When moral standing is made homeless

Knowing when you are there

Like mine, I could imagine that many minds are filled with one type of regret or the other, where an unfortunate lack of insight at an opportunity we find ourselves in is not used to any benefit until we have left that position.

The power of hindsight reveals how we have misused both opportunity and responsibility, when that unique situation we were presented with offered more than we realised we could do.

A friend tried to contextualise this with people who have been in power, position, and providence, who failed to understand what they could do to change, improve, or give enduring value to things and on their exit have resorted to writing memoirs about how they were unable to do things they were so uniquely able to do, when they were in that position.

Perfect vision outside power

However, this extends into other spheres of existence how when not endued with power, much is said, but when those who saw so clearly out of power assume power, the realities dictate everything that borders on hypocrisy and worse.

How one can soon forget the moral standing that comes with position that you are left defending the indefensible and justifying the unjustifiable.

Much as a critique of our current government is difficult, it can be encapsulated in the recent resignation last week of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Minister for Homelessness and Democracy) whose brief and responsibilities need detailing for context and understanding.

• Homelessness and rough sleeping
• Housing delivery and strategy engagement
• Homeownership and homebuying process
• Supported housing and domestic abuse
• Elections policy and delivery
• Planning casework

A total lack of awareness

It just so happens that as she was pushing reforms through the parliamentary process, she ran afoul of the protections she was seeking to put in place. She evicted her tenants on the pretext of needing to sell her property, only to put the property back on the rental market, a couple of weeks later, at a hiked-up rate.

She might protest that she had done nothing wrong and every idea that this was rank hypocrisy might have been an unfortunate coincidence of realising her property could not be sold for the asking price, leaving her no other option but to access the rental market again, but other lives are unravelled and upturned, I dare say, landlord greed entered the fray.

Invariably, she created an untenable situation for herself in government, that the only recourse was to tender her resignation. You cannot superintend a law where appearances suggest that it is one law for others whilst you find yourself outside the ambit of the same law being promulgated.

Then taxes went up again

Moreso, I can remember in March 2024, the current Prime Minister then in opposition lamented that we had reached the highest tax burden in 70 years, only for them to gain power in July 2024 to find a £20 billion black hole.

That has instigated another tax hike that might take the burden to the highest in about a century, but how amnesia has overwhelmed any reckoning or memory. [BBC News: Tory Budget 2024: Is the tax take the highest for 70 years?] [BBC News: Labour Budget 2024: Key points at a glance]

Meanwhile, that was £45 less, per month, on my take home pay when it all took effect, and they are not yet done with the proposed tax rises. It just looks like the black hole is getting bigger. [BBC News: Reeves must raise tax to cover £41bn gap, says think tank] [The Guardian: Reeves and Starmer to prepare ground for tax rises in a difficult autumn budget]

Let’s talk for the voiceless

It is easy to talk in opposition, when in power, reality bites and the choices to be made are more impactful and far-reaching than they let on. Let us not delude ourselves, our politicians are in the same game of trade-offs, beholding to some with great influence and less so to those without a strong voice.

Except if you were a tenant of Rushanara Ali who were fortunate to have their distress amplified enough to force the minister’s hand, you are like many, on your own. [BBC News: Homelessness Minister Rushanara Ali quits over rent hike claims]

The responsibility of having opportunity and being in power is a great one, we often fail to make it easier for those who gave us that opportunity to do something significant.

Dreamscape: Of friendships, in conflicts and strong voices

The outlay

I cannot remember how long ago the dramatis personae were in the latest dramatic episode of parasomnia where the script is an ad hoc exhibition of wild and vividly imagination occluding and folding time into a present continuous of endless juxtapositions and unlimited human abilities that science fiction will not dare to touch.

My father had gone away when his best friend who passed on last November had come round to ask for the use of his car. I promptly deactivated the security my mother having consented, and the deed was done. In dreams, there are backstories that come to view as memory during the playback of events you cannot place, and this one, I do not remember giving access to the car, yet I was bought into the premise.

