On parental interference and sundry matters - III

A Problem Child

I have a blessing; I still have my parents who are alive and well, but we have a situation where we are estranged. This estrangement is probably because they are embarrassed or ashamed of me, and that is something we all have to deal with in life when it comes to how we live and the choices we make.

In those circumstances, I have taken measures to manage their exposure to these things, sometimes by reducing or eliminating communication.

For those children who have made their parents proud without having to sacrifice anything of themselves, I guess you are doubly blessed. The stars were aligned, maybe angels were even singing to the shepherds in the fields, as wise men journeyed with presents of gold, frankincense, and myrrh from the East to herald your birth. Oh, the prophets foretold it all.

I was not that child; I was different, difficult, and diffident. I was at one time smart and then considered stupid; for a while, trusted, and then not trusted. I was a handful to my parents, yet a product of the environment I was in.

We Were Not Friends

My African parents made many assumptions about what they thought I had learnt from examples that were not always obvious, for instance, the handling of money. Heck! My father is an accountant, but tell me, how do you pass down the genes? I guess only one of my siblings pursued a career with any semblance of that profession, so much for the power of example.

My parents are of the generation that maintained a certain status and stature, with a school principal for a mother, someone moulding impressionable young lives. The pressure to perform was even more stifling, the need to impress was necessary, and every failing was condemned with such excoriation it left an indelible mark.

Then I failed. I failed woefully, twice. I started courses at two polytechnics, both ending with the advice to withdraw. When I look back, I realise I was clinically depressed; my mother had Psalms and white-garment prophets on the rolodex of that time, and I found religion. I had finished secondary school at 15 and was starting all over again at 20.

A Different Parent

The difference this time was being under the guardianship of an uncle, my sadly departed Uncle Cash, a close relation who had experienced failures early in life but had become very successful in his chosen profession of insurance.

That relationship was different. It was not built on a yearning to show power by demanding and comparing, but on engagement and an appreciation that I was a person first, with my own beliefs and persuasions that could be accommodated within his mentorship and guidance. My parents backed off a bit, and I thrived.

The purpose I gained moved from setting goals to make others proud to achieving success for myself. I had the power to make my own decisions, based not on what others thought, but on what I thought was best for who I was, what I was doing, and what I aimed to achieve.

We Are Really Strangers

In their eyes, I could very well still be the child they once knew, because we grew so far apart from the day they sent me to secondary boarding school. They knew one child; I am a different man, and their child still.

In the same vein, my parents have changed from the people I once knew, even as some characteristics remain, and we have never really had the time to compare notes about who everyone turned out to be.

I have issues and misgivings, many of which I have written about in my blogs. I think I have had a reasonable relationship with my father and a rather volatile one with my mother. Even as I think of them and love them, there are elements of past resentment and abandonment that have taken hold as I review their parenting of me as an individual.

My parents, I can understand, have their concerns too: they have a firstborn son who is gay, has never married and will marry a man, has no offspring, and whom they have not seen in decades. And I am comfortable with all that, because it is my own life and not theirs.

Let's Do This Again

On my Facebook page, I have a friend request, the inspiration for this blog, because it is from my father, who I once blocked, then unblocked, but did not re-establish the friend relationship. After all, he conflated the situations of parent, participant, and policing.

Allowing him to participate in my social media activities meant that he began to police me, and then I got the message: “The earlier you make a good change in your lifestyle the better; it is not too late. All the best”. I was 53. I am going to be 60 in December.

You know what? I’ll accept that friend request.

Blog - This is my life, this is me

Blog - On parental interference and sundry matters

Blog - On parental interference and sundry matters - II

It cannot be unlooked

A predator without shame

It cannot be a term of praise as the review of someone who for all his achievements is in particular everything a philanderer is. Contemptuously in denial and feigning unconvincing innocence in the face of incontrovertible evidence, the pleadings wear thin to the point of irritation and annoyance.

The roving eye with its propensity to quarry some prey for activities quite reprobate and adulterous is never without its focus. Caught at all times that the force of personality is used to enervate those who might expose the truth.

