THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY

“John, that girl make sense, abi?” I said, nudging my head towards the beauty with afro, simple make-up and tinny-tiny dot gold earrings (there should be a name for that). John turned and looked at me pointedly as if we were the only ones in the large lecture theatre and I was seeing double. Then he nodded once, twice while looking at her saying, “of course, you gbadun am, shey?” “No. yes, I just dey…” “She make sense. Go yan am”. It was my turn to look at him as if he was crazy to which he responded with the why not look. “See,” he started, “just wait still this boring lecture is over and go bust her brains”. I responded in relief, “okay. You be sure guy. Na why I love you”. “Hey guy, calm down”, he said and we started joking again. I needed that little chat of bromatic boy-speak to encourage and recharge my creative faculty of playing out, in my head, a thousand ways to woo a girl. Then it loomed: what about the thousand girls that were not wooed? What about the ones that got away?

            My first amorous sight came when I was in primary one, when my best friend was named Sikiru, when my class teacher was called uncle Alhaji. She, lets call her A for Angel, was a heavenly being on earth. My innocent mind couldn’t comprehend how she could be more intriguing to me than the other girls in my class. She got away not because she didn’t notice me as I was uncle Alhaji’s favorite but because I let her – coupled with the fact that in the next school year, I was in primary three (a thing called double promotion, mine for being both too brilliant and too old for my previous class. I take the former) and the joy of using biros instead of pencils made me forget Sikiru and A for Angel.

            My remaining three primary school years were laced with affection for G for Gentle, S for Smart and Q for Quiet. G was disinclined to activities although her clique brought out the talkative or, in the word used by one of my past principals, the garrulous, in her. Her gentle spirit amazed my playful and troublesome mind. S for smart was my desk mate for the whole of primary four (throughout primary school, my less than tall frame always landed me a seat in the front of the class, inevitably with the girls). She is the cleverest human being I know. She got my love the day I had a migraine and I placed my head on the desk to cry it off. She noticed I was crying, called the teacher’s attention to it, and personally took me to the sickbay. Although my rationale for crying off a headache still baffles me (yes, I shock myself sometimes), I was glad I did. Q for quiet was just that… quiet. If I were to use three words to describe her, they would be quiet, quiet, quiet. She rarely talked in class. She rarely cried if and when beaten. She rarely stood up from her seat all day. It always ran me crazy until I realized I was angry with her behaviour maybe because I liked her. Although I had a good friendship with S and, to a lesser extent, G, I lost contact with them (including Q) as I entered secondary school. Don’t I cherish past relationships?

            My secondary school life was exciting and confusing. I liked E for exciting because of her electrifying attitude as I had loved those primary school ones. Then it went downhill from there. Attitude flew out the window and my eyes were my judges for liking a girl. I tried to bring mannerisms back into play, but it had already turned physical. I concluded I preferred some body parts to others but still endeavored to use stance and other fascinating details to befriend a girl. There were I for Iron lady, W for Wow, and B for Blissful. Later, there came T for Thin. I (Iron lady, not myself) had a boyfriend for four years; W left our school before we became seniors, and B! Oh my sweet B. I couldn’t let her go or she wouldn’t let me (whichever is less embarrassing for me) and she was nothing short of a dear friend. My love for T almost scattered everything. And incidentally enough, she was a close friend of B. You might want to know, T also got away.

            In my young adult life, there were just a lot of hit and misses, a lot of getting away. There were D for Dark, H for Hospitable, V for Vivacious, M for Motherly and C for Cute. They all got away because of me. No, I did not have a mouth or body odour. I just didn’t lift a finger let alone make a move. I guess I was either shy and stupid or wise and bidding my time (I take the latter). The good news is that they are still in my sights, even now as I’m writing this down.

                                                                                               

The bad news is that I’ve found another person.

This afro-carrying, simple-makeuping bolt from the blue is my next project (I hate to call her a project but that’s what it feels like) and she must not get away. I say this for almost every other person, but there is something about this being, this entity, this organism, this creature that is mesmerizing. John has encouraged me and I’m ready to bust her brains. Oh! The lecture is over. Everybody is standing up. I’m looking around for her. Target identified. Moving in on the target. Wish me luck.

HER GROWING OCCUPATIONS

The first time I met Asake, she seemed interesting enough – geeky and shy, but fascinating to watch and talk to. It started with a “chance meeting” and one discussion led to another until it doodled on the educational hazards we encountered while growing up. I had expected a tale of pop stars and actresses and wives and mothers but I was treated to a rude awakening that this was no ordinary girl or lady or woman (what’s the deal, by the way, with unmarried females not wanting to be called girls?). So, the following can be called an aspect of her biography penned down by a stenographer (me!).