The setup

When he returned, he had no knowledge that the car was used until it came up in conversation with his friend. As he is wont to do, he was completely sceptical that the car had been moved at all because there was no record in the odometer or tracking system that the security had been tampered with. That was where fingers were pointed at me by his friend that not only had I bypassed security, but I had also overridden all protective systems, it became a thing of jest that so seriously annoyed my father.

Rather than have a discussion with me about the issue, he took his frustration out on me resorting an instrument of corporal punishment that he handily wielded from our childhood to exert authority and respect. As it was in a public place, I was apparently conversant with customs not to resist or attack, I let him have his way, humiliating me as others watched without intervening even as what I did was at their insistence.

The fightback

Later, he came at me again in private and we got into a struggle, I was having none of it and then I went to bed. Quite overcome with the injustice of it all, I got up and was in a crowded courtyard where my mother was serving food to quite a few people. I attracted her attention asking to talk but gave way to a few desperately hungry and possibly homeless people hoping once their urgent requirement was served, I would be allowed a hearing, but I was altogether ignored.

I adjusted my voice and bellowed, “Can I have an audience?”, at which point, I could no more be ignored and the whole crowd fell silent to listen to what I had to say. I am not much of a public speaker, but I gave it my best shot occasionally losing my voice but recovering soon enough to make coherent sentences.

My statement

Uncle Jimi, though I have never called him that before, I said, was a father-figure such that if my father were absent, he would not have to be asked to take on that role. There was no way I would have refused him access to use my father’s car and with my mother’s consent, he did have the car when he required it. I was rather disappointed that they allowed my father to abuse me without even attempting to restrain him.

Whilst I was busy speaking, my implacable father came wielding a big stick again, but this time we had a full-on confrontation as I tackled him the apparently big stick shrunk into a length of flimsy string, his hand hanging down with the incredulity of how his instrument of power and enforcement became nothing of any threat. Yet, it was in the words I spoke than in any physical tussling that this happened.

Leaving the courtyard to return to my bedroom with my brother, along the way, he wanted to go to see my father as I worried that he might not have access to the house if we did not go together. Then across the stream just before a bridge that could be easily crossed, I saw a wolf with a colourful iridescent coat approaching as if towards prey. I growled at it, it cowered in fear and slunk away. My phone rang and that is how I was awoken from my apparent nightmare; it was Brain on the other end.

I prevail

All day, I have been reviewing the events in my mind as I narrated the dream to friends, the seemingly incessant conflicts between my father and I, caught in a time warp of when we were literally of equal strength and I always gaining the upper hand. The situation where the presumed reasonableness he possesses is quickly dispensed for the physical, but more pertinently, the bond of friendship with his best friend that we all celebrated.

Then, one thing I have realised and learnt through life is I have to speak for myself, for fairness, for justice and to arrest that abuse of power and authority by those who think they are unassailable and inviolable. The voice against oppression must be heard and it is there to disarm completely. Another dreamscape.

Hark! The bleeding obvious

What you already know

Unsurprisingly, I seem to be good at stating the bleeding obvious, usually by example or analogy, maybe crude raconteuring, though, not a skill I would even pretend I possess. As many who read my blog would already know, I am a believer in voices, everyone has a voice, and except if you are an impressionist, you will generally speak in your own voice, except if you are performing.

The ease with which we breath when not belaboured by stress or infirmity is done by our need for the oxygen that is taken from the air breathed in and the need to expel carbon dioxide as we breath out. The pace and rhythm are done and regulated by voluntary and involuntary functions mainly in ourselves except if ventilated.

Where you are already going

For those who journey, they plan a course to a destination, choose their mode of transport and might resourcefully adapt to all sorts of conditions, those they choose or are scheduled, rarely changing course except for distraction, deviation, disturbance or distress, which could within certain situations be ameliorated.

