Izuu's Turn

Ask me whether 2011 was good or bad, I would not have a definite answer. Why? It's difficult to say, given the madness that heralded the end of this year. Do not get me wrong, I am not talking solely about the senseless bombs being thrown around us as if they are Santa's gifts, but I am concerned about the general unfeeling attitude of the government of Nigeria to the plight of our people. There is nothing I will say here that has not been said before, especially by better wordsmiths. Yet, the people that rule us, pretend to have better understanding of the difficulties that have become our reality, but remain largely inactive. Was it not during OBJ's time, that this same Okonjo-Iweala claimed that the debt forgiveness dividends will be used to develop this-and-that sector? And, just a few years down the road, she has forgotten the kleptomaniac tendencies of many a Nigerian politician, either by selective amnesia or by omission. Now she has come again w

I pray for you That when you are done With dealing with others Courtesy: http://poeticprophet.com/2007/10/18/stay-prayed-up/ Sanity wouldn't have left you I pray for you That as you plunder the public till Your heart would be beating still For you to eat your crime thrift I pray for you That as you disvirgin others' daughters Yours will reach puberty  Before being raped by your kind I pray for you That as you stone your heart To the pleas of your subordinate You will survive venom of their grouse I pray for you That as you steal from others Your life will not in turn, too Be stolen by the ultimate paymaster I pray for you As you pride yourself in conceit You will not grow a cockrel's tunic And a peacock's rainbow ass I pray for you As you preach your lies You will not soon begin To seriously doubt your own truths I pray for you That if you are a culprit In the mass murder of innocents Your carcass would be massed by vultu

As a habit, I do not believe in saying good things about people when they are dead. I always believe that if a bad person dies, the best epitaph for him or her is to say how bad he or she was so that those still living will take heed and amend their own ways. Now that I have your attention, Sir Odimegwu Ojukwu is one man I have admired all my life. From my childhood I have held bated breath waiting for the time he will become president. Not so he can create Biafra as some people think, but so that he can shame all these thieves in Abuja and other state capitals who see our beloved nation as failed when they are the root cause. I see Ojukwu's role in the civil war this way: a man who believed in something and fought for it with all his might and wealth. How many of us would invest our family fortune in such a cause as he even when we are assured victory? How many of the political prostitutes that people our government even believe in anything other than lining their poc

When in the recent past we read about the ban on farting in public, in the tiny country of Malawi, we all scoffed. I still remember numerous comments wondering whether that is the major problem bedevilling that land. Some asked how farting in public or its ban will affect the economy of the land. I actually believed it was a waste of time and resources for the government of Malawi to outlaw one of the most natural act of personal expression. Neither I nor anybody I know carried placards and took to the streets to protest. I really thought we're done with improbable government legislations until Pakistan made the news again, needless to add, once again for the wrong reason. Having heard an analyst describe Pakistan as a country at war with itself, I had reconciles myself to the innumerable astounding negative unprecedented phenomena emanating from that land. But this ban on the use of certain words including "Jesus" within text messages, is another first in th

I did a very" stupid" thing recently: a research on attractiveness of female undies! Don't ask me about the result of my research because it is still on-going, especially the aspect that concerns how they affect other people. The concluded part of the research has to do with men; solely. What did I do? Copied from a friend's Facebook update without permission! I went to the market and priced a wide range of female undies. You know what happens when you price something ... you take it up, turn it over and take a very good look at it. You can even do the impossible (which I didn't do, anyways). I will simply allow your imagination to take a guess for you! Did I buy some? nay! But I have access to a good number of them; at home, I mean. And I took the liberty of taking a good look at them ... a very long one, at that! Let me land before you label me a sicko! My finding: There are three categories of female undies existing in our world, and each of them af