            According to her, her first would-be job was to be a pastor (or pastress). Shock, I must say was my expression as she doesn’t look like someone bent on going that road to me. She said it was when she was around the age of five or six. Her aunty living with the family at the time was usually with her during the holidays. The aunty made fried sugar coated peanuts which she sold. Asake loved being with her partly because she loved tasting the peanuts for an acceptable level of “sweetness”. The aunty also taught her the times table from two to twelve that was at the back of her notebook. She owed her multiplicative skills to her aunty (and I must confess, she is a genius at anything with numbers and the letters A, B, C, X, Y, Z). Her love for pastoring came alive when every evening she was entertained by this relative with stories from the bible that fascinated her. Infact she still remembered her aunt’s classic line after she had been interrupted and she’s back to resume her story: “so, as I was saying …” Asake smiled a smile of sadness, of missing the old days. Praying and hoping that I was not too forward, I asked her where are aunty was. The distant smile turned to face me, “she is now married with two daughters in her mansion, the last time I checked.” So much for selling peanuts, I didn’t say. Asake said when the aunty (I think her name is Wunmi or Bunmi) or anyone asked what she wanted to be, “pastor” was her petite and short response.

Was I in anticipation of her second growing occupation? Of course I was and my face mask did a pretty good job of not betraying me. My disguised enthusiasm turned to apparent alarm when she recalled that next; she wanted to be a soldier. Okay! I didn’t see that coming. When I asked her why, she indicated that after that aunty had left to marry, the next set of family members to live in her house were her uncles, three of them. At different times, they each bought a gun for her (what about Barbie dolls and tea party parties. I wanted to scream at her uncles, “Men, she’s a girl!”). During a particular holiday, she said, there were four toy guns in her house – the fourth being the one her dad bought with her first video game, the FamilyCom. I knew it was the FamilyCom because she called the console ‘terminator’, and I am a console freak. Her best games on the ‘terminator’ were duck hunt and another – the game gun was used in both. Using her uncles’ guns as bases, she decided she could either be a cowgirl, a policewoman, or a soldier and she opted for the latter. The cowgirl was a no-no because she didn’t have the complete attire (she had only the gun, belt and hat. In my silent opinion, that was enough) and the policewoman story was gone the second that every evening, her extended family would always have complaints and rain abuses on the policemen shown during the news. I just had to ask how many people lived in her house. She counted thirteen and her dad, uncles, and younger twin brothers constituted the male gender in the house. Her dad worked out of town and was home only on weekends; so, during the week, there were 7 females (mom + aunties + cousin + maid) and 5 males. Once at a time, her uncles brought their fiancées to live with them until they were married, beyond which they stayed a few more weeks before disappearing. I could only imagine the size of the house.

What happened to the army dream? It was squashed, literally. The uncle who bought her the toy submachine gun visited them one day and without looking down, crushed the gun she had put at the door entrance while she was playacting one of those her Rambo tales. The other guns also got damaged one way or the other. She later had a Tommy gun and a water gun but the weapon carrying saviour of the defenseless was gone.

            In secondary school, she was a whiz kid and it was automatically imperative for her to go to the science senior class and become a doctor in the future. And so, she decided she wanted to be a practicing pediatrician. Her mom was a nurse – she had lots of support and enough colourful books showing the biology of humans and the chemistry of chemicals. She loved the books and dreamt the dream until she started taking biology in her senior secondary school. Although she had no problems with chemistry, biology was too essay-oriented and notes and notes were written. She even found that physics was more stimulating than boring biology but that could be aided by the fact that she was not a good drawer. The medical doctor vision stayed a reverie as a new one took over – engineering. Her fascination with chemistry, physics, mathematics and technical drawing relegated to the background any liking she had for the human body or life. Aeronautical engineering was the coolest engineering occupation around that time and that was her preference. It was aeronautic love all the way till she wanted to write her JAMB/ UME. There and then, she had second thoughts. Physics was no longer interesting and being called Engineer Asake (husband’s last name) didn’t look so attractive after all. Her father had always hammered that he would love to see one of his children studying economics. Through the exam brochure, she saw that she could do math and geography (relatively simple subjects to her) with economics. Her dad didn’t hesitate to give his blessings and she started yet another career path as an economist. She told me she missed her chemistry and technical drawing but economics still provided her an opportunity to continue her fixation with arithmetic problems.