Sing praise chorus insult

He cast his net when away many times and once netted a pupil for whom a time of matrimony was never one to be termed of any bliss. Animosity finds excitement in first and the second, that any prospects of the third should have a man checking himself for his flaws and faults. Therein, is the problem for which a eulogy will not by any stretch of the imagination be hagiographic.

A church he helped build, but a saint, he never was. Honoured he is, but it cannot honestly be for the remotely honourable for which conduct may be viewed as exemplary. If there is praise to be sung, there are stanzas and choruses of opprobrium to chant. In a human being is the good and the bad, let the story be told of all that makes a man what he has lived.

Thought Picnic: I will remain curious and work on it

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Who is me again?

Recently, I think I have been searching for a better understanding of myself, a kind of review of my past, my present, my prospects, the circumstances in which I find myself, what might need tinkering with and what other things must radically shift.

I guess I am constantly challenging myself to appreciate if I am achieving and contributing, whether my ideas are sound and what I need to do or where I need to go to get inspiration and insight for whatever I am faced with. There are days I do not think I have done much and there are many caught between the shame of being slothful, the guilt of not achieving my goals, the embarrassment of being caught out and the humiliation of being shown up.

Finding my place of vulnerability and being able to deal with it is still a process, the way I find it difficult to ask for or seek help when I need it most. I am working on finding the voice to fix the things I am uncomfortable with.

Guarding the influences

This Coronavirus pandemic lockdown where you are left alone and with your own thoughts, many influences begin to insert themselves in your life, usually from social media and television. I do manage my television influences better than I do social media, especially Twitter. So much jumps out at you to enrage you that you need to condition yourself in terms of initiation, engagement, response, contribution, restraint, disengagement, or indifference.

Then, I am getting better at extricating myself, I do not need to be drawn into issues that drain mental energy, denigrate, or are unedifying. The unpersuadable are just unpersuadable and it is important to see the trait early before the fruitless frustrates. Most importantly, know the unnecessary for it is unnecessary, something to be ignored and where the temptation to tweet must be resisted for your good.

I will remain curious

As I go through this developmental process, I have been trying to find fulfilment in the things I enjoy without having the things that drive others define my sense of achievement. Listening to a number of discussions from many interesting people, the pep talk is quite off-putting to the point of detestation.

The life coaches and motivation speakers who go on about using this period of sequestration or rather retreat to say you should focus on something, have a purpose in life or pursue your passion, without which you have underachieved leaving you an anxiety wreck as you realise you have let another day slip useless away, again.

Blog - Thought Picnic: In the days of useful ideas

Elizabeth Gilbert in a recent TED discussion brought in a new thought process, suggesting we exercise curiosity; a kind of interest probably in the mundane, which I do so well, observing beyond just seeing, the stakes she said are lower, there is no anxiety, for looking closer brings to light things easily missed.

I know I am curious, it feeds my learning, the learning to love myself more, it brings insight, it is questioning, precocious, inquisitive, challenging of the norm and I might just end up being proud of myself, grateful of the wonderful people and things that enrich my life. I think I am comfortable with that.

Thought Picnic: What I feared from childhood had dissolved into the reality of a lived life

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From the passing of George Michael

In December just around Christmas, I was staying with my friend in London when we heard the news on television that George Michael had been found dead.

I had always liked George Michael from after his Wham days and was saddened by the event. More pertinently, I was well aware of his struggles with revealing his sexuality, the international embarrassment that came with his importuning as a result of law enforcement personnel presenting as an agent provocateur to entrap men.

He consequently took that event and made a global hit of the episode with Outside. Whilst, I had never really been closeted about my sexuality, I’ve been out at work since in the 1990s in the various places I have worked in many countries, it was not until just a decade ago that I came out to one of my closest siblings.

Out in a rout

That revelation came with much distress on her part that when I was asked about it from another sibling, I was coy, even denying it. Meanwhile, for a while I had been badgered and harassed on many occasions in conversation with my parents about my marital status, some commentary and questions were just too difficult to address. I utilised the convenience of distance to avoid too much analysis of what I might be.

Besides, I was battling for another thing, my parents were in the UK in the 60s, and much as there was all the emancipation in social values, I could well remember that the worst thing you could say to anyone was, “You are a bugger.” With all the uses of bugger, the derogatory intent when deployed was complete in its contempt of the person so abused.

