Thought Picnic: My long dance with failure

The smarter of a big bunch

In primary school, I can say I was brilliant, though not good enough to beat Maya from Bulgaria to the first place.

I never revised or liked homework, examinations and tests were always a chore, but I did what I had to do, coming 2^nd most times and probably 3^rd once. In my last year, I was out of school for four months doing common entrance tests for secondary schools in the Nigerian South-West, when I returned, I still came 10^th out of 22 in the class.

Just average

Secondary school was a different regime, homework and assignments were part of the continuous testing regime apart from the end-of-term and end-of-year examinations.

I probably wrote the shortest scripts and was out of the exam hall in half the time, my performance in those terms were mediocre and scores average that I was in the top fifth of the class, but hardly celebrated.

Many of those ahead were naturally gifted and smart though the teaching technique of learning by rote and evaluation in some cases of regurgitating lesson notes verbatim in answering exam questions would have had me handicapped. If I was endeared to any teacher and there were a few, it was because I was articulate, we never had oral examinations, no, not the dentist.

Succeeding at failure

After secondary school, the first four years of study in two different schools yielded nothing, I did not need to report the events at the first where I was advised to withdraw because I made it into the premier polytechnic in Nigeria of that time.

Much as there were distractions, what I realised with hindsight and I have written about before was I never really made headway academically. I attended classes I completely drew a blank in, I was like a zombie in class but able to thrive in student union politics and getting co-opted into religious activities.

I played truant in secondary school and here too, the classes were boring, the teachers were evil and the lecturer was either bombastic or had the worst command of English ever, it was tortuous beyond belief, I had to extricate myself. The die was cast for tragedy.

Depressing the F-key

I was in trouble and somehow I did not understand what it was between depression and probably something worse because the mental capacity was there, but the engagement was missing, it was like I had no purpose or direction and before long my world came crashing down.

Blog - Thought Picnic: Are those blanks signs of depression?

Under duress, I repeated my second year after my father pulled all the strings to get me readmitted but I was far gone. At the end of that year when the results came out, I left home to check my results first running an errand for my dad.

I did not return home that evening, I went missing for well over a week and there began a new chapter in my life, an acknowledged failure, the child of role model parents, between them a successful accountant and a secondary school principal of 10 years.

That is the lay in for my next blog. The link would appear in the blog below when I have written it.

Blog - Thought Picnic – My world, their world.

Thought Picnic: How experience humbles our generosity of spirit

Peeling away at the sores

Experience seems to bring us into close encounter with the core of our humanity. It is in experience that we begin to discover who we really are, if what we can do in comfort can be reflected similarly in the presence of discomfort.

We may deign to understand, dare to sympathise or attain the supreme expression of empathy, but when we are touched, how would our minds change, and how would our concern for others dissolve for the ascendancy of the trumpeting of our self-pity?

How would we attempt to magnify our circumstances almost to the level that suggests we have been ravaged by the greatest disaster ever to overwhelm humanity?

They are questions we must ask ourselves always.

Beyond belief

Yesterday, I heard a sermon where the preacher told a story of a tightrope walker who did his act over the Niagara Falls many times with greater daring-do each new time he attempted the feat.

Charles Blondin did many feats, blindfolded, on stilts, trundling a wheelbarrow and even carrying his manager on his back as well as frying an omelette midway. It got to a point that people believed he could do anything, however, the same people when asked to sit in the wheelbarrow for a tightrope walk balked at the idea.

Experience takes issues to another level just as having to place one’s trust in the death defying feats of Charles Blondin to be a participant called on a new level of trust, a trust in circumstances one would have no control over until the feat is completed, the risk of it going wrong coming to the fore, in their minds.

Disaster comes here

There are many natural disasters around the world, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, typhoons, tsunamis, droughts, floods, fires and much else. Most of them we would only see on television and are moved to contribute to charity drives to help the victims of those disasters.

It is probably our nature to give as an expression of our innate humanity, and that is a really good thing. However, the natural disasters have come to our land, storms raging, winds so boisterous bringing down heretofore stable things, rains coming down in incessant deluge causing floods and a few sink holes, this is serious and grave.