The recently concluded National Merit Awards ceremony may have come and gone, but the gullies (rather than ripples) it created, will plague our much tortured soul forever. The way our present crop of (mis)leaders are (wo)manning our rudderless state always leaves a sour aftertaste. It makes me wonder whether we are actually living in the same nation with them. I have ceased to wonder about the yardstick for honouring this kleptocratic throng and dishonouring Nigerians! Reason: we have a different understanding of "merit" from them. We, the people, believe "merit" to be positive but they also have a contrary appreciation of positive. Or how do you explain giving these awards to serving politicians whose pilfering fingers have not abandoned its romance with the national till? With the height of national insecurity, every one that calls himself a leader should take the path of honour and resign. But not in Nigeria! Even the police chief who deserves sack re

I can understand that an older child bullied mine and I go out there and fight for him or her. You can permit a man for defending the integrity of his spouse when an outsider makes mockery of it. We can bear the rattling tongue and the momentary madness of a woman whose matrimonial bliss is being threatened by a comely slut. Humans even applaud when a child is in the right about preserving the legacies of his or her old parents. Sometimes, our patriotic zeal can make us do the unimaginable to defend our nation at all cost. We can also defend and lay our lives down for what we believe in. It's a big honour, in deed. But I ask: when and where did our Creator, the One whom we believe created the universe and all in it, become so weak that we have ve fight for Him? And in doing so, we maim, kill innocent people and some people even take their own lives. What kind of creator would endorse one of his creatures destroying other creatures in his or her name? Believe me, fighting

Why do men cheat? Is it true that men cheat much more often than women? Are women generally more faithful than men? Who is most likely to cheat, husband or wife? These and many other questions like them often come up when we discuss fidelity within the marriage. I have observed that the answers we proffer are often tied to our gender. Hence, a lady would be most agreeable that men cheat much more than women. But the very issue here isn't who cheat more, but why men cheat at all. Women cheat also, but not being one myself, I wish to restrict myself to my area of jurisdiction. Why do men cheat? The answer is simple: women! It's no justification or rationalisation but a statement of fact. Women make men cheat, and the reverse could also be the case. If you think I am wrong, imagine your wife is the only woman on earth and you are the only man. Of course, of all the sins in the world, neither Adam nor Eve was accused of infidelity.

It was just yesterday that a friend wrote: "When some people add two to two, they get strange answers." And immediately after that I read that someone called Gadaffi a martyr. For me, connecting the two statements was natural. Gadaffi, in case they have quickly forgotten, took many innocent lives both indirectly and directly. Of course, we may not be able to convict him of cold blood murder, but do you know how many Libyan lives that would have been saved if he left quietly after holding on to power for a record 42 years? Many innocent lives would have been saved, including those of my black brothers who are now been hounded for being mercenaries. If martyrdom is now reserved for suicide bombers, masterminds of terrorism, blood-thirsty tyrants, then history needs to be re-written: Adolf Hitler, Mussolini, Augusto Pinochet, Joseph Stalin, Idi Amin, King Bokassa, Mobutu Sese Seko, and the facilitators of the Apartheid government in South Africa deserve episcopal sa

As sad as it is, we live in a society where everything your see in government is meant to deceive the people. Nothing works. Money is approved for projects on the pages of newspapers. No one talks: the politicians because they are the chief beneficiaries of kickbacks and the people because they are made indolent by peripheral bickerings. Long after we have complained about the inefficiency of government agencies supposedly responsible but largely irresponsible in water, power, transport, and general welfare provisions, we are now being stared in the face by a new entrant: EFCC. I used to think that former politicians should be afraid of you, but now we know better! We don't know what really transpires between you and those you so dramatically arrest. All we know is that you have been taking advantage of our collective amnesia. What happened to Chimaroke Nnamani, Lucky Igbinedion and other former governors that you so brazenly waylaid in the past to our uninformed applau