Learning to love me

It is hard enough coming out having seen the reactions of parents to that kind of revelation from basic disapproval, through being disinherited, sometimes thrown out of the home and in some societies, murder. This in somewhat emancipated societies, that somewhere between fear, shame and embarrassment, I felt there was no need for my parents to know anything about it. An acquaintance did suggest my stance was out of shame, though I decided not to take umbrage about that opinion.

Living in Europe, I had come from a time of being convulsed in guilt, being caught in liaisons that I could not defend and being a subject of blackmail that I refused to be subject to. I had come to accept who I was, made peace with the fact that I could live my life in comparison to an alternative life of the normal and the conformed, whatever that may be.

I am a gay man and with that comes all sorts of issues that one has to live with, in which I have found love, lasting friendships, extended periods of grief and a full awareness of the fact that I am just as human as any other.

I’m coming out, out, out

However, that December night, I told my friend, Funmi Iyanda that I was ready to put it all out there, if anyone was still in doubt or questioning about my sexuality, they should be left in no doubt about it. In countless blogs, you did not have to read between the lines to know some truths about me. Funmi then got to the task of writing this piece, she asked a few questions, sought some clarification and then just before she published the piece, she asked if I was fine with it.

I might have been a bit reticent, even considered informing my family about the possibility of this revelation going viral, but in the end, I decided, whatever comes of it is what comes of it, I had given the permission for it to go public from the hand of someone who had a huge following and we will deal with the consequences and the fallout if any.

I never expected the piece to have the reach it did when it was published on the 3^rd of January, it got within the sight of people I never thought would encounter it, and not soon after, my siblings were reading of this issue and maybe even displeased with me about it. I had laid my bed on this matter and I was going to lie on it, come what may.

Blog - FOR AKIN … on bravery, honesty and thriving.

The letter arrived in the furthest post box

In the week that followed, I kept a low profile as messages of support and encouragement came from far and wide. I probably only encountered two negative reports in all, and I thought it would all die down soon afterwards. It did not, for months, people found the piece, read it and then contacted me.

Just about 3 weeks ago, a message appeared on my phone with an instruction to alter aspects of my life along with an acknowledgement of my having followed that instruction, at 51? At first, I smiled and then I crafted a 4-part response about certain other intimate details of my life that probably no one else knew. It was sent and I waited, unsure of what might come of it.

Then I received a response, the recipient of my message after recomposing the parts that were first read from the third part had gone into shock. The realisation that there was much more to the situation than the specific ordering to act in a particular way. The reaction and the response were understanding, sympathetic, compassionate and conciliatory, it gave me the courage to pick up the phone and call to talk.

We are, where we are

We were sorry that some things had happened in the past that probably could no more be corrected, the answers being sought in all sorts of places appeared to have been revealed in the response I gave that touched on some sad events in my childhood. I was encouraged to just be myself and live my life. I suppose my response and the suggestion that the piece to read fully had given some perspective to a difficult situation.

I could not have arranged for any of this to turn out as it did, but there is no greater freedom in acceptance of self and being accepted for who you are. When it came down to it, it was about humanity, understanding and possibly regret, but never to cease the need to communicate, what I feared from childhood had dissolved into the reality of a lived life. My father had learnt through that piece that I am gay.

Nigeria: #PayKeshi - A minister incapable of shouldering responsibility

Goaded by embarrassment

Nothing gets the Nigerian government of Goodluck Jonathan as agitated to be vituperative in overwhelming defence of their policies than a public embarrassment.

We must agree as they have severally demonstrated; they have no capacity for shame, but embarrassment shines a light into the nooks and crannies of the failings of the system that they close ranks sending out spokespersons to the media and Twitter/Facebook minions onto social media to stem the tide of criticism.

Yesterday, the calumny descended to a new low, quite shamefully contemptible that it left many seething with rage.