We are affected, some of us have to stay put, and others can apparently temporarily escape those conditions until things improve. Our attachment to our things might well determine how affected we are about possible loss as a result of a natural disaster.

The aid matters even more now

The UK has a large foreign aid budget, and it goes a long way to improving the lives of the people at the receiving end of our aid in fighting poverty, disease, disenfranchisement and inequality whilst sponsoring health, education, democratic and human rights programs.

We cannot in essence, in principle or in understanding our role in society and the world at large withdraw aid for the expediency of our little local difficulty.

That is why I am saddened that personal disaster has a tendency to expose the deeper selfish human nature where our temporary pain gains ascendancy and greater importance over recognising the broader context of the bigger, deeper and more serious sufferings of others.

It would pass

Indeed, we should help ourselves and find the means to tackle the big natural disaster issues that ravage our lands, but for that to be at the expense of the foreign aid that brings quality to lives, yet nowhere near the comforts we have enjoyed before disaster struck is unacceptable.

The power cuts here would soon be restored, many of those we give foreign aid to do not have that luxury, the flood waters would soon recede, many of those we give foreign aid as a consequence of natural disaster may not have resource or hope for the change that would make our bad experiences become history.

A selfish humanity

When I hear people on television go on about the government addressing our problems first before thinking of foreign aid, or by inference these first world victims of mishap comparing themselves to the poor and destitute of much less fortunate countries and circumstances, you begin to appreciate the shallowness of our humanity and its absurdity.

We are mostly good when things are good, but when things go bad we subconsciously reveal the worst of who we are. Much as man’s capacity for good is well regarded, our capacity for selfish malevolence when we are most affected is unspeakably unprintable and with that our humanity as a whole suffers the more.

Such is life.

Thought Picnic: Powerless in darkness

Rich and busy

Not too far down the road from me, though longer that a brisk walk, you will find some of the most expensive real estate, the residences of young and odiously rich footballers.

During the week, I am ensconced in what is left of the country pile of a squire, a farm house which mostly survives as a week day bed and breakfast concern.

The main hall or mansion, if you care is now the technological information technology nerve centre of a major bank with other buildings as offices housing up to 4,000 employees on a busy day.

In fact, I have found that major global conglomerates seek out a remote and cheap (affordable) location to host their information technology teams. For instance, when I worked for Unilever, we were in North Wales, a place called Ewloe.

Power lost

This discovery comes with its issues, like I have been here just 4 weeks and in that time I have experienced rarities, things I am quite unfamiliar with.

In the first instance, it was men-at-work upgrading a power substation, with that came a power cut that lasted a good few hours, that was understandable.

Last night, the whole of North West England was buffeted by stormy hurricane winds with speeds of up to 100 miles/hour (160 km/hour), there were recordings on the news whilst it was on of much higher speeds in other places.

I retired only to wake up around 18:30 to realise that we had suffered a power cut with no inkling as to when it would be restored.

Managing power sources

One of the safety features of buildings like where I am staying is they are equipped with emergency lighting, but the loss of power also meant the security system was constantly beeping.

This power cut scenario presented some challenging situations because it meant we could not use the microwave oven, my laptops only had battery life that lasted so long and if I had to use my mobile phone, I had to be conscious of the need to remain contactable or rather have the means of contacting others.

Contingency arrangements

Now, in Nigeria where I lived up to the end of the 1980s, if I were in a hotel, it is possible that the contingency to frequent power cuts would have involved switching on a power generator. In fact, when I was in India, the power cuts at both the hotel and the training centre did not last 5 minutes before the power generating set was turned on.

This was not the case, so it was cereal for supper and the luck of one of guests giving me a spare LED torchlight that he had.

To get online, I used my mobile phone that was charged through the USB port of my laptop, later I only had to power up the other laptop without logging on to keep my phone charged through the night. This eventually drained the battery charge of the laptop, but at least I could still use it.

