SECTIONS

Thursday, October 29, 2015

"DON'T BE SILLY"

Category:Uncategorized

I came across this story on SaharaReporters and thereafter said a prayer of thanks to God that nothing untoward happened to my dear former president. For, were Matthew Aremu Okikiola Olusegun Obasanjo to so suddenly go missing from among the living, this ridiculous back and forth between Wole Soyinka and him would come to an untimely end, and so would my thorough entertainment by the big words that adorn the many pages of their bickering.


So I said a prayer of thanksgiving to God for protecting the former president as he made his way to Lagos en route Abidjan, where he was going to monitor the presidential elections there on behalf of ECOWAS and to ensure that those elections were free and fair.


After my prayer of thanksgiving to God for the life of Okikiola, I allowed myself to begin to think that having President Obasanjo monitor any elections and/or listening to his opinion on free and fair elections is like having, as the lead judge in a musical competition, a man born deaf and dumb, and requesting such a man to verbalize his keynote address.

Then I slapped my hungry self and, in my father’s voice said to myself: “Don’t be silly!”

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

DIVINE DECEIT? OR DIVINELY INSPIRED CON MEN?

Category:Uncategorized


Finally, the good pastor Chris Okotie and I agree on something.

Perhaps.

In 2003, God asked President Obasanjo to try for a second shot at the Nigerian presidency after Obasanjo performed a month's fast. Interestingly, God also asked Okotie to the same task at the same time. Obasanjo eventually clinched the presidency and Okotie clinched a certification for a failed attempt. In 2015, God again asked Okotie to run for the Nigerian presidential elections, the same year he asked incumbent President Jonathan to run for the same position in the same elections.
Rev Chris Okotie (source: http://revchrisokotie.com/)
Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor (source: Wikipedia)

And all the while that God was pushing an Okotie to run for the presidency and a Jonathan - via Oritsejafor - to win the same presidency, he was persuading a certain Buhari to "show me your satificate, oya pullova", no?

Just why does the good pastor think that God's prophecy to Jonathan according to Oritsejafor was false? In listening to God, wasn't Oritsejafor employing the same radio frequency that he, Okotie, was making use of? It appears to me that, though Okotie accuses Oritsejafor of deceiving Jonathan, Oritsejafor actually heard the very same message Okotie heard. Only, when Oritsejafor heard God say Jonathan, Okotie heard God say Okotie. One cannot be justly vilified for hearing something different than the other, surely?

Methinks the good pastor should cut Oritsejafor some slack. This was either one helluva first rate divine deceit, or both pastors - honourable men of God that they are - suffered from a form of auditory hallucination so interestingly profound that they may require psychiatric evaluation rather more urgently than they do divine intervention.

If that is not the case, then it would appear that God, judging from claims attributed to these holy and very, very honourable men, derives great pleasure from divinely instigating lots of people to stand for Nigerian presidential elections...just for the fun of watching them tear at each other’s throats.

Mbaka?

This post is about men of God, not about God's men.

Monday, October 19, 2015

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

Category:Uncategorized

In one of his comments on one of my Facebook posts in which I basically hailed the news of the arrest of the warmonger Nnamdi Kanu as good riddance to bad rubbish, a contributor said:


“I am not praising or criticising him...I won't haul derogatory names at him either...but I don't feel strongly as a Nigerian....will I have a chance to decide....maybe a vote among others who feel like me to decide if Nigeria is what we want?”


Nigeria was indeed a British contraption, made to, among other things, spite the French who were the other big player in the West African colonial space. The Germans were never really big, and their WWII defeat put paid altogether to their colonial ventures. Our consent to the amalgamation of the Lagos Colony and the Northern and Southern Protectorates was neither required nor sought, nor was our approval obtained before the king’s mistress called us Nigerians (not the King of England, mind, but the man who by leave of the English Crown, was essentially the king in these parts). What mattered to the British overlords was the administrative and strategic military sense it made for the British Empire to have a single, giant colony in the heart of West Africa in addition to the far smaller ones that existed farther west along the west African coast.


At independence, and especially after Nigeria became a republic, our “founding fathers” (if indeed Nigeria can be accurately said to have a founding father other than Lord Lugard) missed important opportunities to put the question to the Nigerian people: “Do you want Nigeria?” It was taken for granted that we did, and that the Nigerian concept was not negotiable. In fact, it was understood that any kind of independence from the white man was a more desperate need and therefore a most thoroughly desirable outcome than was a clear understanding of where we were headed once that much sought-after independence was achieved. Several times since 1963, since the Biafran surrender in 1970 and the promised reconstruction of Eastern Nigeria that never happened, and through all the coups d’état that perforated our half-hearted democratic experiments, we have missed important opportunities to do all of the following:


  • convene a truly representative and truly sovereign national conference to which every ethnic group (not local governments) will send representatives chosen by a deliberately organized series of elections.
  • systematically address at that conference the following among other questions:
    • whether we choose to remain a united Nigeria or otherwise.
    • why we want to remain a united Nigeria if we so chose, and why we would not like to remain a united Nigeria, if we chose otherwise.
    • how the united Nigeria was to operate if we chose to stay united, and how the so far united Nigeria was to disintegrate if we chose to go our separate ways.
    • the number of years that would intervene between one conference and the next conference, at which subsequent session the same questions with respect to our continued nationhood would be posed and answered.
    • what role religion and ethnicity were to play in national life, should we have elected to remain together.
    • how resources and proceeds from resources were to be exploited in the case of the former, and shared in the case of the latter.
    • what form of government the nation would run, were we to have chosen to stay together, and what form our Constitution would take.
  • the resolutions reached at that conference would then be subjected to a plebiscite, the result of which would be instantaneously binding and maximally effective.