A man of distinction humiliated

Stephen Keshi, 51, as the manager of the Nigerian national football team since 2011 has won the Africa Cup of Nations in February 2013 and has successful added Nigeria to the contingent going to the Brazil FIFA World Cup in 2014. [Wikipedia] [Wikipedia]

Despite his successes as a homegrown coach, as at July 2013, he was owed five months’ salary and out of desperation in October he lamented that he was owed seven months’ salary. Some of this has now been paid. [BBC] [Vanguard Nigeria]

These were his words, in October, “The lowest point of my career is working and not being paid for seven to eight months. I have never had this kind of experience before.” [Vanguard Nigeria]

He earlier stressed the point with, “I am not being favoured. Whatever I am doing here, I am doing it with everything I have and I need to be respected and be paid.” [Vanguard Nigeria]

Stephen Keshi was then reacting to comments attributed to the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF formerly the Nigeria Football Association NFA) that allowances and bonuses paid to coaching staff should be enough to sustain them. [Vanguard Nigeria]

A manner of calumny and atrocity

This appeared to embarrass the Minister of Sports, Bolaji Abdullahi, who yesterday upbraided Stephen Keshi for going public with this seriously untenable situation, some quotes from the news story are replicated verbatim below, courtesy of the Vanguard Nigeria newspaper. [Vanguard Nigeria]

“If NFA is having problems paying Keshi’s salary, it means that the system has a problem and that system has to be addressed.”

“When you get a job you do it and you don’t go about embarrassing your employers because your salary is delayed.”

Surely Keshi was right to talk

Nobody is saying the NFA/NFF does not have problems, however, if a performing and successful member of staff to whom the organisation has responsibilities and contractual obligations is not paid for up to 8 months that it becomes a demoralising and destabilising burden that could affect their productivity, there is cause for concern.

It is evident that from Stephen Keshi’s words that he was affected, despite that, he has fulfilled his contractual obligations without quibble, but with dedication and unrivalled patriotism worthy of the highest commendation.

And as the Sport Minister noted, if the NFA/NFF was having problems, it could report up the chain for intervention and resolution, it beggars belief that the NFF/NFA allowed the situation to deteriorate to the point that the coach had no other choice but to vent his spleen – 7 to 8 months with pay is just unspeakable.

A matter of assuming responsibility

This atrocity happened under the watch of the Minister of Sports. He had the choice of expediting the payment of all arrears along with an apology to all the staff owed their emoluments or in this case, for the embarrassment indicated by the failings of the NFA/NFF; he decided to make a villain of Stephen Keshi, a victim of the failed system in his ministry.

That is just shameful and lacking in sensitivity, though it is redolent of a culture of impunity amongst employers in Nigeria who get away with not paying salary on time, if at all with them demanding as in the words of the minister – “you get a job you do it and you don’t go about embarrassing your employers.”

I would say, the employer can avoid the embarrassment and shame by just paying the salaries.

That bill is essential

In conversations I participated in on Twitter, the matter of a third party owing the NFA/NFF sponsorship moneys was brought up. However, this is completely beside the point, a desperately unconscionable way to pass off blame and share the responsibility for what is essentially bureaucracy incompetence, lethargy, the lack of sensitivity and the lack of respect for the hardworking personnel who have brought plaudits and glory to Nigerian sport. [KickOff.com]

If the Workman (Unpaid Wages Prohibition) Bill had been passed through the legislative process to become law, the matter would have been cut-and-dried on the issue of responsibility. [Information Nigeria]

Somebody in the Sports Ministry hierarchy would have borne ultimate responsibility for the contracts and the payment of salaries to staff.

The organisation in the law would have faced a surcharge of up to 30% of two months’ wages for delaying salaries more than 30 days to a maximum of 60 days.

Any salary delays beyond 60 days will attract a 30% compensatory surcharge with the possibility of the employer serving a month in prison.

For Nigerian employees need it

The Minister clearly identified an employer – employee relationship between the coach and the NFA/NFF, a designated person will carry the sanction if imposed by the courts where the contractual obligations of prompt and full salary payments are left wanting.

It goes without saying that Nigeria is desperately in need of this punitive measure and law that protects the rights of employees whilst giving them the means to seek redress through an expedited legal process that provides specific legal guidance as to what is due, fair and just.

The NFA/NFF under the threat of sanction would have done everything possible to meet their obligations and the minister would have had no justification whatsoever to excoriate Stephen Keshi for speaking out for his right to be paid on time, in full, with due respect, courtesy and dignity becoming of an exemplary and hardworking Nigerian of repute and accomplishment.

