TO THE NAIJA ROAD USER BEFORE THEY DIE

Dear Naijaman,

Before you cross the road, please look left, then right, then, importantly, left again. 

If it is a small village dirt road, please look left, then right, then, importantly, left again. 

If it is a small township tarred road, please look left, then right, then, importantly, left again. 

If it is a dual carriage highway with all vehicles supposed to be going in the approved direction on each half, please look right, then left, then, importantly, right again. 

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When on a dual carriageway in Lekki, you look right and then left, and then start to cross, you reckon without that rusted-ogogoro-filled okada rider or the other cheap-hemp-saturated danfo driver who has decided that driving "one-way" is no big deal. 

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You may think that you know your rights and that heaven will fall if you get knocked down by an errant driver. Well, maybe you know your rights. But if you get knocked down, heaven will not fall down. If you get killed, heaven will just go from being your dream to being your (possible) destination. 

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When all is said and done, when the driver has hit his victim and run, it is those who are left that get to determine who was right.

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On a small road, look left, then right, then left again. On a large road, look right, then left, then right again.

If there is a pedestrian bridge and you are a pedestrian, please use your bridge. The Nigerian road is a sea full of alligators called vehicles.

WHILE YOU WERE AWAY - DAY 10 OF THE PRESIDENT'S VACATION

Dear Mr President, 

Now that the vacation has ended, let me update you on events that took place while you were away from Nigeria, away from Facebook, away from Twitter,  and away from all the wahala that happens in those three social media websites. You don't agree Nigeria is a social media site? Don't worry. There are many smileys and frowneys today. You can react by using one or another. Not like those days when the only possible reaction was LIKE or when the only available news outlet was FRCN. But before you react, remember that on the social network called Nigeria, you have more people following you than Donald Trump has following him on Twitter. 

But I ramble. My task is to tell you what has happened in these ten days.

1. YOU FELL ILL AND THEN YOU DIED

Yesso. You fell ill, were urgently whisked away from the country where there are no doctors to the one where doctors abound. And then, despite the best efforts of the best doctors, you were placed on life support, and when your life couldn't use the support, you died. The announcement wasn't made by your friends and well-wishers. The announcement was made by your fiends and death-wishers. Your friends responded by making two announcements: neither was the standard professional demonstration of commercial sorrow; the first comprised pictures of you watching a channel on your television called CHANNELS with your feet on a coffee table; they called those still pictures proof of your life; the second consisted of twitterings from your aviary; those twitterings sounded like you had prohesied you would die and resurrect in 10 days. Just like your friends had two responses, your well-wishers had two responses. One group responded by praying for your resurrection in 10 days so you could return to Nigeria in a blaze of glory. The other group prayed for your ascension into heaven at the end of the 10 days so you could be our modern day Elijah. My questions to you: Are you dead? Did you die? When will you die again?

2. AMERICA BECAME THE APPRENTICE

Donald Trump picked near-quarrels with Mexico and Australia, gave Russia and Israel some head-scratching to do, created alternative facts, fired the word diplomacy from diplomatic circles, and pushed the green cards of many of your dependants that much closer to useless. Some of us now understand that when Wole Soyinka ripped up his green card, he was not only being comical (that too, but not only that); he was being prophetic. Besides, Trump is now giving the world an option: "You're either with me or you're with that woman". No, no, no. "That woman" is not UK Prime Minister May. She is not "that woman" although she could be "the other woman". "That woman" is Angela Merkel. Remember Angela Merkel? The Führer of West Germany? Trump says you must now choose between him and her. He does not like the Chinese, polyandry, or the Russian weather.

3. TUFACE GOT UNDER FIRE FOR PUTTING YOU UNDER FIRE

Tuface thinks you are doing a shitty job at stabilizing the economy. He may be right or he may be living in his own alternate universe where everything you do is wrong because the doer is you and no reason else. But this is a democracy and you and he have subscribed to this system. The system protects his right to protest whatever. Your friends are pissed that the system affords him that protection. They call him names for daring to protest anything. They forget that they - like I - took full advantage of this system in calling out the unprecedented cluelessness of your predecessor. They want to shut him up and shut him down. Shaa, me I like that his song, African Queen. I wish though he sang it on Key B-flat. 