            And that was how I met her – we were both studying economics in the university. Though it was unsurprising, I was still amazed when she told me her best aspect of economics was the immense and colossal econometrics. Being an econometrician was not completely out of sight for her but it is in parallel with her entrepreneurial ambition. I could only wish her good luck. I hoped she has lots of it. The conversation shifted and it was my turn to begin my chronicle of growing occupations.

Wow! From a pastor to a soldier to a medical doctor to an aeronautic engineer to an economist to an econometrician to an entrepreneur is really a long career path. But it was more than sweet relief for me that a genius like Asake would have problems deciding what to do in the future. So much for my parents’ and teachers’ brain-piercing shouts and ear-splitting screams that I should have already known what I wanted to be at the age of ten! Infact, for their information, I still don’t know what I want to be in the future.

SUCCESS OR HAPPINESS IN YOUR CHOSEN OCCUPATION

In today’s world, “I’m successful “ and “I’m happy” are two wildly different responses to “how’s work?” we are often required to choose between the rock and a hard place when it comes to picking our occupation.

            In generations past, the onus was mainly on the successful parents to lead their children in the ‘right way’ so that their subsequent gene pools would be successful/ the not-so-successful folks would push their kids into their (the parents’) comfortability. Education was the key word. The more education you got, the more successful you would become.

            This ideology has not changed much as more and people are pushing the boundaries of educational attainment just to be more eligible for than others that job. Parents, who have seen it and done that through experience, know the lucrative areas of specialization, or so they think. They have seen more successful individuals and have come to realize where, when, how and why their own mistakes were made. Not wanting same for their kids, the parents’ inadvertedly make occupational choices for them seemingly for the kids’ good. The snag: the children, although ‘successful’, might not be ‘happy’. This is the first scenario.

            The second scenario stems from the Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. At the apex – what Maslow himself concluded that man needed most – is self-actualization or self-fulfillment or realization of one’s purpose. So much has being said, published and preached about the usage of one’s talents and the first rule of business nowadays is to learn to commercialize these gifts. People in turn, now use their passion to become great. The snag: this idea of commercialization of talents, gifts and passions has really been sold to the heart of men. That we tell ourselves that there is that one thing we do well that no one else can do is a white lie. It might have been safer to say that we do some things better than most people, not all. And the people who can do what we can do are not in their dozens or scores, but in their thousands, often times millions around the globe. So, while we are ‘happy’, we might not be ‘successful’.

            Recently, another scenario has popped up. ‘Happiness’ is not about being ‘successful’ or following your passions, it is about serving others. The main cause of unhappiness, according to this scenario is our selfishness or self-centeredness. You should pick an occupation that serves people around you the most. The snag: the people in this circumstance claim to be the most fulfilled but their lifestyles are not enviable – the most ‘happy’ with the least ‘success’    

            These three scenarios have taught us something: there are various meanings of success and happiness. In some quarters, success might mean fame or fortune or both. Sometimes, it is not quantitative, it is qualitative like self-fulfillment (what we had called happiness in the above scenarios) in short, success can be happiness and vice-versa.

            The alarming rate at which young men and women are refusing their parents’ requests about their occupation shows incredible independence among today’s youth. But the other side of the coin is that hardly as a person come out to blame his career misfortune on his parents. I have not seen. This tends to reinstate the fact that that maybe happiness is overrated. No parent would want her child to turn into a non-entity in the society (at least most of them wouldn’t), so why don’t we listen to them more?

            What makes us happy? We are joyous when we do what we want. And yet we cringe when we see another act of stupidity all in the name of ‘gratifying my destiny’. Are we not supposed to be happy with them? With their happiness? Heck, even they themselves are not happy. Those who are not confused about their self-fulfilling prophecy find out that what they called their passions or gifts or talents aren’t often times profitable. As stated earlier, too many people are into that ‘passion’ of ours and making a living out of it is sometimes a nightmare as the marginal are enjoying the bulk of benefits accruing to that ‘passion’. A major fallacy propagandized by the media is that our parents want us to be either doctors, lawyers, engineers or continuing the family business. And we should fight for our rights and chase away the talents God has given us where we can be both successful and happy. In real life, most parents are supportive of what their wards choose as an occupation but to them, guidance is key. Also in real life, where you see the most flourishing individuals is where you find the most failed ones both in their great numbers.

            Serving other people is great as Mother Theresa has shown us and as most companies nowadays are more concerned about serving and keeping the next customer than even making the next product. But we need to be careful. In the words of a wise man I know: Caution, Caution, Caution. Not everyone needs our service (you don’t open a foundation to feed the rich) and most of what we achieve while serving people is just from the few that really appreciate what we are doing.

            In conclusion, the direction of parents or elders should not be discarded. Rather, they should be collected gracefully but sieved meticulously through the membrane of our thoughts tinted with the activities that constitute our happiness and that of the very important few who appreciated and celebrate what we are doing.

