Izuu's Turn

I congratulate the entire Roman Catholic faithfuls, friends and country people on the "emergence" of two brand new saints: St. John Paul II and St. John XXIII. E no easy! Already, they are being bombarded with prayer requests from all over the world! But... not "but" because it looks as if I am going to say something blasphemous against this highly auspicious religious moment for over one billion Catholic faithfuls worldwide. I can't trivialise the faith, belief and confidence of fellow believers. I am just surprised that people are quick to embrace new saints, yet they don't strive to live their own lives in saintly pattern. You want a saint to pray for you, but you quickly forget that if saints had lived the way you are now living, there will be no saint to pray for anyone. Sainthood is good. It's received by living Godly life. I am one of those that believe that there are more saints dead and alive than the church has recognised. ...

Culled from The Punch April 21, 2014 by Tolu Ogunlesi Two weeks ago, a young Nigerian, Yusuf Onimisi, vanished from Twitter, days after posting photos he took, with his phone, of soldiers mobilised in the wake of the attempted jailbreak at the Directorate of State Security headquarters in Abuja. Expectedly, the news filtered online in no time. A group of social-media-savvy persons started a loud campaign alleging that the DSS was responsible for his disappearance. There were rumours he had been beaten and possibly even killed. The DSS, thinking this was still 1994, at first refused to comment on the matter. Eventually, in the face of immense local and international pressure – mostly driven online – released him. While it is difficult to justify the wisdom of live-tweeting a military operation like that (especially when your access is made possible only by the fact that you work very close to the highly-sensitive Presidential Villa grounds), it is even more diff...

Copied from the Facebook wall of Professor Pius Adesanmi We must repeat this point: there can be no possible excuse or justification for stupidity on the part of those who have read the big books and whose minds have been humanized by the best thinkers in the Humanities. Such people in our public life cannot expect to be assessed like Evans Bipi or Ayodele Fayose. That is why I devoted two column installments to Sanusi Lamido Sanusi's "shiki shiki ma mi owo de" philosophy in the exercise of his duties as CBN governor. Now, take your time and read this profile of another mind that has read the proper books and is now behaving extremely stupidly: ============================================ Kayode Fayemi is a former Director of the Centre for Democracy & Development, a research and training institution dedicated to the study and promotion of democratic development, peace-building and human security in Africa. Prior to his establishment of the Centre, h...

When you see people walking on the street, cruising in exquisite cars, driving in and out of posh residences, it looks as if they will live forever! When you see them in mire, under Lagos bridges (in those days, I guess), jumping off and on to molue , existing in naked squalour, it appears they have failed in life. The rich looks like they have inherited the earth for keeps, And the poor merely existing alongside, to remind the rich of how successful they are. But in reality, both the rich and the poor die! And what is their lot: a rectangular space in the red earth, not even up to the size of some of the beds we so comfortably sleep on! All the make-up, costumes, body-enhancing surgeries, tattoos, body piercings, and whatever adornment we have so lavishly indulged in, would cease to matter to your new neighbours - the termites, the rodents, the tiny beings that you never noticed on earth! I write this, teary-eyed: my neighbour lost his dad to th...

A very good pastor was preaching on Sunday and in his prophecies said, "You will get that visa this week..." Come and see the thunderous "Amen!!!" that shook the building! Throughout the ministration, he mentioned how scary embassies are for Nigerians. And I couldn't keep myself from wondering what the problem really is! Another scenario: a neighbour of mine recently went for a business trip to China. He spent about a week or more. When he returned, I asked how he procured visa for the trip. He said he paid 350k to his travel agent. Note that this excluded his flight ticket and other expenses. It was solely for the procurement of travel visa to China! Hmmm! I have also encountered a friend and school mate who told me that he sold the piece of land he inherited from his dad in order to travel overseas. At that time, I also had this notion that travelling overseas is the easiest way to make it in life! So, I kept in contact trying to find my o...

Someone asked, just this morning, "Will you marry yourself in your present state?" What she means: If you take a good look at your character, personality, finance, etc, and you come to marry yourself (assuming yourself is another person), can you in all honesty agree to that marriage. This got me thinking! And I remembered what a pastor once said. He said that everyone is looking for a person that meets 100% of what they want in a spouse but find it difficult to locate. He further said that everyone's 100% exists but the problem is that even when you meet them, you may not even be up 20% of what they want in a spouse! Hmmm! Everyone is searching for perfection. Everyone is looking for THAT special one. The questions are: Are you perfect yourself? Are you a special one yourself? You are unmarried, gallivanting from one bed to the other. When your time comes, will you look for your kind? Or will you go for that fruitless search for a modern-day Virgin M...

It is no longer news that a handful of individuals lost their lives last Saturday at recruitment centres for Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) job. I imagined the number of people who turned for the exercise and my mind went back to the first time I attended such an event almost two decades ago (omo, I don old o!) It was Nigerian Breweries recruitment exercise at the Trade Fair Complex, Lagos. I got the invitation and took a night bus to Lagos, with the feeling that there would be about 20 or at most 25 others there. I got the shocker of my life when I got there and found over ten thousand people. As far as my eyes could go, there were job seekers milling around as if we were in some Nazi Concentration Camp! Yes, Concentration Camp! That is what this land has been turned into by mindless, gluttonous politicians. I was at another interview a couple of years later. It was KPMG exams somewhere in Ikeja, close to Airport Hotel. There were a lot of us too. We wrote the...