4. WE GOT OUR SANDAL-FREE WEEK

I think this phone has has a problem. I did not intend to say sandal-free. We still wear sandals made of finest Daura leather signed off as Made in Dubai. I intended to say scandal-free.  We had a scandal-free week. No Dasuki. No Buratai. No Rann. No billions in the clearing of weeds. No scandal. Just the minor inconvenience of having a presidency that cannot convincingly account for the president when his whereabouts become a matter of national discourse if not national concern. Definitely minor. Not at all scandal-worthy.

5. MMM FINALLY DIED

In this case, unlike in yours, both its friends and fiends, well-wishers and death-wishers alike, agree it is dead. The only controversy is in how dead.

6. EWU GAMBIA FINALLY LEFT GAMBIA

You remember Ewu Jammeh Gambia? The one you sent troops to oust and then promptly disappeared on vacation? Well, he left. Finally. They say he left aboard Tinubu's jet. They say that that exit cost Gambians a lot of Gambian money, saved Gambians a lot of Gambian blood, and depleted the Gambian internal reserve of ewu by one.

7. MOROCCO JOINED THE AFRICAN UNION

I just included this bit so that those of us who are unaware become aware that in this post-West Germany world, Morocco is colonizing an African country called Western Sahara, the Saharawi republic and that this is the reason for many of Morocco's problems with the rest of Africa.

So you see, a lot has happened while you were away.

Now I am watching to see whether you will come back, when you will come back, how you will come back, and what happens when you do. 

MY KINSMEN AND MY COUNTRYMEN

That is how I was strolling along those news channels that I have been watching while I wait for the 10 days to be over so vacation can end and work - or resurrection - can resume, and I stumbled across a piece of news on CNN (I love CNN, (you don't like that, chew some udara seed and drink hot palm oil)) that said that the US Department of Homeland Security had indicated they would be complying with a court order that temporarily blocks President Trump's executive action on immigration.

I like how my kinsmen, Americans, behave. They are so different from my countrymen, Nigerians.

What do I know? The Bible says that in the beginning He made man. In his image He created him. Male and female He created them. American from Nigerian he delineated them.

Praise the Lord.

RUNNING OUT OF TIME TO BE THE ANTICHRIST

They said he was the antichrist.

That no one could be America's president and be so globally loved if he wasn't of the devil.

That his signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act, was the means by which he, the antichrist, would stamp his seal on foreheads and arms of his followers.

That the end of the world was near and that he would start the Third World War and Armageddon (how is that word even spelt sef?)

They said all that they said had been spelt out by or in the Bible.

Well, his tenure ends in four days or less. Four days or less for him to stamp his seal of 6 6 6 on all foreheads and try to turn the whole world against Christ and do whatever else they said he was sent to do.

Four days for Barack Hussein Obama, the President after my own heart, to prove them right. Or illiterate.

Isn't that what we call those who cannot read? Illiterate?

Perhaps.

But let us step back a little and attempt to start from the very beginning. From the early days of the presidency of the first African American leader of the United States of America.

From the moment his black feet darkened the threshold of the White House, Obama was guilty. In the hearts and minds of the white conspiracy theorists who sought, first to delegitimize his presidency, then to derail it, and then, when that did not work, to defame it, it was an inconceivable horror that a black man should desecrate the halls of their White House with his black wife and decidedly very black daughters. It did not help any that he was a Democrat and had a name that sounded like Saddam's surname.

These racists decided that Obama was guilty; he was guilty because he was a black man in the White House, a slave presiding over the affairs of free men. But being a black and a descendant of slaves was not the kind of crime they could unashamedly accuse him of in the public domain. They had to be more subtle; they had to be able to cast him as unworthy of the position he held without showing their racist hand. They had to ensure that there were crimes they could accuse him of having committed so that, in the eyes of the less discerning, in the eyes of those unaware of the roots of this conspiracy, his "crimes" would speak for themselves and against him. So, like the Sadducees and Pharisees who needed the perfect crime they could accuse Jesus of, having already predetermined his guilt, Obama's traducers needed the perfect crime to accuse Obama of; the perfect weapon to wield against him.

They found that perfect weapon in religion. 

Today, those who dismiss everything Obama stands for as "ungodly" and refer to the man himself as the "Antichrist" justify their claims by accusing him of legalizing same-sex marriage in the United States of America and attempting to implant the biblical mark of the beast - 6 6 6 - on the forehead of every American and every world citizen by means of his Affordable Care Act.