RELATIONSHIPS: ORDAINED?

“Without relationships, we are either dead to the world – or dead”

RICHARD KOCH

There are relationships and there are relationships. And I’m not saying about the ones we had with family (we didn’t choose them) or the ones with friends (we love to think that we chose ours even though events and circumstances are to be blamed). I’m talking about romantic relationships with the opposite sex, of course. Subsequently, the question pops up: are our romantic relationships (supposed to be) ordained or pre-destined.

Like any other non-rhetorical question that starts with ‘are’, the answering options are limited to offensive or defensive, positive or negative, yes or no (except maybe the infamous ‘are you asleep?’). Also like any one of those silly questions that change the course of history, there are always two schools of thought, usually and most naturally, opposite. Let’s call ours the YES and NO schools of thought.

The YES school of thought is mainly composed of moralists and many are found in the church. Don’t get it tangled – being moralist doesn’t mean one is a Christian or vice-versa. The yesies, singular yesy, believe that an infinite being, in this case God, created a woman for every man (meaning our polygamous brothers should be charged for theft). An example, as always, is taken from the bible. The first woman, Eve, was made from one of the ribs of Adam, the first man. Interestingly, the yesies believe women were not created, they were made. This debunks the argument of the various ‘what-ifs’. What if the woman is not forthcoming or basically does not like her ordained man? What if by some unfortunate situation, the man dies as a young boy before they meet? Or is already married when they do meet? God in his unusual mercy, the yesies believe, would make another woman for the man or create another man for the woman. There are more spiritual connotations to all these than physical – the man and women do not have to be birthed; destinies change and a chain reaction ensues.

The nolites from the NO school of thought believe otherwise. They are definitely not disputing the a-woman-for-a-man ideology as some, to a degree, are moralists and church goers. Their main argument is that Adam was created a man, so a woman would have been his helper not a girl. Woman was made for man, not girl for boy. The nolites claim the yesies are too concerned about marriage and they tend to forget every other romantic relationship the man or woman were involved in before they got together. A remarkable insight is that if one’s first romantic relationship culminates in marriage, one tends to be eternally grateful to the spouse which can have unhealthy consequences. Marriage cannot occur unless the boy becomes the man and the girl, a woman (except for those on a craze to enter the Guinness book of records by marrying their babies or even unconceptualised foetus). A girl must be emotionally matured to marry and some of the maturity has to come with coping with various past and present relationships, be it family, friends, or boyfriends.

If my opinion is of any interest to you, here it is: I’m a nolite to the bone. The problem is, when you support anything to the bone, you tend to forget the skin, muscle and blood of the matter. Bones don’t make us humans - they make us skeletons. I understand that we nolites want to have fun before we settle down for marriage but I also understand that the yesies are coming from the standpoint that God is the author and finisher of our destinies, the beginning and the end. But that’s the point. The beginning (he created us and ordained us to our families) and the end (heaven or hell) is all that is beyond us. We have a choice to which end we go to depending on our action and reactions. Similarly, the end (or beginning) of your marital bliss is one that is sanctioned by God, but you still have a choice decorated with consequences.

This is not a gather-your-arms-and-shoot-your-son-become-he-is-a-nolite war; rather it is more like an intellectual war, an educative war that needs more lights illuminating the numerous dark alleys.

I’m of hope that a compromise between the yesies and the nolites is obtainable (a closer look and there are some signs) if disciples and egos don’t get in the way.

THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE FOUR

I was determined to stay clear of the news on hearing about the lynching of the four University of Port Harcourt students. Only a few “Nigerians have started again” and “God, save us and everyone we know came forth from my lips. But the more I tried to push it onto the hind of my mind, the more it came back to the fore like an abusive partner influenced by the law of karma. Then it hit me – we are all thoughtless. More on that later.

            When people die, the first set of my mostly invincible condolences goes to their families. We are always taught that death is a phase that must be passed through and not to be afraid of it, but nothing is really more painful than the death of a loved one. If the death was preventable like the one in Umuokiri-Aluu, more painful still. When people die, issues thought to be serious fly out the window. The parents who lost their children would not have the time to think about the advice they gave to the child about bad friends, good grades and ‘graduate to get a good job’. The person who lost his or her spouse would not mind fighting the last fight they had so long the now dead spouse would stay with them forever. The child who lost a parent or a sibling would definitely not mind being scolded eternally by this same people. The death of a loved one has a paralyzing effect on our hearts and we all of a sudden begin to see nothing wrong with what we dislike about them. we then pass through denial, anger and anguish – blaming both ourselves and the dead about the death of the dead – before finally accepting and forgiving but not forgetting (this last part is easier said than done and it might take forever). NOTE: The mood here is not insensitivity to the case at hand.