Electricity really matters

I doubt I can survive another night without power and much as I can fully commiserate with those who have been victims of severe weather issues in the UK this winter, with floods causing immeasurable damage, it is not a situation I can get too accustomed to.

You begin to appreciate better the role that electricity has in our daily lives for literally everything, lighting, cooking, cooling, heating, freezing, domestic appliances, communication, entertainment or just a sense of wellbeing. First world problems you might say, but when you get used to something, its absence would probably be felt more than if it was something that was in short supply.

Knutsford is that place and no, I have not been meeting up with WAGs of Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool or Everton premiership football clubs.

Remembering Dick van Galen Last

A fine Dutch gentleman, and remembering him is a testament to the kind of man he was, as I have written before and will never tire of writing again, he is sorely missed.

Dick van Galen Last would have been 62 today, 4 years and 8 days after he passed on and 4 years and 2 days after we buried him.

I still remember that last day I saw him alive, he came to visit me just a week after I was discharged from hospital. I was too weak to go out for a meal, so we just talked over a pot of Earl Grey tea and some biscuits.

This was a little over two months before we had another chat on the phone where he informed me he had a health crisis, and we were sharing the same consultant. We even joked that we might meet up in the chemotherapy room one of these days.

Just three weeks on, he defended his PhD thesis; I could not attend as it was days after a chemotherapy session, I had no strength to do much, but vegetate at home. I heard that as he spoke, you could hear the strength drain out of him, but it was a spirited and commendable effort.

13 days after that amazing effort, Dick was gone and I learnt of his passing the day after. Tears in my eyes, literally sobbing all the way from my home to his, we, his friends had the opportunity to see him for the very last time, in his bed, formally dressed, with a cravat and as serene as if he was going to open his eyes at any moment.

I stood by him and whispered, “Goodbye, dear friend.”

I sometimes wonder if he was awarded his PhD posthumously, he did devote a good few years to that project travelling around the world doing research or looking for moments of tranquillity to complete the work. It was indeed determination in failing health that drove him to do what many might have put aside for another time.

When we gathered to see him off, there were hundreds filling that little chapel on that brisk and cold February morning, many paid tribute but I could not tarry for either the internment or the reception, I left after the service for what became my last session of chemotherapy.

My almost 13 year sojourn in the Netherlands began with Dick picking me up at the airport, lodging me for the first month and many other encounters of supper with his numerous multinational friends.

As interpreter, he would switch between English, Dutch, French, Spanish or German with the ease of a Babel Fish, he was such a person, thespian, cultured, refined, open-minded, loving, caring and much more.

To all of us who knew Dick, we all knew that when he died, a man indeed, of high integrity, a bon vivant whose joie de vivre remains as an example to all of us in the pursuit of happiness was gone.

Dear Dick, you may be gone, 4 years now, but you are never forgotten.

Library Thing – Dick van Galen Last

Nigeria: More Questions For Tobore Mit Ovuorie - The Human Trafficking Undercover Journalist

I have many easy questions

This would be the fourth blog I am writing about Tobore Mit Ovuorie’s expose on Human Trafficking published simultaneously on Premium Times in Nigeria and ZAM Chronicle in the Netherlands.

Blog - Opinion: My Views About That Human Trafficking Exclusive

Blog - Pa Ikhide Unravels That Despicable Human Trafficking Yarn

Blog - The Dying Profession Of Journalism in Nigeria

I am writing again because the more that Premium Times has put out in attack, defence and evidence seems to raise more questions that needs the person of Tobore Mit Ovuorie to answer, clearly and unequivocally.

One is now of the opinion that the human trafficking probably passes the plausibility test, in that everything she wrote about does happen in the human trafficking world, but it has consistently failed to pass the muster of a credibility test for the reporter and all her handlers.

Please answer correctly

Below, I have a list of questions, I would want Tobore Mit Ovuorie to address with a greater attention to journalistic rigour, truth, facts and honesty.

Scenario: Tobore Ovuorie's friend died in 1999 after being a victim of human trafficking to Europe. Tobore who is 33 now, was 18 then.

Question: How old was her friend when she was trafficked and in what year?