In accusing Obama of being the Antichrist based on the legalization of same-sex marriage, they pay no attention to history; to the fact that same-sex unions had been legally recognized in several countries around the world many years before Obama's black feet stepped on the gray tiles of the White House as its lord:

• in 1989 in Denmark, 
• in 1993 in Norway, 
• in 1994 in Sweden, 
• in 1996 in Iceland, 
• in 1999 in Belgium,
• in 2001 in Finland,
• in 2005 in Canada,
• in 2006 in Israel, (Israel! And before Obama)

In 2013, the United States Supreme Court, which does not have on the Bench anyone by name of Obama, upheld a previous court's decision that effectively set aside the ban on same-sex marriage in the state of California. In 2015, the same Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in all of America.

Obama's accusers are angry that he did not use his powers to muscle the court into upholding a ban on same-sex marriage in California. But they ignore the fact that as president, he has no business interfering in the courts. They pretend to be unaware that even before his presidency, several US states had already given different levels of recognition to same-sex unions. They do not tell you that Obama himself had several personal scruples about gay marriage and made no secret of their existence; nor do they tell you that Obama's eventual support for the judgment is based on his overriding conviction that all men - and women - are created equal and so should not be discriminated against based on whatever indices. No. They do not tell you that because that would spoil their Antichrist narrative. Never mind that several countries around the world already permitted same-sex partnerships years before Obama became an Illinois senator. 

Obama's accusers also point to his signature healthcare reform law as evidence of his antichrist agenda. I am not American; I am not directly affected by Obamacare. I cannot comment on its merits and demerits. But the much I know about it, it has no provision for emblazoning the number 6 6 6 on the foreheads of its subscribers. At some point, the conspiracy theorists said the mark would be engraved on microchips in letters too tiny to be appreciated by the human eye and then the microchip would be implanted in people's foreheads.

Chai.

Obama was a president who was not afraid to be human. His courage was demonstrated time and again when he stood up to popular thought and sometimes against it. 

Israel will not forgive Obama because he had the guts to tell the Israelis that a path to peace required more good faith from their end than they were coming up with.

The White American racists will not forgive Obama for being the Black Man who stepped into their White House to blacken it. I guess they will be using bleaching lotions to expel all of his blackness when he is gone from their house, thank goodness!

And the Pro-Christs will not forgive Obama for being the Antichrist who came to teach them tolerance, that all men and women can live together, disagree in peace, and move forward in harmony.

IT’S CHRISTMAS

They say it’s Christmas. And they are right. It’s Christmas.

While celebrating Christmas in 2016, try not to forget to remember to:

• -         wash your hands
• -         wash your fruits
• -         wash your vegetables
• -         use a condom
• -         not reuse condoms
• -         avoid fights, including Twitter fights and Facebook brawls - and MMM
• -         avoid motorbikes if you can, control the speed of the motorbike riders if you can’t avoid them
• -         drive carefully – and that includes avoiding the paths of reckless drivers
• -         check your blood pressure and get your family members and loved ones to do same
• -         ensure your pregnant folks are not over-stressed; they really don’t have to do all the cooking and cleaning
• -         do not over-spend. January is notoriously unforgiving.
• -         store petrol safely. That is a lesson we learnt from a few years ago.

Merry Christmas!

THIS UNHOLY COMMUNION OF SHIT

It is Wednesday evening, and you are home after a long day at work. Work went well, except, you are not feeling fine. You had to skip dinner, to the consternation of your wife. Your tummy feels like an Aleppo being pummeled by all the bombs the Russians can deploy. You have made at least six visits to the loo in the last two hours, maybe more, who's counting? Very watery visits. 

Very smelly, watery visits.

All you had this evening was watermelons. Sliced and ready-to-eat watermelons you bought off a hawker and ate as you endured the traffic jams that punctuated your drive home to wifey and kids.

You have visited the chemist at the street corner, and he has given you a cocktail of drugs which he promised will give you relief within a short time.

As you race to the toilet yet again, you make a mental note about avoiding watermelons. As the next wave of brown water gets expelled into the toilet bowl, you try to remember what they said about prevention and cure.

Only problem is, you’re probably wrong; probably barking up the wrong tree. It probably wasn’t the watermelons.