THE CASE AT HAND: nobody really has an idea of the genesis of the whole story but most of it continued and finished in Umuokiri-Aluu. This guy owed one or more of the four later-to-be-lynched individuals. The debtor would not pay his debt and the four decided to strip him of his phone(s) and laptop(s) as collateral. Turned out to be a bad idea. The debtor raised an alarm that he had been stolen from and the people of Aluu sprang into action. The four were burnt alive, beaten to stupor, and striped of their clothing (in the reserve order). The sequence of activities that happened next was over in a hurry. The news filtered back to the university and angry students mobilized themselves to rain torches on the households of people in that community. Most of the dwellers fled and the ones remaining got nabbed by the police one by one. The only emotion prevalent in this story was that of anger.

LESSON LEARNT: We (and by ‘we’, I mean Nigerians) are all thoughtless people. Everybody involved claims or claimed to be a Nigerian and whether we like it or not, their actions speak for us all. The more the leader of the lynching mob took it upon himself to end the lives of these young men and that lady using her camera phone to get every possible angle of the killing, the more it became apparent ‘thinking’ has no place. In Nigeria, we are too action-oriented. We make sure we cross the road faster than the approaching vehicle. It is obligatory for us to turn our vehicles into that junction faster than others. Even when it comes to buying, the queue was never made for Nigerians. A friend just came out with a timely quote – “live fast and die early” and he couldn’t be nearer to the truth. We are so wary of being cheated that our actions drive away our thoughts. Just a little ounce of thought might have changed the outcome of what happened in Aluu.

            If the four had thought better than to confiscate the debtor’s belongings, they most certainly would have been saved. Even when they didn’t, if the debtor had thought better than to scream “thief, thief” and tried to settle the matter amicably (although at this stage, it’s a long shot), the killing might not have taken place. After his false alarm, if the people of the Umuokiri-Aluu community had just thought about clearing up this misunderstanding, of course, there would have been a fortunate end to the story. even after the deed was done, thoughtlessness reigned supreme as UNIPORT students burned down buildings as if it would bring back the dead and police arrested everyone on sight claiming “investigations has begun”. The amount of ‘ifs’ and ‘just thought’ are just baffling. The regret that comes after the action is embarrassing.

            I once saw another lynch video some months ago. A man was kicked and hit with items as hard as wooden planks and as soft as foams. He was put in front of a moving car. In his seriously injured state, the planks and the foams were put on him, a little fuel and a matchstick did the rest. A live roasting because of a phone theft. After watching the video several times, my reaction changed from “that serves him right” to “there are some sad people in this country”. The argument that lynching occurs because poor folks are angry that an unfortunate individual is stealing from their own very little merchandise is baseless. To think that they were so angry with themselves that all their frustrations could culminate in murdering humans as if they are clapping away mosquitoes is really sad indeed. There was this other tale of a market woman who raised a false alarm that the man that had just left her shop stole her money. Within minutes, the man was mobbed. The woman later came out and said she had found the ‘stolen’ money. Of course the angry mob left one by one, shame personified. Tragic, to say the least.

            I am a Nigerian (as if I had a choice of where I should be born or bred). But I love Nigeria with my heart and head equally. No matter how patriotic I can claim to be, I’m not following Nigeria to the innermost depths of the pit latrines of sadness, and of acting without thinking. My apologies in advance if we ever reach that point.

AFTERMATH: PARALYMPICS

            While Micheal Phelps and Usain Bolt entertained my adrenaline levels, the Paralympics, as a whole, motivated me. I had never really watched the Paralympics before although there was a vague idea of what it meant. So, I was dumbfounded when I saw an armless female winning a swimming race, a one-legged cyclist finishing second behind an imbecilic person (no pun intended), a one-legged high jumper, a blind sprinter, etc. it makes you wonder what manner of mental toughness these individuals have.

            But one couldn’t help but notice how world records were thrown into the gutter with ease – even the podium less athletes shattered the previous world records. Our beloved delegates broke many. After careful observation, I noticed that in many of the events where the records were broken, the athletes were aided by technology either during practice or in play. This is, of course, not to take anything from the athletes but to reinstate the argument when Ed Catmull, the co-founder of Pixar said, technology plus art equals magic.