A lot of Nigerians, like the one whose comment in part inspired this post, do not feel Nigerian. It is unfair not to let them have their say regarding their misgivings. But a lot of other Nigerians do not feel anything other than Nigerian. They know their country is very imperfect on many fronts, but they feel a connection to that green-white-and-green flag, and to those two unfortunate horses forever condemned to their arduous task of unsteadily holding up the banner on which the eagle on our coat of arms rests its conceivably impressive weight. It is unfair to try to force these ones out of their Nigerianness, just because one ragtag riffraff called Nnamdi Kanu can get on the internet and, like his islamist terrorist mentors, dish out hate speeches and refer to the political boundaries of the labours of our heroes past as a zoo.


So it is desirable that there be an opportunity for Nigerians to decide and to determine whether they want to be together, and if they decide that they do, on what terms such a union should be built. This is what the Americans had the opportunity to do when their Founding Fathers met on behalf of the Colonies and decided to become the United States of America. This is the opportunity that Lord Lugard denied Nigerians by his amalgamation to create the behemoth, and that General Yakubu Gowon denied Nigerians by his balkanization of that behemoth into states that had neither ethnic nor religious justification for their allotted boundary lines. This is the opportunity that should be afforded Nigerians, by the simple instrumentality of the ballot box.

A lot of my friends desire Biafra for its own sake really, and not for any clear ideological differences that separate such a Biafra from the already existent Nigeria. The current southeastern states are not noticeably ideologically separate from the rest of the country. So, for many Nnamdi Kanu-enthusiasts at least, and for many others whose lungs have been generously suffused with the incense of his rabble-rousing, Biafra represents an opportunity for personal economic gain, rather than the touted opportunity for the emancipation of a hitherto shortchanged people. 

But not all that is desirable is always immediately achievable. Sometimes, Wisdom is knowing what you really want, how best to get it, and, having got it, knowing how to manage it, how to ensure that it stays useful to you, and how to properly rank it on the scale of preference. This is the definition that assures me that although Nnamdi Kanu is someone that we all are better off without, he is also a cancerous mass than cannot be ignored without dire consequences, and so must carefully be excised in good time, and with clinical precision. He is like a fly perched on the testicles. You do not want to injure your balls while taking a swipe at the insect, but then, as you most definitely do not want the arthropod anywhere near those prized nuggets, you are sure that inaction is not an option.


Monday, October 5, 2015

IRRESPONSIBLE FREEDOM (DIRTY LANGUAGE ALERT)

Category:Uncategorized

I read this Punch story about the dismissal from his duties of a senior Polish priest who, flanked by his Spanish boyfriend, publicly came out of the closet, while criticizing the Church for its as yet unchanged position with respect to "sexual minorities".

Now, I believe that men (and women) should be allowed to fuck who they please, so long as the act is mutually consensual (and of course that the consenting parties are legally capable of giving consent), and that the act does not interfere with their work and with the day-to-day running of societal life. I believe too that who a person is fucking should not define how I relate with that person. And I think that, on a personal level, it doesn't.

But, I am aware that the Roman Catholic Church prescribes celibacy for its priests. So, with Catholic priests, it is not really a question of who you can or cannot fuck; it is a statement that you cannot fuck anyone. You are a eunuch for God's sake and for the sake of God's people. That is the way it is, and that is something you get to know before you become a priest. It is not a surprise that someone springs on you after you have donned the chasuble.

So when some priest drunk on his own testosterone addresses a news conference, hanging on his Spanish lover's arm, dressed among other things, in a Roman collar, saying stuff to the effect that he should be allowed to be both Catholic priest and boyfriend, beyond the crass absurdity of it all, I believe he is dressing irresponsibility up in garbs stolen from Freedom's wardrobe.

So here's my message to Krzysztof Charamsa:

Hey priest. You can quit being the patron saint of ingratitude to the Church. As of this moment, the Church recommends that you choose between your priesthood and your prickhood. You may not like it much, but being a priest is not compulsory, and staying a priest is not obligatory. You may have been born gay, but you were not born a priest. What you seek to defend is not your right to freedom; what you seek to defend is your right to irresponsibility. While you may have a right to be irresponsible, the rest of us have a right - and a duty - to be protected from your irresponsibility. Next time you come across a TERMS AND CONDITIONS section, don't just check the box. Read the text.

And by the way, what the heck is "sexual minorities"?