A real man shares blame and glory

The Sports Minister has the gall to step forward to share in the laurels and the glory of sporting successes of Nigerians who still excel in spite of and despite the incompetence and negligence of the rotten bureaucracy, he heads. Where that system fails, he should unashamedly shoulder the responsibility for the lapses and the atrocities without looking to pass off blame to others.

His statement about Stephen Keshi was at best regrettable much as it was the display of utterly reprehensible conduct.

The humility of accepting blame

Those who have found ways to agree with the minister must for once find the humility in and magnanimous heart to sensitively take full responsibility and sue for justice rather than shirk and dissemble with sophistry.

Beyond this, Stephen Keshi becomes a poster boy for the many millions of Nigerians who have suffered the indignities of slave labour extracted on the forlorn hope of salaries that will never materialise.

I hope the legislature now sees why the passage of the Workman (Unpaid Wages Prohibition) Bill is of the utmost urgency with the case of Stephen Keshi putting a human face to unacceptable business practices in Nigeria.

Opinion: Tackling the Culture of Blacks Handling Disease

The taboos we must break

I found myself nodding in agreement to literally every line I read in this article published in The Body magazine – The Complete HIV/AIDS Resource – titled Breaking Through: HIV and African Americans.

If we removed HIV and replaced it with cancer, diabetes, hypertension, or misfortune, we would have subconsciously listed a sliding scale in terms in growing confidence to talk about how certain issues affect us.

Someone dying of the complications of HIV might only be able to accept that they are dying of cancer, the visible signs and sometimes along with diabetes means, we never attempt to ask more probing questions.

Our false stories

As I read the article, the writer informed that he had lost three relations, presumably African American to AIDS; two women, including his aunt and a man who insisted he was a heroin user when it was quite possible he was gay.

We have never been able to approach the reality of our diseases for the so many factors raised in that article. It is not just an African American thing; it is particularly African and probably broadly affects all non-Western cultures.

When I write blogs like this, I am wont to excerpting generous portions of the source material to make my points. However, I have decided we need to get the courage to begin to face the many issues that plague our communities as we suffer in silence, perpetuate the stigma and look at disease as the otherness that will never approach our steads.

We shock to numbness

We cannot deny that HIV/AIDS and cancer cuts a swathe through our communities like a wild forest fire that we treat as if it is insignificant, as our silence becomes a coping mechanism of convenience.

This means we fail to access health options and healthcare early enough for radical and timely intervention until it becomes an emergency exceeding effective medical treatment leaving us with just one option of palliative end-of-life care.

The story then becomes one of hospital visits, close family in shock at the apparently sudden deterioration in health of their relation as life slowly ebbs away no one the wiser about the truth until a nurse pulls one of the most affected relatives aside to say exactly what the diagnosis was. AIDS? Cancer? Usually not enemies scheming in the backyard, held at bay with Psalm 35.

There and then, the world collapses around every loved one and the questions start to flood the mind with prefixed inquisitive phrases of how long, how bad, how did, what can, how much – we have experienced this many times and yet we willingly hop on the vicious cycle of the culture of blacks handling disease badly.

The signs we ignore

We ignore the warning signs in the cause of the worry about the loss of our livelihood and the economic distress that accompanies a disease. Then visit our temples hoping and wishing for miracles with mountain-moving faith that had moves nothing more than the air that comes out of our mouths in fervent prayer, because we are in the mortal grip of fear; we rapidly approach an avoidable expiry date.

We listen to stories and conspiracies, we search for Shamanist cures in grottos that have defied the onslaught of civilisation and logic, imbibing awful concoctions too rotten for a recipe list and yet the temporary relief presages a catastrophic relapse before it is passed off in an obituary as a brief illness or a sudden death.

No fairy tale

These are the facts, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, the “Nigerian multi-instrumentalist musician and composer, pioneer of Afrobeat music, human rights activist, and political maverick” died of Karposi’s sarcoma, and it is a form of skin cancer usually brought on by AIDS.

His brother, a prominent AIDS activist and former minister of Health could only talk about AIDS affecting his family after the man had died. Nelson Mandela’s son also died of AIDS, but we only learnt of that after the fact.