Question: For how long was her friend in Europe before she returned to Nigeria with the AIDS defining illness of Karposi Sarcoma?

Scenario: The average time from HIV to full-blown AIDS without any ARV medication is around 4 to 10 years.

Wikipedia - HIV disease progression rates

Question: When did her friend discover she had HIV and consequently AIDS? If anonymity is waived, what was her name and who else knew of this story of her trafficking all through to her death?

Scenario: Besides the general criminal activity to do with human trafficking, Tobore witnessed two murders.

Question: Why is she not leading the police to where she attended the Abuja party which she left feeling very ill that she had to attend hospital?

Question: Why is she not taking the police to all the other significant places she mentioned in her report?

Scenario: Oghogho had a number luxurious cars and houses she had built or was building in her home town.

Question: Did Tobore forget to note the car numbers as an investigative journalist?

Question: Where is Oghogho’s home town amongst others she must have had conversations with who had progressed up the human trafficking chain?

Question: In all the places Tobore was taken to, was she blindfolded?

Premium Times - Human Trafficking Expose: PREMIUM TIMES, Critics and the Limit of Falsehood

Scenario: Tobore attended a NAPTIP Human Trafficking conference after her ordeal. She supposedly submitted her report to Premium Times before the conference.

Question: Did she share her experiences at the conference?

Question: If not, why is her report similar to stories shared at the conference?

Question: If Tobore was so driven by her friend's experience 14 years before, where else did she share this compelling issue before she was commissioned for this human trafficking expose?

Question: How did Tobore get to be selected for this mission?

Scenario: The risk analysis was atrocious, she really could have lost her life.

Question: So, after that heinous ordeal and Tobore's rescue in the Republic of Benin, she was able to recover so completely from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder under casual medical observation in less than a month to attend a conference reliving the details of her experience?

Question: What has happened to Reece Adanwenon's Facebook page with which Tobore communicated with ZAM Chronicles?

Question: Why did Tobore not use her Facebook page instead or had she forgotten her password by the time she arrived in the Republic of Benin?

Scenario: Reece Adanwenon who was supposed to facilitate the rescue of Tobore in the Republic of Benin had never met Tobore, yet Tobore was able to recognise her from what she could recollect from Reece's Facebook profile.

Scenario: However, when Reece's Facebook profile was communicating with ZAM Chronicle, there was no picture of Reece on the profile.

Question: What happened?

Scenario: Tobore's head was shaved by the ritualists in November, just days before she escaped in Benin Republic.

Question: Where are the pictures of the condition she was in when she was rescued?

Question: Where are pictures of her at the NAPTIP conference since she appears to like hobnobbing with important people?

Question: Did she use a wig during the time it took for her hair to grow back?

Scenario: Surely, after suffering such a humiliation she as an investigative reporter cannot have lost the significance of taking pictures of her recovery.

Question: Why after her rescue with reference to the text messages she constantly exchanged with Premium Times personnel did she wait weeks to inform them she was safe when it appears she was ready to immediately contact ZAM Chronicle in Amsterdam?

Amateurish recklessness

The lax modus operandi put in for this Human Trafficking expose beggars belief. If the text messages she was sending were discovered by the traffickers, there was enough for a death sentence in her communications.

They used no code words, no call signs, the power distance index was very prominent that it was clear she was reporting back to someone and her boss was giving instructions. This escapade was so amateurish to be in any way believable.

With ZAM Chronicle involved, you wonder what they really know of undercover work especially in cases where a life or many lives could have been at great risk.

Too convenient and sadly expedient

Finally, it is all too convenient that critical evidence that could give the real truth to this story was lost, like why she had not immediately transmitted pictures, conversations and much else for most of the time she had her mobile phone. At worst, there should have been an electronic dead drop to collect all this data for the use of the expose.

In the end, we only have Tobore’s word and the threatened reputations of Premium Times and ZAM Chronicle through obfuscation, bluster, bullying and ad hominem attacks to go by, the rest in text messages and Facebook posts is hardly independently verifiable. It is a crying shame.