What is within our control we do with much diligence than we acquit ourselves for and when met with obstacles we sometimes find ourselves better prepared for eventualities than we ever thought ourselves equipped for. Invariably, much as we cruelly measure ourselves against unnecessary standards and outmoded goals, we may not be perfect, but we are usually good, quite good enough, yet let the perfect get in the way of the good, and produce nothing. That’s a shame.

For everyone can blog, they have amazing stories to tell, in their own voices, through their own breath, on their own journeys and within the controls they exercise that no one can upend. Need I say more?

Thought Picnic: Traversing the universes of the mind

Deep calling upon deep

As human beings we are a mystery unexplained and sometimes too complex and indecipherable to comprehend. The physical we see does not begin to plumb the depths of our nature, our thoughts, and our inclinations.

In the world of dreams the mind travels beyond the realms of the possible to universes of experiences unfathomable. The people who crowd into the movies of our subconscious bridging the expanses of time and space that is it impossible to fully relate or remember.

The stuff of dreams

That I have covered amazing distances in incredible leaps or flown like a superhero between continents is not so much a strange thing. Traversing the worlds of the natural and the supernatural with superhuman abilities display the unlimited expanse of the imagination only trammelled by the extent to which we can afford to be curious.

Whilst it might be alarming to some, that at the same time and place, voices and faces of the long departed, the knowing present and the unknown future can play in conversation, admonition or the creation of new experiences is a wonder that words can never fully explain. I have fought in my dreams and talked loudly in some, caught up in battles I can never understand how I got into but given the means to win through.

Dimensions unmeasurable

I cannot afford to be afraid of the power of my mind to conjure and to compel, they are gifts of the subconscious we all have to gain strength to surmount things we heretofore would never have had the courage to face.

A human alive is a mystery and through trial and tribulation, there is a force of hope, the assurance of faith and the power of love to take us beyond the ethereal existence of dreams to a reality that is the stuff of miracles come true.

Nigeria: You'll keep hearing from us in the diaspora

Out, yet about

I have been out of Nigeria for a long time, 29 years in 3 days and I have my reasons. However, my absence from Nigeria has not become isolation or disengagement from Nigeria. I have a Nigerian heritage, I share elements of my identity with Nigerian, and I have significant members of my family, parents, and siblings in Nigeria.

What gets me agitated is when people assume Nigerians abroad have abandoned the country and by that should have no say in what happens there. There is a trope of othering that is becoming the mainstay of some influential commentators n social media who expect us to shut up and slink into insignificance rather than be heard or seen.

Fossils endure still

I had to deal with this way back in 2007 when a son of the then President of Nigeria working for Microsoft visited home and regaled us with pictures of servants at the presidential palace of Aso Rock sleeping in atrocious penurious conditions without any sense of appreciating how unreflective that situation was.

He went on to say, “I like how Naija (jargon for Nigeria) people who have abandoned their country like you carry on as if they are more Naija than anyone else.”

Blog - Did I abandon Nigeria?

In my addressing this issue in the blog I wrote then, I gave reasons why I might have abandoned Nigeria, it was however rich of him to suggest those in the diaspora were carrying on as if we were more Nigerian than anyone else, considering he is of great privilege and his father was still around 3 decades after he first left power in 1979.

See us here

Then, I do not presume to suggest that Nigerians in the diaspora should arrogate to themselves primacy in the affairs of Nigeria, but they can neither be ignored nor be seen as insignificant. A few months ago, a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers averred that Nigerian migrants remitted 6.1% of its GDP in 2018 at $23.63 billion which was a 17% increase on 2017, with estimates expected to rise in the next three years to US$25.5bn, US$29.8bn and US$34.8bn respectively. [PwC Report PDF]

The Central Bank of Nigeria disputes the estimate suggesting it is closer to a tenth, what is surprising is how nothing is said to account for the sudden downward trend that had been growing linearly for over a decade. [CBN – Vanguard]

I have used the case of the volume of remittance to propose the idea that like as taxation might spur a popular demand for government accountability, leading to better governance. The contributions of the diaspora cohort should earn them a right as stakeholders to have a say in what happens in Nigeria.