***

This morning, Latifat had to take her older child to school and so she asked her neighbor, Iya Bose, to help her look after her two-year old daughter Halima. Iya Bose agreed and took Halima and her own six-year old daughter Bose along with her to her stall. The stall was located on the fringes of the nearby mechanic village. It was at this stall she sold a variety of things ranging from biscuits and sweets to mineral water and “pure” water. Her husband, Ayo, a vulcanizer, had a shed in the mechanic village, which was quite close to her stall, and which afforded him the opportunity to stop by the stall in the afternoons for lunch…or whatever could pass for lunch.

Today, when Iya Bose and her two wards, Bose and Halima, got to the stall, Iya Bose noticed that Halima had wet her nappies; while she was in the process of changing the diapers, the baby shot out another generous stream of watery stool. Eventually, Iya Bose noticed that Halima was having diarrhea and had to divide her attention between her sales and cleaning up the baby’s soiled backside yet again. Of course, the fingers that cleaned the baby’s poo also counted the customers’ cash. No time for such niceties as washing hands after cleaning baby up. Not when baby was passing stools at the rate of three times per hour. Time na money.

When you stopped by Ayo’s place so that he could pump your tires, and gave him NGN1,000.00 and insisted he provide your NGN800.00 change, it was to his wife’s stall he went. It was from her fingers, soiled with baby Halima’s poo germs, that he collected the equally contaminated NGN800.00 that he came and handed over to you. It was when you took the money that you took in your fingers as well the germs that came from Baby Halima’s poo – a baby whose existence you didn’t know about. It was the NGN200.00 from that NGN800.00 that you used in buying the watermelons you bought at the next intersection.

***

It was the germs in your fingers that originated from the poo that came from Baby Halima and then passed through Iya Bose to Ayo to you that set you oscillating between your bedroom and bathroom.

All of this would have been prevented if you had simply washed your hands properly before you touched and ate the damned watermelons. You probably would have excused yourself from this unholy communion of shit.

Wash your hands. Correct handwashing is your greatest antibiotic.

YOUR HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE AND YOU

When you get to a doctor and he tells you that you have high blood pressure, what he means is that the force your blood is exerting against the walls of your arteries is so high that it may eventually cause health problems for you including heart disease and stroke. Usually, when your doctor tells you that you have high blood pressure, he is not wishing you ill. And he is not making a prophecy about what may happen to you in future if you do not pay your tithes. He is telling you what is already happening, so that you can take steps toward controlling the event. Simply “rejecting” what your doctor has said by faith in the name and by the blood of Jesus will probably not be enough.

You can have high blood pressure (hypertension) for years without any symptoms. Sadly, the absence of symptoms does not mean that you are safe; on the contrary, if your blood pressure is high, damage to your blood vessels and your heart will begin and progressively worsen, eventually increasing your risk of developing serious health problems, including heart attack and stroke. It can also interfere with your ability to think, to remember, and to learn.

A lot of people think high blood pressure is a phenomenon that affects elderly people – and with good reason. But we have increasingly noted high blood pressures in young people, including in children as little as eight years old. Therefore, we advise that young people within the age bracket of eight to 39 years should get at least one blood pressure reading a year. Those 40 years and older should get a blood pressure reading every six months.

So what causes high blood pressure?

In many cases, we do not know what causes high blood pressure. In a few cases, however, the cause may be identifiable – and so perhaps treatable. Some of those identifiable causes of (a relative minority of cases of) high blood pressure include problems with the kidneys, thyroid gland, some medications including contraceptives, and substances like cocaine and alcohol.

Not everyone who uses alcohol or takes birth control pills develops high blood pressure. Fact is, apart from these possible causes of elevated blood pressure, there are certain factors that, if present, can increase your chances of developing high blood pressure. Some of them include:

Age: The older you get, the greater your risk of developing hypertension.

Race: If you are black, you are at greater risk for hypertension than if you are white, yellow, Arab, or (possibly) an alien.

Family history: If someone in your family is/was hypertensive, you are more likely than not to be hypertensive.

Weight: The bigger you are, the bigger your chances are of developing hypertension.

Sedentary lifestyle: The less physically active you are, the less your chances of good health and the greater your chances of developing high blood pressure.

Tobacco: Whether you smoke the tobacco directly, or you stay around in company of smoking folks and thereby inhale the fumes they exhale, you are at greater risk for hypertension than someone who has never encountered tobacco in his life.

Alcohol: The more the pints of alcohol you consume daily, the higher your risk of being someday labelled hypertensive.