You cannot trust this

If Tobore was exposed to such evil and unconscionable human traffickers with connections to people in high places in Nigeria and abroad, she and her handlers must be recklessly bold, careless, and utterly irresponsible to reveal her identity where she must daily be at risk of being apprehended and assassinated.

I am sorry, it is time for Premium Times to cut loose of this travesty or both it and its reputation would sink with it, considering the reporter they are supporting has hardly been with the outfit for 6 months, the level of naïveté demonstrated by the seasoned journalists at Premium Times is befuddling to the point of bafflement.

Nigeria: Another rotten church exploitation - brides without grooms

These foolish things

“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” I Corinthians 1:27 (New International Version) Parallel Verses.

I have chosen this Bible verse to illustrate what passes for religious abuse in Nigeria, where pastors get their flock to indulge in farcical gimmickry, and the flock like sheep follow the shepherd down the precipice of ignominy.

A pastor in the Winners Chapel franchise and I have written about them many times, I dare say, it was a church I did attend in the late 1980s in Nigeria, had asked all the single ladies who want to get married this year to attend church in wedding dresses.

Gowns on clowns

Pictures which I saw on Facebook were really from Linda Ikeji’s Blog, the popular Nigerian gossip rag that one must admit has one of the biggest followings in Nigeria. We are people like that.

Linda Ikeji’s Blog - Pics: Women looking for husbands storm Winners Chapel Enugu in wedding dresses

The ladies were bedecked in bridal dresses, all without grooms just as bridal houses saw the opportunity for brisk trade, renting out dresses as zippers and corsets might have caused a fitting frenzy in the ladies rooms just before the prayers of supplication and blessing.

Between God’s tactics and man’s stupidity

This is where I have issue, in fact, I have many issues with these corruptions of the Christian message and the drama that ridicules the whole purpose of religion and much else.

The verse above clearly states, “God chose the foolish things …”, it is God doing the choosing; how that comes about is open to interpretation, but I cannot find ways to suggest that verse instructs that we should act foolishly so as to shame the wise, nor does it suggest we should celebrate weakness to shame the strong.

This reads as a tactical ploy of God that is not in the gift of man to deploy, where men attempt to do this, everyone appears foolish, and there is no redeeming factor towards wisdom apart from compounded derision.

For those brides who went to church in their bridal dresses, nothing is said of bridegrooms ready to sweep them off their feet, rather, they were wishing and hoping and ultimately being presumptuous.

Shamanist grottos in church buildings

Herein is the problem, we go to our churches broken, needing, sick and desperate, a hungry crowd open to atrocious exploitation and manipulation by people standing at the pulpit as men of God.

However, the reality is we have the mind-set of ritualism, the church building has become the forest grotto where the Shamanist priest invokes the gods with incantations and the worshippers have arrived seeking instant solutions convinced of the fame and the powers of the priests. Anointing, we call it.

Obviously, we must leave a gift for the deities, something must be given in exchange for what we desire. That gift is now passed off as a seed offering. Though never under duress, very few in need ever think they would get anything if the tray is not filled with a generous gift. Where we have little, we are overcome with a guilt complex, the widow’s mite is now too little for the church.

Sadly, this is what things have become, it is like the temptations of Jesus Christ with the Devil’s chorus, “All this I would give you, if …” Yeah, if you can prove who you are; if you jump and show off; if you bow down and worship or in churches today, if you sow a seed. It is all full of conditions when the gospel stresses the things of God are free, free, free, and free.

The Bible Gateway – The Temptation of Christ [Wikipedia]

The women suffer, always

Then again, it is the women that take the brunt of the abuse, they are the ones exploited for their singlehood as if it takes only one to get married or women should be more desperate especially as the biological clock ticks away, and society disrespects or dishonours extended spinsterhood.

Once they get married, they are on another conveyor belt of possible exploitation if they cannot bear “the fruit of the womb” in Church-speak. The man is never once medically assessed for fertility or the motility of his sperm to clinch the deal. The onus is always on the woman.