My dear Steve, you may not be able to read this now. You also possibly would not have read it if you are still on this plane with us. Reason is that you became so successful that small people like me may not have necessarily mattered to you. But you affected my life in the following ways: 1. Your creativity was and is still outstanding. Though I never owned any of the i-products you rolled out, I am yet to snap myself out of the delusion that one good person will make me a gift of one of them. 2. Your can-do spirit showed that everything is just possible. You truly grabbed every opportunity that came your way and made the best of them. But I can't help wondering if you were born in the Nigeria's Niger Delta to some militia prone family or within the Boko Haram neighbourhood in Maiduguri. What about if you were born in Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, or South Sudan, what kind of product would you have made? Wonder when our leaders will awaken to the reality that so man

This title is also confusing for me. The topic it begs for is also a very sensitive one that I really have to tread softly here. I truly cherish my readers and wouldn't want to say anything that will hurt their sensibilities even when it bothers on the senseless or sensible too. Everything still boils down to the one recurring theme I have always had, TOLERANCE. It's a simple two-edged word which means you allow for my difference as I allow for yours. But the sight of two men(?) kissing deeply on a bench in a park, while I was taking a late afternoon walk back in Europe, hardly shows any respect for my own difference. I wish to make this write-up short in order not to say what I shouldn't say. But come to think of it, the most astounding (I'm trying not to use the word "absurd") situation for a man like me is to find myself being asked out by a guy. I don't know, first hand how ladies feel about being "chyked" by humans who bear the same

"... The labours of our heroes past, shall never be in vain ..." So goes a part of our national anthem which we always sing with gusto without meaning any word of it! My fascination with this part of our national anthem came by a comment of a friend on FB. He thinks, erroneously though, that our present leaders are wasting the "labours of our heroes past." And I ask, what labours? Which heroes? Unfortunately, our country has no national hero. Tell me one that you know, if you doubt me. All we have are folks who worked solely for their regions and at the national level, they worked tenaciously at keeping us polarised. Sadly, at 51, we are yet to see any true (not pretentious or tribalised) hero for our country. We do ourselves a great injustice by blaming our present leaders for the rot in our nation. Stop reading where you disagree: If not for the divisive politics of the First Republic, would we have had the coups of 1966? If not for the coups, the civil

I've been bothered by this question for some time now. Adjoined to this, I also wonder: If everyone must have an FB account, must we all post comments? If your answer is yes, then must we all write in English given the rate at which misspellings and bad grammar (a lot of people spell grammer) have become the rule rather than the exception. Somebody recently posted a comment on my link (don't look for it, I have promptly deleted it) and I couldn't even read the stuff because it was too long and looked like, but one English at all. I was even tempted to post it here as an example. But I remembered that if you're not one of the culprits, if you check your own wall you will have ample evidence of this linguistic crime. Just as if the volume of English language bastardisation on FB isn't enough, I now ran into a blog that ... oh, my God, defies every logic of English language expression. I will give you a hint, I found while Googling the ABSU gang rape issue

I pray you'll find time to read this blog because it took me a while to get these out of him. One of the reasons he gave me is that when it comes to reading that you show no interest. And he is concerned about his children incase they take after you. He regrets the present situation and prays you will find love elsewhere. No. 2 is that you are too desperate to get married, not necessarily to him. How did he know? You talk endlessly about friends and family that just got, will get or are getting married. And you've told him countlessly about wedding colours you prefer. No. 3 You're too suspicious for his liking. He said that rather than call him you call his siblings in order to confirm that he truly went to visit them. No 4 You hardly watch the news. He was embarassed the day you asked in public whether David Mark is Nigeria, Prime Minister. No. 5 You take secret phone calls and he suspects you have other suitors you are lining up incase your plan with him doesn&

I may not be a financial expert, but I know that true wealth is money saved not money spent. Hence, I am not a fan of interminable wage increases in Nigeria (my opinion here only, believing my employers are too busy to read my blog). Seriously, our country would have been better off with much more funds saved for the "rainy day." But the real problem is not the incessant agitation for wage increases. It is rather the squandermania disposition of Nigerian political class. The workers' quest for more money is informed by the knowledge from the days of the military in uniform that money denied the workers is siphoned and placed selfishly in personal accounts abroad. So while politicians are devising how to steal more, they are not alone. ASUU, NLC, TUC, others are on their toes agitating how to reduce the volume of money being stolen regrettably for their (our) personal pockets. Of course, we deceive ourselves if we think that kleptomania left Nigerian politics a