            We were so concerned about the able-bodied delegates that we forget the real stars with thirteen medals (6G-5S-2B). Although most of the medals came from weightlifting, we can not complain. We dare not. By all standards, given the disappointment of the Olympics, we were successful. A blissful relief, you may. The real challenge comes from what would happen next. For all the celebrations and welcoming jubilations given to these athletes, what they need is sustainability. In their various sports, technological advancement in facilities is needed for them to compete satisfactorily at the next games in Rio. Since Nigeria has become an import-dependent country, it should be easier for us to get the latest technology than misleading ourselves that we can produce them. Production of technology involves years and years of research and – I might be mistaken, but – no funds are put in place for that. They might have been put to better use like buying laptops for all lawmakers (pun intended).

            Sustainability in the lives of the athletes is the most important thing. Even if 50 million naira had been given to each delegate (that’s ten times more than was given to the gold medalists), it would not have been enough. What they need are jobs or assistances in self-employment to provide basic amenities like food, clothing, and shelter for them and their families. They need to be business owners or civil servants eligible for pension. Believe it or not, they have goal s besides weightlifting. Of course, the shirt should not be given the work of the shoe and vice-versa. If their jobs need more qualifications, they should be given more training. Sports may be their head start in life, but it is just part of it. I’m in no way advocating for sympathy for the disabled men and women of any profession or vocation; they don’t need anyone’s pity. They need more empathy and increased emotional intelligence from all and sundry.

            The Paralympics started in 1948 by Ludwig Guttman as a means of engaging the aggrieved war veterans; it was later accepted by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and modeled as a full-fledged Paralympics in 1960. (So, no one should tell me Oscar Pistorius single handedly brought the world’s attention to the Paralympics). It has taught us, me that there is life after ‘disability’ even if one is unfortunately pushed into it or is born into it. It has taught that disability is of the mind.

  

AFTERMATH: OLYMPICS

The summer Olympics have come and gone but the memories will linger for a long time. Usain Bolt hammered Johan Blake both in the 100m and 200m sprints. Michael Phelps became the greatest Olympian of all time. The USA climbed back to the top spot in world sports after deceiving themselves they did in Beijing they had won more medals, not more gold. Andy Murray thumped the greatest lawn tennis player of all time, Roger Federer. Brazil swallowed her pride when humility came knocking at the hands of Mexico. The host nation’s domination of rowing. Oscar Pistorius becoming the first amateur runner in the history of the Olympics. And many more.

But what many Nigerians have chosen to remember about the Olympics is the failure to secure a single medal. The blame game started in earnest with the officials there was intense preparation (three months, seriously?) before the games while the sportsmen and sportswomen claimed the preparation was inadequate (they should have negotiated for a longer preparatory time, or better still, participate for another country. Unpatriotic, but better than messing up and blaming the government you know is never ‘ready’). Then, the news filtered through that the athletes sneaked into the country.

That last line is as stupendous as any statement could be since most of the Nigerian delegates don’t even live in the country. It’s amazing how imaginative people would be to be funny. But it also pointed to a plain truth – Nigerians were not ready to accept failures, in sports at least. But as usual, Nigerians are looking at the tomato sauce bottle from the wrong side.

In Nigeria, we are too optimistic about sports. Really, what gave us the audacity to think that we could win any medal in the summer Olympics? A little pessimism could have improved our chances.

There is a solution to every problem. Or at least, there should be. There is no self-help book that can help us because the answer is not within us. In fact, it never was. The solutions are glaring for the whole world to see. The first is in South East Asia and the second, the extreme west. China and the USA provide the templates for success.

The Chinese template is pushed by the almost psychopathic ambition to rule the world of sports. It has also been made possible by the shrewd thinking of the government. They discovered that the rich kids could not be forced into sports so they descended on the poor ones. And what dividends that action has paid. The Olympics in Beijing and London showed a country’s willingness to dominate sports and the whole world applauded. China, on the other hand, would have been surprised if they were not highly praised. The Chinese government discovered that the height of sport brilliance in the late teens and early twenties. Any age beyond that and it is up to the athlete to keep his fitness and motivation. The Chinese template involves taking kids as young as six (sometimes younger) from their poor folks to have their bones and muscles tested. The tests determine what sport the kid can participate in and he or she would be transported to one of three thousand schools built by the government around the country where they would be optimally trained in their specific sports while receiving education in a religious setting.

The American template is so much easier to comprehend. Most of the advancement in sports is brought about by the private sector. Sponsorship is the order of the day from the youth ranks to the senior level. Most American schools are seriously involved in sports and the arts. Any talent discovered is nurtured and sponsored to the highest level.