We’re all affected

The truth is everyone who has a Nigerian heritage is affected by the situation in Nigeria whether at home or abroad. The prosperity of Nigeria is the prosperity of all of us and the less of a burden on those who sometimes have to cater for the absence of a social welfare system and other social services and infrastructure deficits that hold progress back in Nigeria. Beyond that, we should be able to have a conversation on the political, economic, social and human rights situation in Nigeria towards affecting and improving outcomes.

Last night, I had to tackle another of those myopic and reductive views of Nigerian in diaspora and their contributions to the Nigerian system in all its ramifications. We might have left Nigeria, we are still involved, engaged, affected and contributing in varied measures to address issues that concern family, friends, strangers, charities and any other sphere we can find to influence for the better.

I left Nigeria for the last time on a delayed flight with Nigeria Airways on the 30th of December 1990, I am part of that pontificating lot that remitted over $25 billion to Nigeria in 2018, we've earned the right to pontificate whether it is liked or not. https://t.co/mCMivYFbXb

— Akin Akíntáyọ̀ 🏳️‍🌈 #FBPE (@forakin) December 26, 2019

Our voices will be heard

We are not going away and those who cannot stand other Nigerians abroad having a voice would have to lump it or leave it, we all have a stake in the country and earlier we begin to realise we need each other, the better it would be for us to create the unity of purpose to bring the change, we desire to see in Nigeria.

Our silence will not be bought nor will our contributions which arrive as remittances but permeate the full-body polity of Nigeria be considered insignificant as to render us voiceless.

In brotherhood/sisterhood we have to stand to make a difference, we the unwitting ambassadors of Nigeria in our respective foreign communities creating the impressions that help positive views of the country along with the hardworking hands and minds in-country making a direct and effective difference in the lives of their localities.

Give Your Voice To Rights That Don't Matter To You In 2013

Harmony from afar

The old song goes, “I’ll like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony …” We all know that the world is singing many songs and mostly never the same words, or the same tempo and harmony is so distant that we hold hands and sway our heads into a dreamland of Utopia hoping it signifies peace and harmony.

To sing we need a voice and to that voice we need the words, lyrics that represent our humanity, our struggles, our victories, our losses, our pains, the quest for justice, the call for war, the identities we have or the differences we want to project – there is much for song and much to do.

A world riven

The voice is important, it is critical to producing the sound we need all to hear to bring people to listen so that they can reason and then hopefully they can agree.

We live in an unequal world riven with great injustices, wars, disease, poverty, dispute and much else with people populating the broadest spectrum of extremes between palatial comfort and atrocious discomfort – we cannot stand still and watch the world go by.

Lend your voice

I challenge you to lend your voices this year to that which is just, that which is fair, that which lifts and confers rights on the least amongst us and the most different from us.

We should extricate ourselves from rules, creeds, customs, beliefs, traditions and cultures that bind us to age-old systems that persecute and prosecute others needlessly and become the Good Samaritan of humanity setting people free to be the best they can be because of the brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity we all belong to.

Stand!

Let colour, tribe, language, region become insignificant and enter the global village of what allows us to laugh together rather than cry in anguish, what makes us shout in unison than shoot at each other and what lets us embrace those we once saw as lepers rather than ostracise them.

There is much to stand up and be counted for in the quest for human rights and the protection of the same, the campaigning against abuse; the abuse of children, of women, of the vulnerable and of the powerless, rolling back the cloudy pall of sententiousness for the fresh air of acceptance and the fight against institutionalised corruption, racism, rape, victimisation and oppression.

Your voice, the seed

This is not a call to forsake your values but to use your values better to give value to others that you might once have been tempted if only in the slightest to deem worthless.

The voice amongst our friends, in our communities, in our societies, in our countries and well beyond that into the world is what will make the difference to both your lives and those of others around you.