The urge to write about this has always been on my mind. But I have been deterred by the knowledge that oftentimes we unconsciously force our beliefs on others without considering that their experiences and ours are not the same. A person who lives in a society where you get water at the turning of every tap, may not understand that there are people who trek for miles to get their water even within so-called cities. A person who can have the police come to his/her aid because the neighbour's music is louder than normal, will not understand that people live in places where it could be safer to run into armed robbers than police. Growing up in societies where politicians cower when the people are not pleased, finds it hard to imagine that there are countries where political leaders practice modern feudalism. In essence, living all your life in splendour and comfort insulates you from the harsh realities of living which others are subjected to. For this second group, when

Since I watched the infamous ABSU gang rape video online, my itinerant mind has refused to take a nap. Five guys forcefully taking turns on their victim as if they were using a public toilet. And this is somebody's daughter, sister, cousin, niece, possibly aunt and then, mother to be. Perhaps in the future, a son of one of her assailants would ask her daughter out (hoping he doesn't get his father's rapistgene). But this girl's plight is not my primary concern here though I admit that what befell her is condemnable. Nothing she has done warrants such an assault. That said, my theory of rape is simple: Rape exists only in societies where other forms of rape (like economic sabotage, corruption, and sundry crimes) thrive and remain largely unpunished. It then follows that people are most likely to rape others (not only girls) in societies where impunity resides permanently. So, a society that corruption has festered and grown, is most likely to attract this

They say where I come from that the one-eyed man is always king in the land of the blind. Since nothing was said about the country being ruled by 'fools' (by their own admission), I surmise that it should be a land full of imbeciles. Forgive my bluntness! If you do follow my logic, you will agree that fools do not rule over wise folks. So when our former (are they really no longer in control of power) rulers, and long serving ones at that, publicly call each other fools, who else will know better but themselves and perhaps other 'fools' who have ruled like them? How can a country being ruled by fools and foolishness, by association, ever attain any meaningful development? A nation where illiteracy is so high that even state governors cannot define development. A society where leaders cannot address their people without paper written by deceitful script writers and sycophantic harem of advisers. When leaders embezzle public funds to sate personal greed, how

I have spoken in English, you didn't listen. I tried vernacular without seeing any meaningful transformation in your attitude. My mangled French hasn't helped. Either I don't speak well or you don't hear well. Now, I've made up my mind to make this last effort to speak to you in country-man language. Dis girl! Dis girl! Dis girl! How many times I call you? Your papa don talk tire. Your mama join, come lose in voice. All because of your waka waka. We go run comot because of you? Your papa no fit pay rent for de two-room face-I-face-you for Ajegunle, but na VGC address you de circulate for city. Your mama no know road go Abuja but your mouth don reach every European capital wey your body no follow go. Your chief for village still de use 3310 while 'im wife de manage R220 but na Blackberry Torch you de request from your bobo. Nobody for your lineage get bicycle spoke, but pesin wey no carry Hummer no fit give you lift sef. Your carry-over for school still

I just hope that this draft will be better than the first one I lost to the combination of NEPA and epileptic internet services! About the title also, it's equally confusing to me. Just make your own title at the end. Courtesy: www.imagetrail.net You are wrong if you think I am going to talk about the myriad crises we have been seeing in this country. My concern is the so-called killer text messages that we have been receiving in recent times: " Pls, don't pick any call with 09141, 111, 04040, it's instant death after d call, bcos over 20 people av died already, pls tell odas fast. It's urgent " read one of the messages that I received from folks who LOVE me more than me! That very evening, I got a total of five such messages with slight variations in their content. One even claimed that a total of twenty people have died. Chei ! People can be gullible here! Fear has become a national past time and some people are deriving pleasure from watching others sq