As a cancer survivor, I know how much I have revealed about my condition and the secrets that I still keep for the fears, the shame, the stigma and many other attendant issues that dog our cultural outlook to disease.

Yet, as the article states, and this I will excerpt, “Magic Johnson has not been cured by some medicine being kept from us.”

Ignoring our possibility

We can expect better medical outcomes if we talk, if we act or react immediately and seek professional advice when things are changing in our bodies that we cannot account for in our daily routine.

Karposi’s sarcoma as a result of HIV/AIDS complications was already treatable in the 1990s, and anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs manage HIV to the extent that people living with HIV can live very productive lives.

We cannot ignore our way round reality, nor can we bargain away disease with the false comfort of vows and the sudden laying on of hands; we need to accept first by understanding what we have* and that will inform the kinds of interventions that medicine or therapy can help us with, in a timely fashion.

[*This includes, HIV/AIDS, cancer, diabetes, hypertension, depression, mental illness, misfortune – tag anything you want to the list.]

Medicine is not evil and churches are not hospitals, but the beginning of dealing with the problem that plagues our community with the poison of silence is to read an article in a HIV/AIDS magazine about respected black women in the family dying of AIDS in today's America.

Finally, go for that test, it is about your life and keeping it.

Click on the link and read - The Body - Breaking Through: HIV and African Americans

Thought Picnic: In life, we will always differ

Of secrets deep inside

Following on the issue of acceptance and understanding of my parents and relations concerning things that affect and define me, I realise there is much we probably will never get to talk about.

Many decisions and allowances have become the story I have never fully told, yet, I have friends urging and compelling me to reveal more facets of my makeup.

Finding a new direction

Beyond that, there are elements of activism that I am not too conversant with, but I have experience of because of whom I am and what I have.

To some, these issues are lifestyle choices, but to those who live within that framework, if we could really make those choices we would have made completely different ones.

There is no reason to go against the grain to prove a point deliberately, we are not obstinate and stubborn people geared to offend, upset and embarrass anyone, we are just human.

We suffer in silence

However, elements of our humanity are still difficult to understand and accept; some of it comes with fear, with shame, with stigma, with discrimination and sometimes violence unwarranted.

Besides this, some of us bear in ourselves a death sentence, organisms seeking to sap away our life force and yet we refuse to give in – we are survivors, telling a tale mostly to ourselves that we will see another day, another year and more beyond that.

Both different and the same

We just want to get on with our lives and not have to face the unremitting scrutiny of people who want to define our lives by what they consider the norms to which we cannot adhere.

When we do sit down to talk about some difficult and hard truths, we might be different but no less than anyone else engaged in the pursuit of love, happiness, peace, joy and a life worthy of remembrance and positive impact in our communities.

Nigeria: How We Sacrifice Our Children to Paedophiles

Our Child Sexual Abuse Shame

It made my blood boil when I first read snippets of this story in Chxta’s Daily Dispatches, the case of a 7-year old girl who was repeated sexually abused by grown men that the magistrate found it just to release one of the paedophile rapists on bail whilst committing the girl to remand in a Child Correctional Centre. [Full Story]

There is no doubt that we find the issue of child sexual abuse difficult to understand or manage in Nigeria, it is there, children suffer but find no avenue, forum or platform to ask for protection and ultimately justice.

Community Spirit and Commodifying Assault

It is so disheartening to read of the ordeal and terror the 7-year old girl went through from grooming, inducements and threats to her life that the paedophile made it routine to seek sexual pleasures of the poor innocent child as her guardians strove to make ends meet as well as care for the child.

Our community spirit implicitly expects that amongst adults, a child is safe and will be free from abuse whilst any responsible adult in that setting rises to the occasion if need be to protect or extract the vulnerable from untenable situations.

However, when it comes to sexual abuse, everyone seems to clam up, no one wants to countenance the idea that some respectable member of the community has crossed the line to the utterly reprehensible that they all close ranks and the victim is left to suffer from the pall of shame and silence that has enveloped the community.

What Law Allows This?