Stress: High levels of stress can temporarily increase your blood pressure.

Pregnancy: Some women develop high blood pressure when pregnant. This may disappear several weeks after childbirth.

If you are diagnosed with high blood pressure, your doctor may advice lifestyle changes, changes to your diet, and in some cases the commencement of antihypertensive medications.

This is not the time to turn to your pastor and begin the profession of “believing God” that this is “not my portion”. It is the time to carefully follow your doctor’s advice. For sure, you can ask your pastor to pray for you, but you also need to realize that at some point in Jesus’ life, rather than just command miracles with the power of his spoken word, he spat on the floor, bent and made a paste out of the mixture of spittle and clay and took the mixture and applied it to a blind man’s eyes.

So if you are placed on medications, take the medications as you have been requested to. And do not arbitrarily stop taking the medications if you eventually check your blood pressure and get normal values. If you get normal values, it is more likely because the drugs are keeping them normal than because you have achieved a permanent cure.

Note that if you do not take your medications exactly as you have been requested to, your blood pressure and your health may pay the price. Not your doctor. Not your pastor.

In addition to faithfully adhering to your drug schedule, eat healthy foods, decrease the amount of salt you have in your diet, maintain a healthy weight, and increase your physical exercise. Also limit your alcohol intake, discontinue smoking altogether, reduce stress as much as possible, and monitor your blood pressure at home. If you are pregnant, register for antenatal care at a hospital, not at Mama Eliza’s shop, where she will tell you – as she smokes her dried fish – how her own pregnancy of 40 years ago went, and expect that your will follow the same template.

Very importantly too, keep your appointments with your doctor. That may be the difference between a long life and a sudden death – or descent to a life of a poor vegetable.

THAT INDIAN BOY WHO GOT AIDS FROM A PINEAPPLE

If you use WhatsApp, then you are no stranger to the kinds of messages that come to you from people you know as well as appear in groups you belong to that notify you at the beginning that they have been forwarded as received and then enjoin you at the end to please share…so that God will bless you, or so that misfortune will avoid you, or so that you will save a soul…or something more or less ludicrous.

Well, there is this group I belong to, and a few days ago, someone posted this message:

***

(Public Interest)

Dear All, It's in India, Karnataka, Bangalore, a 10-year old boy, had eaten pineapple about 15 days back, and fell sick, from the day he had eaten. Later when he had his health check done, doctors diagnosed that he had AIDS!!!

His parents couldn't believe it. Then the

entire family underwent a medical checkup. None of them suffered from AIDS. So the doctors checked again with the boy if he had eaten out. The boy said 'Yes'. He did that evening. He ate pineapple.

Immediately a group from the hospital went to the pineapple vendor to check. They found the pineapple seller had a cut on his finger while cutting the pineapple; his blood had spread into the fruit.

When they had his blood checked, the guy was suffering from AIDS which he himself was NOT aware.

Unfortunately the boy is now infected and is now suffering from it.

Please take care while u eat on the road side (particularly Water Melon, Pineapple and Pawpaw (cut to size and packed in Nylon)) and pls fwd this mail to your dear ones

Please do take care.

Please Forward This Mail To All The Persons You Know As Your Message may save someone's life today💞

Dr Sushant Jadhav,

CMO, Civil Hospital

Mumbai

This message 📮 is from a group of

Doctors in India:

(forwarded in public interest)

***

According to this message, purportedly from a doctor, a boy ate a pineapple that he got, maybe bought, from a pineapple vendor, and then he fell sick from the very day he ate the pineapple. 15 days or so later, doctors conducted a health check for him and found he had AIDS. AIDS o, not HIV, but AIDS. Ehen.

Then the doctors who found that he had AIDS checked to see whether he had any family members who had AIDS too, and when they couldn’t find any family member with AIDS, they now started doing a dietary recall. They wanted to know what he had eaten and where. As an investigation for AIDS. They were in India o, yet they were not interested in whether he had been raped…they were interested in what he had eaten 15 days ago.

Then the 10-year old remembered that 15 days ago he ate a pineapple that he got from a pineapple vendor. Fantastic 10-year old. He remembers a lot from 15 days ago.

This pineapple vendor had AIDS, and somehow spread his AIDS into the pineapple which eventually infected the boy and got him sick that very same day, only to be diagnosed 15 or so days later.

Story story.

Now for a few facts.