Honestly, I would have been well settled at home, probably taken my dinner, a shower and see if I can wrap myself up in a thick blanket to keep the cold away. But here am I by the side of a busy road, waiting endlessly for the mechanic that took an hour and thirty minutes to come. The drizzling rain means that my thin T-shirt has no answer for the buffeting cold that is torturing me. I have also been tormented by unsolicited sympathies from characters I will be better off not knowing. Now don't take that last statement wrongly. I am not one of those frustrated guys who hide their own deficiencies by putting their noses in the air. My reason for preferring not to know them is because they obviously were watching and discussing me. Seated among them is a student of ours who believes I might be too amnesiac to remember all the faces of students I have encountered. So, you now understand my predicament? As I sit here obeying the order of the Mechanic: "Open it!"

Who is a terrorist? The one who spreads fear And doles out terror like poisoned cakes. The one who wants to live But others must die in the process. The one who feels that his opinion is superior to others' The one who hides his relatives away from the calamity he engenders. Who is a terrorist? The friend who maligns you at your absence and comes to sup with your family. The friend whose heart is closed to you when you hold him in a warm embrace. The friend that will readily join others to murder your reputation. The friend who is always in an unnecessary self-imposed competition with you. Who is a terrorist? The ruler that sacrifices his subjects in order to perpetuate himself in power. The ruler who feels that he knows what his people want best. The ruler who will not sacrifice his personal comfort for the general good. The ruler who will not succumb to popular uprising until thousands of innocent lives have been wasted. The leader who knows the truth but prefers

I didn’t want to blog about this, but another attempt on the evening of the same day made the urge stronger! What happened? On Friday last week, I woke up late. At a few minutes to 7.00am, I received a call. It was Charles. Purportedly an “unknown” colleague at the University of Ibadan who, by his own unsolicited admission, is now the Head of Maintenance at an unmentioned oil company in Port Harcourt. He called me by my name and put me on the defence by accusing me of having lost his number! What did Charles want? Charles used to be the Procurement Officer at the "yet to be mentioned" oil company and now the person who succeeded him wants him to give him the contact for his usual suppliers of some “undisclosed” items. According to him, he makes around 80,000 Naira (€380) on each of the items. And at each point, the “oil company” procures about 50 units of that item. He doesn’t want his successor at the lucrative Procurement Office, to know his supply source and the differ

Assuming tsunamis are man-made, the creators of 9/11 would have had a better location than the Indian Ocean coasts. Perhaps the aeroplanes would have been spared also. Assuming earthquakes are human-made the makers of the bomb attacks in London, Mumbai and Madrid would have spared Turkey and Iran as well as the use of explosives. Assuming the twin tragedy of earthquake and tsunami which will in turn catalyse a nuclear meltdown could be conjured by humanity, the terror of embassy bombings would have been saved. Japan would have been spared of its grief. Assuming that humanity can cause the earth to convulse at will, Breivik would have used Icelandic ash clouds rather than a machine gun. But nature is more powerful. God in His Infinite wisdom apportions tragedies and comedies as He wills. How then can humans who preach that we do not have divine powers now try to usurp the divine prerogative of taking life? As you prepare for your next target. As you ingeniously device better

When we were kids, we all enjoyed the privilege of laying all our cares on the two heterosexuals whose moment of enjoyment produced us! When we demand for biscuits, ice creams and whine about sundry irrelevances, it will appear that we are questioning them: "Did I ask you to give birth to me?" "Why didn't both of you seek my consent before bringing me into this terror-ridden world. I truly can't obliterate the vision of our fathers obtaining permission from us before spewing our slimy selves into our mothers. It's even much more glaring when I imagine myself doing same nine months before my son was born. That is, assuming I know the exact "consignment" that actually turned into him. Why am I saying all these? Don't worry. Am not yet interested in x-rating my blog. My Muse is buoyed on this occasion because my one-month old son has succeeded in keeping both his mother and I awake well into the wee hours of 1st September. On the last d