The American template might be difficult for American to shadow. For one, we are not capitalists (USA itself doesn’t practice pure capitalism as we are made to believe. They are social capitalists). We just don’t have enough wealthy individuals or firms to sponsor everything no matter how generous we intend to be. But we can pick a few things from this template. Our various schools, especially the privately-owned ones can always do a little better than what they are during now in terms of sports and the arts. To have only one school capable of producing world class sports personalities and artists in the country is better than having “feyingbole” schools every corner you turn into.

Of course, the Chinese template is ready made for us. We only need the corporation of the government (prayers and fasting required!). Some naysayers would scream their lungs out and claim that child abuse is in order. This template forces children to be sportsmen and women and they have no freedom to choose their destiny. They are been given talents under duress, the ever-quick-to-oppose-anything-good people would declare. But who cares? We are talking about children, whose families’ lives under a dollar a day, not knowing where food would come from the next day and there is talk of them choosing their destiny?  What future are they choosing if they die out of hunger before they reach there? The pessimists themselves are well fed, well clothed, well sheltered, and just between their homes and their places of work, they see dozens of beggars. Why don’t we ask the poor folks themselves if taking care of eleven or even two kids in poverty is better than giving their offspring to the government where they would be fed, clothed, and sheltered and can yet become stars of the future?

The Brazilian Olympic committee, after the summer Olympics, came out and declared their budget for Rio 2016, which athletes were going from the London’s bunch (bearing all circumstances), and sending an investigative panel to look into the rise of Jamaican sprinters. Of course, they are being idealistic but they are preparing. What has our country done besides blame? It is still a wonder that Nigeria got her independence that early (not that it has benefited us in any way). If nothing is done, we can be sure of obscurity when it comes to sports.

Even if one or both of the templates are used, one thing is certain – we are not winning any medal in the next Olympics, because - implementation takes time. But we can build from there. 

  

BIBLE : ORIGINAL MEANING?

Church was nice… as nice as an Anglican communion service could have been. There was the communion (duh!), the offertory, the offering, the peace, the Nicene Creed, the intercession, and the benediction. “Take just one thing from service today”, I usually tell myself. Unlike most past services, I actually took home one (maybe two) thing(s). This time, I was truly in awe to be in church.

The sermon by the curate was tagged The Poor in Our Midst. His explanation of the theme was not one I fully agreed with but that has to be a discussion for another day. I was truly taken aback by the Bible verses he was quoting. No, he wasn’t wrong and he was humble enough to receive help from the choir when he found himself in between the sandwich. My grievance surfaced when, after speaking good, correct English (Nigerian English even), he turned back the hands of time to speak “Bible English” when quoting the bible verses. He was like, “we are comfortable for a reason, abi? We cannot claim God gave us riches and not cater for his creation, not love them. The rich man suffered the consequences, went to hell, and accepted his fate but he now begged Abraham to send Lazarus back to his brothers to warn them. The bible says, ‘I beg thee therefore, father, that thou shall send him to thy father’s house, for I have five brethren, that he may testify to them, lest they also cometh to this place of torment.’” What just happened? I asked myself in church. The curate wants us to understand his explanation of the story but not the story itself? I looked around me for support. Nobody seemed to give a flying rat tail what I thought. They were listening to the sermon. I gently tapped the lady beside me (we are both ushers, hence the famzing), asked her if she knew what just happened. She looked at me as if I was suffering from an incurable face disorder.

The sermon was over…for me. For the next ten minutes, I was asking myself the same question over and over again. Why? Why? Why? Our vocabulary of English has been updated in all aspects of our lives, except the church? We don’t greet each other, “how art thou”, do we?

And this situation is not peculiar to only my church. Most churches I’ve been to claim the King James Version as their bible. Both the priests and the congregation speak thou, thee, lest, hast, thy and the lot. After a little investigation where I asked why the bibles with the simpler understandable English language were not used, I was told the King James Version of the bible is the most accurate version of the happenings in the bible. I was also told that the new bibles with simpler English had ‘diluted’ the message and they might even be the scheme of the devil for the children of God not to get the ‘real’ message behind the words. I’m no child of the devil, but I think that’s a bit shallow (no offence intended). First, nobody in the bible spoke English, as far as history is concerned. So for their records to be brought to us, it must be translated. Those of us who understand more than one language know that no sentence in one can literally be translated into another language word by word. That brings the subject of dilution back into contention. Any statement figuratively translated is diluted. It has lost the essence, the meaning behind the reason it was made in the first place. In my opinion, the King James Version of the bible is already diluted as it is. It was translated. Thus, the argument retaining the message behind the words is defeated. Second, the King James Version was written at a time when English was spoken that way. If the bible was written (translated) in our time, it would surely not contain thou, thy, and lest, but if our bible was still used five centuries later, what message are we preserving when the language would already be difficult to comprehend. Got my drift?    