AIDS is the name given to the assemblage of diseases that follow an uncontrolled infection with the HIV virus. The HIV virus infection itself is a slow infection that takes months to years to manifest into clinical symptoms. And in many cases, someone who has just been infected with HIV will not test positive for HIV till about 4 weeks (28 whole days o) after infection. Usual time it takes for HIV to be detected by standard testing after infection is 4 – 12 weeks (that is, 1 – 3 months).

HIV infection may be passed from pregnant mother to unborn child, from a newly infected, lactating mother to her suckling child, from a man or woman to his or her sexual partners, through sharing of sharps – whether by choice or inadvertently or even accidentally – through blood transfusions, and through direct exchange of blood and other bodily fluids..

It is not common for HIV to be transmitted from one person to another through a pineapple – even if the pineapple has some of the blood from the cut finger of an infected person. Even if the person comes from India.

Avoiding pineapples and watermelons will not take you any further from HIV infection than your current lifestyle already is.

Let us be careful what we reshare on social media. The above story is an example of the dangerously inaccurate things we see and repost on social media.

Thou shalt not bear false witness against a pineapple hawker or a poor, innocent pineapple.

THEY LOOKED ON AS SHE DIED … BECAUSE SHE WAS NOT THEIRS

Pupils were fixed, dilated, and unresponsive to light, pulse and cardiac activity were absent,…we certified this unknown adult female to be clinically dead at 2243 hours on December 09, 2016.

With those short sentences, and a few others to the same effect, I effectively completed my short summary of my acquaintance with the girl who had been brought to the Clinic, lifeless, a hapless victim of an accident that happened on the road but could not really be called a road traffic accident.

***

The road was not a busy road. It was the road outside her own house. She had been sitting on a kerb facing the driveway in front of her house, and backing the road. She had been sitting there, several feet away from the Clinic, and sharing an evening gossip with a friend. She had plans for that evening. As the sun fell in the sky, her spirits must have risen in anticipation. For that evening was the evening of her long anticipated first date – and that was the gossip she had been sharing with a friend.

On the road behind her, a man had just gotten behind the wheel of the car he drove for his boss. After eight months being on the streets hunting for a job, any job, he had finally secured one as a driver just the previous day. This evening, he had brought his boss here to this quiet hamlet; his boss usually came here for an evening drink before going home to his family. But the driver didn’t know that. Today was his first day at work as a driver. His first day at work in eight months. He was finally going to get paid in 29 days. Get paid so his two children could finally get dinner in his own house rather than pretend to be visiting with the landlord’s children at dinner time.

He was thinking about the 29 days between the day and his payday as he got into the car to turn it around to face the exit. He saw the two ladies seated on the kerb. They sat with their backs to him, oblivious of his world, his suddenly happy world into which the sun unexpectedly shone the previous day at 4pm when someone called his phone number, told him he had been selected for one of the jobs he had interviewed for, and asked him when he would like to start. The ladies on the kerb did not matter. What mattered was that his children were finally going to get something to eat. What mattered was that he was a man again. He could finally plan on getting his wife that phone he had always wanted her to have. That mattered. The two ladies seated on the kerb, with their backs to him as he tried to maneuver the car into position, did not matter.

Till they did.

The shoe on his right foot somehow got trapped on the throttle as he tried to apply the brakes inches from the gutter that separated the front of his SUV from the kerb on which the ladies sat. And from that point, life went south. Again.

As he tried in vain to readjust his foot in order to disentangle the shoe, he effectively floored the throttle. The engine roared and the tires squealed as the car shot forward, flew over the small gutter, and swept off one of the girls even as the right side of the car knocked the other girl into the gutter.

Horror-struck, and frantically pushing at every control his hands and legs could reach, the driver saw the girl the car had picked up fly off the bonnet of the car and get impaled on the sharp end of a stick which was jutting out of the ground and a few feet into the air.

Finally, the car stopped.

As he stepped out and ran to the girl who was lying in a rapidly expanding pool of blood, the driver could make out the small group of onlookers which was quickly swelling into a crowd. Hope that help was coming swelled in his heart.

But help was not coming. They said the girl was a Calabar girl. She was a known food vendor in that community. The man was clearly a Kogi man. The scars on his face told his ethnicity more eloquently than words ever could. Neither was Yoruba. And so, when some of the boys who had gathered stepped forward to try to help, their mothers and other women screamed at them in their native Yoruba to stay back – that the girl was Omo Ibo and the man was a ne’er-do-well drunkard. They were to stay back and watch. They were to be onlookers.