This will be brief because it is a question and I won't mind answers. Can we quantify the number of people that have died in the Arab Uprising? And then the percentage that were killed on Fridays? From Tunisia to Egypt, from Yemen to Syria, from Libya to Pakistan, most deaths are on Fridays. WHY? I ask because it has come to my country too. Those who live in the north are always wary of Fridays, especially those who are not in the majority. WHY? I may not have the statistics on the tip of my fingers, but why bomb the UN headquarters in Abuja on a Friday? Since when did holy days become dying days? Bombs now go off in mosques and churches on Fridays and Sundays respectively. And the perpetrators do these in the name of ... do I even know because I believe God didn't create certain people so that other can practice sadistic killing on them. Or did He? And to think that we're in the holy month of dedication and fasting. And on a holy day too? Someone bombs others, a

NDTV has suddenly become my favourite Tv station due to Anna Hazare, a 74 year old who is on a fifteen-day fast to protest high corruption in his native India. What a courageous act! I salute his dedication and commitment to ensuring that the rights of common peoples are not treacherously subsumed in the gluttony of the kleptocratic few. Corruption no doubt ensures that what is due to the many ends up in the hands of the few. Away from India and Anna Hazare, I have been wondering: how many 70+ public figures in my country will go the way of Anna Hazare? I have taken a census of all of them and arrived at a decision that most of those that could do that are the ones responsible for the rot in the system. Of course, not the old men that were calling each other "fool" and "bigger fool" the other day. There shameless name calling just made our national problem obvious to me: WE NO LONGER HAVE LEADERS WHO HAVE REAL SHAME! A leader who has shame will not plunde

It is in our nature as humans to lay claims to territories we do not own. I just discovered that we erroneously pretend to know things that we do not necessarily know. And what a day to find this out than on my birthday. It's 24th August again and goodwill messages are already flying in, including the much dreaded HBD (I remember someone making a comment on FB that HBD sounds somewhat like HIV & AIDS). But certain mind-boggling questions keep tearing at my insides: How am I sure it's my birthday? Am I truly a conscious witness to my being born on August 24th ... how many years ago, sef? The bottom-line question is this: How do we know that we were born when we claim to have been born? It's a simple one. For most of us, our mother told us. Our mothers do not only tell us when we were born, they are also the true custodians of our truest paternity. Don't raise that eyebrow! Hear me our first! How does a man lay claim to

My mother started it. We were watching a Nollywood movie. An older woman was holding the hand of a younger man, in the industry's characteristic way of contrived heterosexual intimacy, and mom asked whether these actresses ever have the hope of getting married. On further prodding, I was surprised that this mother of mine who produced an artist in me, has a bias against performers especially as regards matrimony. My mind could not help itself from reeling at the thoughts of other professions where I have had the same concerns as my mother. Let's talk about banking and bankers! Or should I not? Without delving into details, those who know are aware that the term "marketing" as regards banking in Nigeria is nothing short of what I call corporate hawking of sex. In a bid to meet stiff deposit targets set by their employers, "marketers" of both sexes break boundaries of decorum as their bosses connive with silence. Yet like bees to honey, people flo

If I was Nigeria's president as UK streets were being set ablaze, the following are the official measures I will take immediately: On the second day of the disturbances, I will ask the Minister of Foreign Affairs to release a travel warning for Nigerians intending to travel to the UK. As the crises enter the third day, I will ask the same Ministry to issue another statement asking Nigerians in the UK to check in with the High Commission in preparation for possible evacuation, should it become necessary. The fourth day will definitely find me talking tough. I will ask the British Foreign Office to ensure the safety of my country men in the UK and will not forget to add that if my country records any mortality that we will not take it lightly. By the next day, I should have about 10 British-owned Virgin Nigeria waiting at Heathrow to bring my people home. Shocker! No one wanted to come back. The airplanes flew back empty because even in the midst of UK civil turmoil some o