The girl gave such a gruesome tale of the many times the rotten men took advantage of her and her guardians might well have been derelict in their responsibilities of care, love, attention and protection but to then send the girl to a Child Correction Centre really smacks of the lowest form of apathy that should only belong to fiction.

The  Magistrate, Mrs E. B. Daudu of Ikeja Magistrate Court, does not have to be a mother to be aware of what this child has suffered but if there is any law or recommendation for justice that has informed her of this heinously contemptible decision, it must be expunged from our legal tomes with immediate effect for our humanity first and then for the sake of basic civilisation.

Only a Barbarous community with a primitive mindset redolent of primates of the jungle will see any inkling of justice in freeing the criminal and incarcerating the victim, a child at that.

Our Duty to Childhood Failing

What could she have done wrong to deserve such a double denial of justice, fairness, respite and at worst motherly concern that her attackers have gotten off lightly and she is condemned to institutionalised care? A correctional facility at that as if her crime is to be a vulnerable child who has had the misfortune of being born in Nigeria.

The child should be able to roam free and develop without being fearful of abuse or assault. Whilst guardians do have responsibilities, children cannot be held on leash like dogs though it also means sexual predators be kept off the streets.

We Need New Thinking

With this case, the sexual predators will only seek another to abuse and when done, probably murder the victim to prevent being exposed as they were with this particular issue – this must be unacceptable to every well-meaning Nigerian.

It would be easy to advocate kicking Mrs E. B. Daudu off the bench, excoriating the police and child protection agencies with unspeakable vitriol and lynching the miscreants mercilessly but what we need is a change in thinking in our communities, we must not tolerate, condone or excuse paedophilia making the culprits pay a hefty price and giving the victims all the consideration, empathy and support required to heal them of those rotten experiences they lived through.

Nigeria: Celebrating the Banditry of James Ibori at 54

A birthday celebration

I woke up this morning minded that I will escape the need to tweet anything crazily absurd about Nigeria and just have a swimmingly smooth day. No sooner than that thought had crossed my mind I clicked on a link that brought up a picture and that was the end of my wish.

The associates of Chief James Onanefe Ibori [1], the ex-governor of Delta State and current jailbird in Her Majesty’s Prison accommodation in the United Kingdom will be gathered [2] at his Oghara Country Home in Delta State to celebrate a “Birthday of Reconciliation” highlighting his 54^th birthday anniversary with a praise and worship service presided over by three “eminent” men of the cloth.

We need friends

Now, regardless of the tribulations by omission or commission a man faces in life, it is of the greatest hope that he is not deserted by friends and that might be the case with James Ibori, he still has friends and that is probably a good thing.

What is dangerous is having friends who are dishonest, disingenuous or who choose to remain obdurately oblivious of the truth about one’s character, behaviour and reprehensible acts.

Living legend?

In a full page advert taken out to announce this celebration which should have been private and completely out of earshot for its odium they have suggested James Ibori is “The Living Legend of Resource Control Struggle.”

These people must be having a big laugh at our expense because if this is to suggest James Ibori was at the forefront of the Niger Delta struggle, then I must have been living in a parallel universe not to have noticed it.

However, what we know by reason of the case of fraud and money laundering [3] brought against him in the UK is that a man on a £4,000 per annum confidently bought a house in the UK worth £2.2m.

Beyond that, the litany of looting is such that the judge in the case said it was impossible to ascertain how much James Ibori frittered away in avarice par excellence that makes the mind boggle.

Let it be known that James Ibori had acquired his riches "at the expense of the some of the poorest people in the world".

These people stink

In any case, disgraced, convicted and jailed in a foreign land along with his wife, his mistress and lawyer, there are people albeit of dubious respectability who are gathered to laud this man as some champion of a cause that seriously escapes me.

The associates [4] of this bounder, scoundrel, fraud and thief have successfully corralled into their disreputable assembly the South South Vice President, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Archbishop God-Do-Well Avwomakpa, as guest preacher, while Rev. Gbejero and Rev. Oyibo would also minister.

It begs the question where the moral compass of Nigeria is if men of the cloth are cavorting with those who in other polite societies would be completely shunned until slowly rehabilitated when memory fails us, it is beyond shameful the hold that money and Mammon has over many church leaders that they will forget principle, character and tenet to sup with those without any virtue worthy of the barest emulation.