Appeal to reason and reasonableness, persuade but do not dismiss, disagree but refuse to be disagreeable, you are allowed to be irreverent without being disrespectful – call out the hypocrites and expose falsehood – stand with the honest, just and true always because they will always matter.

Know yourself, know others

There is no shelter in excuses and using moral equivalences to justify your position stop you having the essentially critical self-examination and self-scrutiny you need to adapt and change for the better.

There is a voice in you that needs to be heard, in your experiences, your intellect, your unique thinking unclouded by indoctrination, and the better world you want to see – Speak up, stand out, make waves – for when your voice is heard for the least amongst you, you protect both yourselves and others from future oppression that could be overwhelming and unassailable if in your silence you lost those who would have done everything to stand with you and for you.

Make it a year where you fight for rights that mean nothing to you but mean the most to those whose lives and the pursuit of happiness depend on it.

Happy New Year!

Thought Picnic: Resumenda vox mea

Fiducia mea frangitur (Latin)

Of all the things I lost to illness and there are many things to which I cannot begin to put a quantifiable monetary value on, what has been most difficult to recover has been my confidence.

The ability to project myself with the extraversion that comes with knowing what I know and knowing what I can do had diminished that I had literally lost my presence in voice, in tone and in assertiveness.

It fell to just my ability to write to keep an aspect of my expression alive, that was the only kindling I had left and it never failed me.

The bearing environmental factors

However, when it came to pushing my professional abilities, I just did not have the verve and the drive, that is where I needed the most help, this, being able to rediscover myself and stand tall knowing who I am.

Something in my character had become feeble and fragile as the worlds I built around me collapsed in ruinous calamity; a tale to make strong men cry in anguish, if not in resignation.

The environment in which I had suffered great ruin was no more fertile for the regeneration of self and esteem, something radical had to be done.

Making changes

That chapter was closed by following some advice I took over 12 years ago when an occupational therapist told me I was suffering the classic symptoms of a mid-life crisis 10 years early and that I had to do something radical like change my career, change my country of residence or do something as mundane as take up a new hobby.

That was when I moved to the Netherlands and it amazingly rejuvenated my zest for life, my sense of daring and adventure along with the renewed hunger for learning that I took on a Masters course with enthusiasm I had not known for ages.

Making changes again

Just to show how the change of environment can alter perspective, focus, realities, vision and boost morale to levels that make things happen like miracles – I have only relocated six days and things are looking really exciting, I feel confident, I have found my voice and that quality of assertiveness is coming forth quite noticeably.

In due course, I will share even more about what is going on, but the power of a journey to new places to change the direction of life such that one is not left in a rut cannot be underestimated – I have lived this reality twice already – I know.

Thought Picnic: Vulnerability offering opportunity

Finally answering the call

I relented this morning when the phone rang; it was the Patriarch who I’ve been avoiding for the past month.

Whilst there is pleasure in conversation it veers too frequently to matters that concern others more than the principal.

Every reticence on those matters seems to embolden the resolve to alter the course of one’s life and decisions to ends that might well satisfy the desires and requirements of the protagonists but those things are not in my purview at all.

Taking liberties

There was a time an understanding that whilst advice was welcome the decisions were chiefly mine, the use of English to narrow the Power-Distance Index allowing for very frank talk should have put paid to this but one might well have been playing soft ball in situations requiring a bit more assertiveness.

The annoying if not bordering on the despicable ploy has been to use the unfortunate times of vulnerability as the opportunity to push their agenda.

There is a case for companionship and care when ill but that should not result in a permanent relationship, worse still was to cite the survivors at bereavement as the warning to act.

My view of friends

There are some rights I can exercise without the need to consult anyone, as refusing to take calls I do not consider encouraging or helpful, the decision to terminate communication if subtle entreaties do not yield the desired adjustments.

One has been reliably informed that friends prevent me from the responsibility of marriage and family – I beg to differ – rather friends respect my views and do not interfere with decisions I have made because they think they know better – besides, I have the friends around me, the more concerned have not been seen in decades.