Strange things seem to have become the order of our days in recent times. The world has been buffeted ceaselessly by sundry disasters ranging from the very natural to the overtly human-made extermination of the lives of innocent by-standers. The tsunami, the suicide bombings and terror attacks, the nuclear meltdown of both Chernobyl and Fukushima and the resultant mortality volume have since become morbid actualisations of the fears of the Cold War. In other words, the pattern of our existence has shown that both threats and their substantiations come from different directions. For example, America was eternally scared of a nuclear attack fro the USSR. Not even their scientific soothsayers could conceive an Osama in the offing. Permit my hyperbolised sense of perception. It in this very mode that I viewed the London riots which has duly spread to other parts of England. Whatever the cause, we have been conditioned to expect a suicide bomb in Europe or America. We can also

Have you read The Sun newspapers today? The headline story is quite gruesome. Night travellers from Lagos to Abuja, about 50 in number, waylaid by night marauders, asked to lie face down on the asphalt as they are robbed, and then crushed to death by oncoming trucks and heavy buses! This is the much I can take of the gory details. But this is not the first time this has happened, nay ... my bad! This isn't the first time this occurence has been reported. Even in this present reportage, we are told that this kind of tragedy took place two years ago on the Lagos-Sagamu Express Way. I still remember the official police reaction that trailed that earlier report: "The incident never happened. The pictures were computer-generated!" I didn't know what to think then. And it isn't any better now! What do I say when I am told by the very people that should protect me that there is no cause for alarm, when alarm sirens accompanied by flashing red danger light are

On Sunday, the 2011 version of Big Brother Africa tagged "Big Brother Amplified" came to an end. Among the two winning participants was a Nigerian, Karen. Permit me to say that the other winner, Wendall from Zimbabwe, came as a total shock to me. Since the dawn of BBA on the African continent, Nigeria and Nigerian contestants have come a very long way. Most especially, since the Richard/Ofunneka saga which pitted the organisers of the show against the Nigerian legislature over issues bothering on explicit content. Since then, Nigeria has been coming up tops in the competition. I am not questioning the integrity of the results. I have no basis whatsoever to doubt their veracity. I in also aware that when it comes to Africa, Nigeria is a giant even when crawling on its knees. The nation and its people can take whatever prominence they want to take so long as Africa is concerned. Unfortunately, the country's major drawbacks come mostly from the nitwits that have

Okay! Having talked about my last subject here, I think I have broken down the boundary of fear. My heart goes out to beautiful, little, chilled city of Oslo! A bomb that went off penultimate Friday ensured it got a listing on the board of terrorist-endangered locations on earth. The initial suspects yewe of course the usual ones since 9/11. But now, we are being told another tale: a Christian Right Wing Fundamentalist. He allegedly blew up some government offices and then crossed over to Utoya, an island across Oslo, where he openen fire on innocent bystanders with a sub-machine gun. Okay, again. What does this tell us? I do not know except that it tells me that our problem isn't in our religious or ethnic differences. The problem lies in intolerance which has become a favourite pasttime of folks. No one wants to accept that we cannot all be the same, think the same way, and see things from the same perspective. Forgive as I succumb to the temptation of saying that we

Fact 1: According to The Vanguard Newspaper on Tuesday 19th July 2011, even Nigeria's lower legislative house is reportedly scared of reprisal attacks if they deliberate on "boko" let alone adding "haram" to it. Fact 2: Someone said on FB yesterday: "If you are married and your spouse claims not being in the habit of checking out your wall, change your status to 'single' and then wait 5 minutes." Bottom line, my wife will have my hide for broaching this subject here. Fact 3: You may think me cowardly, but I need to ask the yet-to-be-ascertained face of this group to please not see my comments as insolence. Please, please and please, do not put me on your wish list or any of your lists at all. A bomb for me isn't what I think you need now or at any time. Now to my thoughts! It's just a question and I ask it because I need to be rightly informed. My people say that a person who asks questions hardly misses his or her way. So p