The man was going berserk. He ran from her head to her feet and back. He carried her off the pole on which she was impaled and the new gush of blood told him he had just made a mistake. He dropped her and shouted again and again for someone in the crowd of onlookers to step forward and help him.

But they were a crowd of onlookers. They looked on. He was not Yoruba. She sef was Calabar. So they waited for God to come down and help them. And while waiting, they looked on. 

The driver ran to the one in the gutter. She apparently was not very hurt. She was sitting up and looking around for her companion. He ran back to the one he had hit. The blood kept pouring. He glanced at the onlookers again. They were doing their job of looking on. With due diligence. A few were loudly praying to God for the miracle of life, while they waited for God to come down from His throne on high to give help to the bleeding woman, the crying man.

One man stepped forward and as the driver turned to face him, a flicker of hope warmed the chill of his heart. Perhaps help was at hand. That flicker went with the wind as he saw the man go to his now mangled vehicle and set about deflating all four tires. That was not help. That was hate. That was not the answer to the cries from his breaking heart. There was no answer to the cries from his breaking heart.

He turned back to the bleeding girl. Kneeling at her side, taking her left hand in both his hands, he cried like a baby, his gasps of grief in time with her gradually increasing gasps for air.

Finally, someone decided that not being Yoruba wasn’t a compelling enough reason to stand idly by as another human died. He stepped forward and got the driver to get a hold of himself. And the two of them carried the girl, whose evening had started so brightly, to the Clinic where I was to examine her and thereafter to write those dark lines that made her fate official.

***

I examined her companion thereafter. She was the lucky one, emerging almost unscathed. She it was who eventually told me of the crowd’s reaction. It was from her account I learnt that my chances of getting help when I am in trouble depend very heavily on two factors: what part of the country I come from and what part of the country I happen to be in when I need help.

#SaneLunacies - ECCLESIASTICAL COURTS, VICTORIOUS MISERABLES, AND THE NIGERIAN RECESSION

Chai.

People who do not agree on whether there are three persons in one God, whether abortion is right under any circumstances, women ordination, and all other uniquely Christian controversies are now hammering out a process of setting up "Ecclesiastical courts" across Nigeria...where "lawyers" and "judges" alike will be looking to litigants and defendants for guidance on what to believe and for how long to believe what before debelieving what was believed and believing what had previously been disbelieved.

In another news story coming from this same country, a minister sends his women out to a world tourney; they go out there, they humble the continent, they return with the world at their feet. The minister now says he cannot pay the victorious women because he hadn't expected them to win.

My reading: he sent them to the championship to lose. For him, it is bad news that they won. Every goal they scored on their way to victory was another nail in the coffin of his expectations. They were too poor to win. Why couldn't they just receive sense for once, cut their football boots according to their leather, and lose gallantly? Why win when they could lose? Isn't it always cheaper to lose? Is that really so hard to get?

Ecclesiastical courts. Victorious miserables.

This is not caused by recession. This caused the recession.

THOUGHTS ON THE INDICTMENT OF THE NIGERIAN ARMY FOR THE ZARIA MASSACRE

By Pius Adesanmi

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Not content with opening fire on members of the Shi'a Muslim group they said blocked the route of General Buratai their boss - yes, I saw that video and I still do not see anything that tear gas could not have solved in the circumstance - the Nigerian Army did a follow-up with an early-morning raid on the civilian enclave of the group. By the time they were done, at least 347 innocent civilians including women and children had been wasted in their sleep.

The gruesomeness of this 21st-century crime against humanity was perhaps only equalled by the inhuman gruesomeness of the public acclamation which greeted the act. It was as if Buratai and his goons had entranced the very civilians whose humanity they violated on a massive national scale. It was worse than mass hypnosis. National hysteria married national orgy in lionizing Buratai as hero.

The Army did not even have to lift a finger to justify or rationalize the sorrow, tears, and blood they visited on innocent civilians in their sleep in Zaria. Psychologically-damaged civilians did an excellent job of brutalizing and victimizing fellow civilians who had been murdered. How dare they stand in the way of an Army General? Nonsense! Some claimed that Buratai even tried. Others claimed that Buratai even exercised restraint. Ok, if you say that killing those who blocked his path was justified, what about the follow-up massacre? Nothing doing. Nigerians wanted a hero in Buratai and 347 innocent lives was not too much a foundation to lay for the hero-making edifice!