Where is our polite society?

The repugnant occasion will be chaired by an elder statesman and Professor Emeritus, B.I.C Ijeomah, a one-time eminent social science professor who by his involvement in this charade is neither distinguished nor reputable – but we probably have no discernment of character in Nigeria once the money is on the table to judge who we should associate with and who we should shun.

In another country, no one will publicly associate with James Ibori apart from his lawyers one of whom is serving time for serving him, he will be stripped of all honours and dignities and left so full of shame that he will seek a low profile exile in some faraway land.

Give no honour to them

Nigeria is not about to see that kind of society, though James Ibori will be kept at Her Majesty’s pleasure for 13 years or probably less than that, he will most definitely return to Nigeria triumphantly, celebrated to the rafters to find great honour amongst thieves like himself who have milked and bilked Nigeria dry with impunity and without consequence.

We can however avoid this shameful parade of the notoriously ignominious by excoriating in the sternest terms all who gather to celebrate corruption and worse as they continue to give our dear country a very bad name and image.

Stop this nonsense

Invite yourself to that rotten assembly at Oghara on the 4^th of August 2012 and make all the attendees as uncomfortable as you can get them, we need to repudiate these congregations of the reprehensible and give no place to the indefensible – we will do our bit on Social Media.

Nothing on God’s good earth should give licence to this decadent fanfare.

Sources

[1] James Ibori - Wikipedia

[2] James Ibori 54^th Birthday Advert

[3] Former Nigeria governor James Ibori jailed for 13 years | BBC News

[4] Associates to honour Ibori at 54 | Daily Independent

Other reference

Nigeria: Celebrating Honour Amongst Thieves

Thought Picnic: Légion d'honte to the French XI

Unacceptable conduct

The indiscipline of the French team at this World Cup is breath-taking in its depiction and despicable in all respects. Regardless of whether the manager of the French team had lost the respect of players and fans there was nothing that could warrant the insult and abuse that he suffered of the words from Nicholas Anelka.

If anything, what we must take away from this is that talent and success does not necessarily breed good character and conduct – in football, we do celebrate talent but that should not transform the talented into an automatic role model, much more should be desired and expected.

The haughtiness of success

It is unfortunate that players can become so full of themselves that their ability to submit to authority and respect leadership is lost, they thinking that by their ability they are not answerable to anyone and have by reason of prowess become indispensable and irreplaceable.

When one plays for one’s country, it is an honour, a privilege and a calling to a cause greater than oneself to participate in a team committed to bringing glory to the motherland – the case with the French-XI 2010 has done more to bring shame and derision to a country that once was the pride of world football when they lifted the World Cup in 1998.

Missing the point

The captain of the team completely missed the point when he said Anelka was not the problem but the traitor that made the abuse public. Well, there would have been no need for seeking a traitor if Anelka had been of impeccable behaviour at first and even if the case were made public and Anelka had gracefully apologised, the situation would have not have descended into a farce.

The situation was just not acceptable and it was right regardless of the opinions of other team players to send such a perpetrator of reprehensible behaviour home in disgrace and ignominy.

Treasonable is the word

The decision of the team to refuse to train plumbed the depths of juvenile obduracy bordering on treasonable by reason of the bringing the name of the fatherland into disrepute which should be punished once their tenure in this World Cup is over.

Not one of those players should ever wear the colours of France again as an example to others who might be tempted to treat the call to national duty with levity. It should be a salutary lesson to every player called to play for country anywhere else in the world – the French must lead in the instilling of proper discipline in national teams as an example and template for the future.

Bad conduct deserves no rewards

The greater providence in this matter should be that no success should emanate from this behaviour allowing for them to proceed to the next round, this kind of saga cannot dominate the headlines to the detriment of better behaved and performing teams at this World Cup.

With the already known change of coach should be the clean sweep of the stink of this delinquency and even though now they have returned to training and stated they are playing for honour, it smacks of hubris and cant to even pretend to virtue after atrocious conduct and rank immaturity presaging a pall of irresponsibility and bad example.

They can only be deserving of one honour in France and it should be the Légion d'honte. Shame, on all of them.