of compassion that he preached rankled when placed side-by-side with their interpretations of the mechanical “will of God”.

This post is not a criticism of the document or of the institution that promulgated it and saw to its implementation. Many others have done that before me. Many continue to do that today. I have no wish to lend my feeble notes to that resounding orchestra. Besides, thankfully, the Christian world has since been irrevocably wed to the divorce between the Church and the State (at least in print, but also in many cases, in fact).

It is rather a gentle reminder to my holy Christian friends who, on account of Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, ISIS, etc., dismiss all muslims as terrorists, and who proudly point to Christianity as the religion that has been spread to the ends of the earth exclusively by peaceful means, by the power of the Father, the miracles of the Son, and the tongues of fire of the Holy Spirit. It is a gentle reminder to those peaceful, holy friends of mine that whatever evils those islamist terrorists are violently perpetrating today in the name of Allah, there are precedents, precedents left for them by our fathers in faith, heinous precedents committed in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ.

Of course, that our fathers in faith were guilty of the subjugation of peoples of different faiths, the oppression and execution of blasphemers, heretics, and infidels (abi unbelievers) several years ago as they strove to spread Christianity does not justify the perpetration of the same crimes by others today, as they supposedly seek to spread Islam. But the generalizations we make about people who believe in God in different ways than we do or even in different Gods than we do, are often unhealthy. Those generalizations, to me, are mustard seeds of the same kind of intolerance, which only need the right mix of circumstances to make us also terrorists.

Let us then beware, because the log we see in our neighbor’s eye may just have been hewn from the giant tree that is happily growing in ours, watered by our own prejudices, well nourished by the manure of our own oft-unrecognized bigotry.

THE HOLY MASS: MY PARISH'S HOLY EXCUSE FOR AN ETERNAL FUNDRAISER

Category: Uncategorized

I have noticed in my temperament an increasing impatience with the almost complete disregard that my church manifests for such seemingly small issues as Mass starting on time, as sermons being spiritually uplifting exercises rather than solely fund-raising speeches, as well as the big issues which are too big for me to even mention in this small post. I had better stick with the small issues.

I had earlier complained about my parish’s endless thanksgivings and how those thanksgiving processions invariably stretch one Mass thirty or more minutes into the time that the next Mass should have started - and that this goes on from one Sunday to the next, as regular as clockwork.

Today, I am bitter about how, in addition to the fact that the 6:30AM Mass stretched to 10:25AM despite the fact that the next Mass was scheduled for 9:30AM, the priest who spoke during the time traditionally allotted for the homily gave a long speech that was anything but a homily. It was more like an assemblage of the Top 100 Reasons Why You Must Give More to God Today Than You Have Ever Done In Your Entire Life. Needless to say, I yawned my way through most of the sham “sermon”.

When I attend Mass, I do so in search of spiritual upliftment; I do so because I desire an ever closer union with God and I look to my priest for tips on how to make my love affair with God something that permeates the rest of my weekday life, whether on my workbench or on the beer roundtable. I do not attend Mass to be told to come forward multiple times to the front of the church to count my blessings and to do so by “thanking God” on each of those passes with cash stuffed in various envelopes and deposited in the offering box first as a youth, then as a man, then as a young Catholic professional, then as someone from the southeast, then as a Nigerian, then as someone who knows God has done something good for him, then as someone who wants God to continue to do something good for him...and so on.

I wouldn’t mind so much if the homily focused on the readings of the day and the lessons that one could draw from it, and thereafter, the flurry of thanksgivings began. I wouldn’t be bothered if they didn’t start passing offering bags round the congregation within the homily. I wouldn’t be complaining loudly if the 6:30AM Mass had finished in time for the 9:30AM Mass to begin.

The kind of Mass that was said in my parish today - mind me, today was harvestday but mind you, it was also Sunday - is the kind of Mass that got me thinking that in some parishes, as in mine, the Mass itself seems to be morphing into a commodity available for sale - to all bidders high and not-so-high; the priests and church officials involved are such happy vendors. I am almost sure that these days, when they meet at informal fora, they ask themselves that Idumota question, 'how market?' 

Blessed be the work of their hands.

RELIGION AND RELIGIOTS

Category: A Set of Random Thoughts

In recent times, I have read about people who have been suspended from their jobs or jailed because they refused to carry out certain duties that run contrary to the tenets of their individual faiths.

Great news. It is always cheering to see humans who are ready to stand up for what they believe in - even where taking that stand may mean suffering withheld paychecks and in some cases jail time. But there is also something troubling in (some of) these stories.

Before one takes on a job in the public service sector, one should study the job description; one should find out what one’s responsibilities to the public would be, should one elect to take up the job. One should be sure that those responsibilities are responsibilities that one can discharge to the best of their ability and without any impediment. And where such an impediment exists but one is determined to take up the job nonetheless, one should be certain that there are alternatives that allow them to legally escape doing the (offending aspect of the) job while simultaneously ensuring that that (aspect of the) job gets done - at little or no extra cost to the employer.

It is irresponsible to take on a job and then refuse to do the job on grounds as shoddy as religion. People who do that should not just be suspended. They should be jailed and made to pay a fine for willfully deceiving the system into believing they were capable of doing their job.

And when they die, they should - kindly - be sent to Hell.

Rubbish.