I felt so alone - especially on Facebook. I felt so alone with two other outcasts - Ike DanfoDriver Mbachu and Obinna Aligwekwe. These two Igbo gentlemen and I screamed and screamed and screamed. We felt like we were the only ones mourning the Hausa-Fulani dead in an ocean of voices lionizing Buratai. We called for Buratai's head. We suffered vilification. For the three of us, it was the first time we suffered dismissal as "wailers" by career Buharists. I mentioned the ethnicity of these two great Nigerian patriots because when they subsequently raised their voices against the same Army for mopping up innocent Igbo civilian protesters in the east, some of the idiots who justified the massacre in Zaria labelled them tribalists for speaking up against the massacre of their own Igbo kinsmen!

Now a panel has indicted the Army for the Zaria massacre. Specifically, the panel indicted Major General Adeniyi Oyebade, the General Officer Commanding the Nigerian Army's Ist Division. He it was who authorized the operation which led to the massacre of the 347 civilians. This is a good start but I'm afraid it does not go far enough. General Buratai also bears responsibility. Luckily for him, he is an astute saver and has enough financial muscle to hire the best lawyers should this case grind slowly through years all the way to the Hague as I expect and hope it will.

President Buhari has been self-destructing especially on the integrity front lately by somehow deceiving himself that silence is the first instrument of statecraft. I expect him to greet this with silence as he has done so many other issues. I expect him not to act on Buratai. I expect him not to even talk to us. After all, the insufferably arrogant Femi Adesina has finally told us, the school pupils he often scolds, that we have no right to expect our elected President to talk to us regularly.

Beyond the Army and our self-destructing President, this episode is an occasion for sober reflection. This episode is an occasion for national self teaching. If you were one of the hordes who joined the Buratai lionization bandwagon, don't worry. Don't be too harsh on yourself. We suffered more than three decades of military brutalization (I almost wrote buratailization) in this country. We have only had democracy since 1999. It will take more than two decades for you to gain the civic instinct to automatically recoil at the presence of military uniforms in civilian spaces.

You just need to keep working at it. Every time you wake up in the morning, tell yourself that military uniforms have no place in civilian spaces. Tell yourself that soldiers have no powers of arrest. Only the police have such powers. Tell yourself that soldiers are in violation of the rules whenever you see them frog jumping civilians in Ojuelegba or Oshodi. Work on yourself to stop clapping and hailing when they beat and mow down fellow civilians.

We need to collectively construct a national psyche which is hostile to the very idea of soldiers in our civic and civilian spaces of agency. They are not supposed to be there, let alone beat and shoot you there.

Also, it is good that the Zaria massacre has been investigated by a panel set up by Kaduna. It should be clear that the Federal government will set up no panel to investigate the civilian massacres during IPOB protests in the east. Consequently, do they have governors in the southeast? Are these governors efulefus? If they are not efulefus, who are they expecting will come and set up a panel to investigate the murder of their own civilians? Pius Adesanmi? Shior. You should at least come together to do it at the symbolic level.

The same applies to Gabriel Ortom and all the state Governors whose people have been murdered by herdsmen. If you set up panels to at least symbolically defy the President's shameful silence on these critical fronts, the findings of such panels may be actionable in the future. An administration hostile to silence may pick them up and act. You owe it to that future to at least do your basic home work today.

WHO IS A FANATIC?

The one who slaughters people in the name of Allah, Yahweh, Jehovah, El?

Yes!

The one who holds that his own brand of religion is the only one worth the name and that other religions and persuasions are either inferior or outright evil?

Yes!

The one who believes that all homosexuals and bisexuals and transsexuals and all-kinds-of-sexuals belong to hell and should be helped to get to hell quickly by any murder means available?

Yes!

The one who believes that he owes his God a duty to fight the latter's battles for Him and to destroy others in the process?

Yes!

The one who believes that his interpretation of truth is the only interpretation there is and that everything else is just another shade of falsehood?

Yes!

The one who is intolerant of dissenting opinion?

Yes!

The one who believes that Arsenal must win their match or we will not hia word?

Yes!

There is a fanatic in every man. Alas, there is no man in any fanatic. Just different types of little boys.