Children are expected to read the bible, know it by heart. In their naivety, they cram so many verses without even understanding the tiniest bit of what is being said in church. Let me narrate my testimony (sort of). I know some part of the bible by heart - I know their essence, their reasons. I learnt them when I was like ten. Reinhard Bonnke came to Ibadan and during his crusades; he distributed some ‘easy-to-read’ bibles to his crowds. I got hold of one of these bibles and was relieved to find a bible with English like the one in my textbooks from school. The relief turned to motivation (coupled with the fact that I get easily bored), I picked it up and started reading, more as a storybook with different stories than as a spiritual connotation. I enjoyed it. I learnt a lot. And most importantly, I understood what I was reading. I have those stories in my heads then, now and forever. They can only be modified by messages and my experiences. All I did was to read an easy-to-read bible.

This obstinacy with the past just sounds like sticking with the typewriter in today’s computer world. I was shocked once when a woman (woman, not lady) told me that using blender destroys the taste of the sauce that is preserved by the grinding stone. We don’t wear robes anymore for a reason. The monochrome television is not produced anymore for a reason. Whatever that reason is, it is enough for us to start understanding what we read in the Holy Bible and not wait for the curate to explain everything he quotes during every other communion service.

“5000 naira note?!”

“God forbid!”  

“Over my dead body”

“Those thieves would now be able to put their stolen millions in their pocket and walk our streets.”

“Now the limit of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire would be one hundred million naira.”

These are some of the responses of Nigerians ranging from being unreal to absolutely hilarious. A consolation to this armageddon of sorts to Nigerians is for them to SHUT UP. That was meant in the nicest possible way.

Yes, shut up and sit down, Nigerians. For once, close your mouth and open your eyes and ears, it is said that when ignorant people speak, they either show how much of the subject matter they don’t know or they show just how little they know. Ignorance was responsible when the eaglet hatched with chicks thought it could not fly up to 5 feet. Because your senators are against it, doesn’t mean they know what they are doing. You are the same people always condemning the lawmakers and you back them up for this. Hypocrites, I hail thee.

I find this difficult to comprehend but some think the CBN is already being run by an antichrist ready to conquer the unsuspecting world. Sit down and listen and I would explain some things to you.

In economics, there is something called the Phillip’s curve. It is simply a graph showing the alternative between inflation and unemployment - the higher the inflation, the less the unemployment and, vise-versa. And what are the most pressing needs of the Nigerians? Security, poverty and unemployment you say. Security aside (because it is the fault of the self-acclaimed most criticized president in the world it has gotten this bad), poverty can’t be erased without having cash at hand. And the last time I checked the amount you have in your pocket is as a result of you earning it or you stealing it, your choice. You can’t earn money unless you are employed.

The current unemployment rate in Nigeria is 70%, which means 7 out of 10 graduates this year would be unemployed next year, after NYSC (which in all honesty should be scrapped because it had achieved its aim of integrating Nigerians & Nigeria).

So, if you are planning to have five kids now, it means - if this trend continues – at least three of them would be jobless. This is normally the case unless you are an empire mogul or a law maker.

    Back to Phillips curve, the 5000 naira note will cause inflation, no doubt.(inflation simply means increase in general price level for example sachet water or pure water would be 200 naira and women would make their hair for 100,000 naira. Pens would be a little cheaper at 500naira.You get the point). But the other side of the coin would be reduced unemployment or increased employment or more people would have jobs. You get the point.

For the record, empathy is on the side of those who don’t support this 5000 naira note move. First, apart from turning our economy into a replica of the hyper inflated Zimbabwean economy, it makes the value of naira to drop. Everybody wants to sell to a cheap currency but not buy from it. The 5000 naira note would certainly turn Nigeria to an import-dependent country (as if she is not already) unless we adopt china’s currency manipulation scheme. And we certainly don’t have the guts to do it. There might also be concerns about the long term implications.

While it is bad for us externally, the 5000 naira note is acceptable domestically. Besides, who wants to paint the outside of his house when the inside is still a mess? The 5000 naira note increases the price level of everything (inflation).The firms or companies or industries have the chance to recoup their losses and charge exorbitant prices giving them the profit they want. Profits are used to expand operations and human capital (people) are needed to run the operations. Thus, you and your children are employed back. The employment provides you the chance to save and spend, increasing your demand. And an increase in demand of citizens is what will keep the economy from crashing, not negotiating with Boko Haram.

The 5000 naira note is the policy to help Nigeria in the short- run, theoretically. But then again, Nigeria is a place where the best theory can make the worst practice.