Despite this, I am

They all mean well, parents are what they are, parents; siblings are who they are, siblings but none have good enough excuses to meddle in my affairs beyond where I have given latitude for them to roam.

So, I answered the call and as usual an antagonistic accusation came forth to which I have adopted the golden rule of silence; this could first appear to be an broken connection but it also helps to move the conversation on – if I had to say what I had in mind, my heart would have been out at the repair shop.

We are back to the fundamentals again – accept my choices or lose your voices in my affairs.

Thought Picnic: Accept my choices or lose your voices

A message without a practical purpose

The fights, the abuses, the physical violence in the name of discipline, the histrionics of which the detail cannot be revealed all wrapped up in the history of child development and parental adjustment or maybe parental development and child adjustment.

Many years ago, the message of the Messiah swept through campuses and before you knew it, they were caught on the message but not necessarily the messenger or its purpose but they were naïve and they thought they had found the truth.

The fact is, most of the time the purveyors of this message never looked at the life application parts of the making the message practical, they prayed prayers that never got answered and tried to move mountains that were the load-bearing walls of the world – indeed, they could move mountains but what if the world collapsed upon them?

It all made sense and really their lack of understanding made it all nonsense, not the message but the appreciation of the message.

The wrath of the parents

Then their parents found out, warnings followed threats, the withdrawal of support, the power of persuasion through the fear of the loss of support, physical violence predicated on beating the hell out of you – they already had the hell out of them by reason of their accepting religion, one would have thought.

The parents had other experiences, the taking up of religion seemed to have distracted once promising and ambitious people from their purpose and this new belief system made no allowances for having a balanced structure of life and faith.

They would eventually learn that time for deity does not necessarily equate to time in the religious house of worship, endless vigils, loud prayers and gesticulations not far off those of the prophets of Baal when they pitted against Elijah – Maybe you should scream louder, he taunted them – quoting from the Book with every sense of knowledge without accompanying wisdom – this world needs to be lived in successfully; if I might add, relationships need to be built and cultivated, character needs to be strengthened and our intellect is there for the purpose of stimulation.

Unfortunately, the religious landscape is still littered with fanatics rather than scholars, followers of religious celebrities rather than a collegiate of knowledge experts, people looking to be entertained with the spectacular rather than ones who are vessels of power and wonder – it has not changed, it has gotten worse.

The first ambush

Back to the parent-child dichotomy, beyond all that is the ambush – the ambush involves getting every respected, reverenced and feared personality in the purvey of the parents to prevail on the child.

With mock encouragement, inducements, bribes and more serious threats, the child is caught between the polarities of dogged stubbornness as a sign of fervent faith and apostasy as a sign of respecting and honouring ones parents – it should never have been that stark a choice with accommodation on both sides, but we all had been poorly schooled – the threats continue as the parents still unrelenting do the unspeakable and the child is scarred with the unmentionable.

The new ambush

That hell has passed and they have moved on the parents having accepted that the child would really do what it has determined to do and somehow in all the fuzziness of the chaotic moments a quarter of a century ago something has blossomed – the child has not become a social misfit as the mother once said, nor is the child amounting to nothing as the father did say.

New battles have started and it is now all troops on a warpath – the child has not "matured" in their eyes because vows have not been taken, the child is not "responsible" because it has no responsibilities of rearing a brood of childlins – the parents are angst ridden, wily, intrusive and have basically reverted to type; bludgeoning the kid with their desires.

At a time when great celebrations are to be had, when the presence of the child at such great occasions would be welcome, the child wonders and resolves that this time – accept my choices or lose your voices in my affairs.

This great occasion offers the opportunity for an ambush – do I want to walk into this one – I think not. The thinking continues somewhere else in the vast cathedral of the mind.

Note: I had planned to call this The Ambush but as I poured out my thoughts the new title as a Thought Picnic seems the most suitable.