Yet, these women who came forward were expecting to get married within the year, the possibility looms of meeting, courtship, engagement and marriage all happening in less than 12 months.

Unworkable marriages

God have mercy as the thrill and euphoria of getting hitched wears off and the man begins to wander because neither party to this travesty was compatible, but hapless and foolish victims of manipulation, exploitation and circumstance, orchestrated in church by the chief priest who proclaims – “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.”

Friends, no match is made in heaven, the match is made on earth between imperfect people and they have to work hard at it, daily tending the love and easing the hurt, it is not a fait accompli of life. Sometimes, it does not work and when it doesn’t be ready to get on with your life.

The miserable lives we live

The woman again, desperate is back in church trying to save her man from the other desires that provide him expression and satisfaction he cannot get at home. It becomes a vicious cycle where the unworkable marriage instigated by the spectacle of risibility and the hare-brained scheme of the pastor, who laughs all the way to the bank on the pains of his flock. It is unconscionable and manifestly evil, it sickens to the high heavens.

What then gives rise to wife-battering and much else? Frustrations, many frustrations. A lifelong relationship that should be given time to mature with interaction and engagement is turned into a magical trick of dead seed to tree in an instant – without roots, deep roots at that, it would die.

I think, I have written enough already. Marriage is not happiness, if you are not happy as you are, the risk of marriage bringing happiness is temporal and it would fade.

The Dying Profession Of Journalism in Nigeria

The draft not getting to the craft

You begin to wonder what is happening to the journalism profession in Nigeria, with the many unfortunate events like badly filed reports that make no sense or serve no purpose than act as space fillers of incomprehensibility.

Then the Shibboleths of Nigerianese that have become the foundations of Nigerian English following none of the rules of common English grammar.

Where we are spared running the gauntlet of inscrutable English, it is verbosity that leaves you marooned as a castaway from context and reason as to why the writer deigned to put pen to paper.

Forget the fine art of fact-checking, proofreading or spellchecking and you end up with a slurry of a jumble of words produced by any fingered primate typing feverishly at a keyboard in the miraculous hope of producing a magnificent volume to upstage the works of Shakespeare.

Whimsical with the unethical

Then we move on to the ethical issues of journalism, where some are mercenaries for hire ready to plant a fabrication to favour a cause, a patron or some bias, many refusing to allow objectivity to get in the way of sensationalism as we have our focus diverted by the bold and screaming headlines of yellow journalism.

Plagiarism is rife, the lack of attribution, reference, acknowledgement or recognition of originality as the race for circulation and any other pursuit means everyone and anyone is trampled upon without any hope of an apology or restitution for the misuse of copyright or sources of material.

Which brings me to the most recent scramble to the nadir of this profession, the fictional construct of a story about human trafficking, supported and sponsored by heretofore reputable organisations, at least we have been deluded into thinking they had any semblance of integrity until now.

We’ve been had too many times

This made me post a comment on Facebook about the supposed investigative epaulets of Tobore Mit Ovuorie.

Blog - Pa Ikhide Unravels That Despicable Human Trafficking Yarn

“That girl would be the complete ruin of any semblance of journalism in Nigeria as newspapers exacerbate this continual fiction of every undercover story appearing to endanger her life.

She has found an emotional and sentimental switch on the Nigerian psyche, speak of endangered life, and we almost always lose the ability to reason and question as we begin to sympathise and empathise - we have been blackmailed into losing our rational minds.”

Indeed, she appears to have found what we as Nigerians are too susceptible to, our lack of curiosity in the face of consuming activity.

We’ve lost our bearings

Our senses stimulated by macabre, bizarre and atrocious stories, pictures and videos that drags our humanity into inurement to the sufferings of others as we feast on what passes for news when it is mostly gossip, rumour and uncorroborated events.

We race so well ahead of the truth and the facts that when they eventually catch up with us, the damage is done as we wait for the next heroin high of another sorry tale of life in Nigeria.

You then ask, who would rescue this noble profession of journalism from the dregs of reprehensible, lying and unscrupulous purveyors of the contemptible? Who?