Even in war times, when children or women, let alone pregnant women, fall casualty to bombardment it is usually received with sobriety and regret. Much more so in peace times.
Or, are we at war here in Nigeria? Have armed robbers declared war on 'punny' defenceless everyday people?
Armed robbers have never been known to kill bank staff during robberies. Rarely so. But, I do not lay claim to any existing statistics. Last week they started killing. Not accidentally, by stray bullet, but deliberately ! Killing a woman. A pregnant woman. And another one, a staff of the bank too.This is way overboard!
Our dear brothers and sisters who do these robberies you should give it up now. This your handshake with us has gone beyond our elbows. It is no longer fun as you thought it would be. Some readers would squirm that I called you 'brothers and sisters'. But you are. You have your relatives amongst us. We are all Nigerians. Bearing under this one and common burden called 'Project Nigeria'.
We are all under the same pressure. Why do you opt to kill your fellow man in order to dodge your own pressure. Stand up, face-up to your life like a man. Stop breaking innocent lives like frustrated babies seeking attention break breakables in the homes.
It is the worst kind of poverty and hopelessness when you believe you have to kill and mame and dispossess others before you can progress in life. And when you have bought that jeep, and built that house, and gotten that child-hood lover of yours how do you feel inside knowing how you obtained and attained your new status !?
And you the gang that killed these people they believed in you, they saw hope for you; but you had given up on yourselves. The pregnant woman hoped on her feminine immunity, that you would not dare harm her. She did not imargine that you would kill her, a woman; plus that she was pregnant. They both counted on your humanity. But you were so far gone, long gone !
As a memorial to these un-necessarily wasted Nigerian lives and a sign of penance, all the robbers in Nigeria should henceforth throw away their arms and be bold enough to tackle the challenges of living within the acceptable norms of civilized society. Their abominable action is sacrilegious enough to have the earth opening up and swallowing them all alive.
The way our life is , is a result of the choices we have made earlier on in life. One should be alive enough to dance to the music one has created for oneself. Everyone is bearing a cross whether you believe it or not. But we don't have to encroach on the next man's space. Everyone has his appointed time. Today for one , tomorrow for another. Brothers and sisters, grow up and go straight!
28.9.08
Can You See What Is Happening to Us ?
People are learning fast today how not to be themselves. Everything is rehearsed till it comes out as a fine-tuned package. I believe the word they used for it then is packaging. Today, it seems they call it branding.I had a taste of it in one of the radio interviews during my days as a musician. It was a recorded program and everything I had to say was edited out of context to make it politically correct. I had a glimpse into the unreal, character-less personality build-up that must have become rampant by today. I wanted out !
People rarely say the truth anymore today. Very few say what they mean to say. What a farse !
I'd been thinking on a matter for long now. It unsettles me when I am confronted with the image of it.
The tug-of-war between banks in Nigeria has become daunting, perplexing, taking away peace; especially to one who is in the profession. Everywhere you turn you see banks lined up on a street, most times next door to one another ; poaching and being poached from. When they come at you they assume you have never had a bank before. They want you to keep all your money with them for no reasonable fudiciary gain to you. Though there may be a better way to place your money for gain, they would not tell you if it is not in their interest ! They basically assume one does not have money sense.
Their proliferation and encroaching presence in every city and township is threatening and intimidating. One wonders if banking is all there is about our economy, because they have become too visible, overbearing and imposing nowadays !
People rarely say the truth anymore today. Very few say what they mean to say. What a farse !
I'd been thinking on a matter for long now. It unsettles me when I am confronted with the image of it.
The tug-of-war between banks in Nigeria has become daunting, perplexing, taking away peace; especially to one who is in the profession. Everywhere you turn you see banks lined up on a street, most times next door to one another ; poaching and being poached from. When they come at you they assume you have never had a bank before. They want you to keep all your money with them for no reasonable fudiciary gain to you. Though there may be a better way to place your money for gain, they would not tell you if it is not in their interest ! They basically assume one does not have money sense.
Their proliferation and encroaching presence in every city and township is threatening and intimidating. One wonders if banking is all there is about our economy, because they have become too visible, overbearing and imposing nowadays !
13.9.08
There Is Room Enough for All ( in the World )
I saw something Tuesday, 9th September which really impressed me. I was at Atakobo at Ogbere junction - an outskirt location in Ogun state hosting the nearest quary companies to Lagos State of Nigeria.
I decided to have a look around the place called Ogbere. The place looked like a lost town. Set in the midst of the thick rain forest, the only feeder road is weathered and begging for repairs; just like all the inter-state and intra-state link roads I drove on getting there from Lagos. 'N E P A' men on a ladder reaching for their cables in the forest was the first sign I got of life existing in the place as I approached the location. You'd notice that am playing safe in not using town or village or hamlet in describing Ogbere because I did not know which it is.
After about five minutes cautiously approaching, I entered what looked like the center of the place. Scanty houses lined-up both roadsides. There is a small general hospital, a this and a that. And as I drove along I noticed I was obvious to the inhabitants of the place. I suddenly remembered the tales of the many armed robberies on the only bank in the place. So, my self-preservation instinct made me drive into the police station as I came to it. An officer met me on the grounds and I immediately introduced myself and my reason for being there. And that seemed real smart because he told me of a reported robbery at a nearby village to which his DPO and men had gone see.
There is only one bank there at Oghere. First Bank Nigeria Plc. The bank is usually found where many others would not go. It is clear that it is not out of business sense, but out of caring. None of the other banks currently competing with the bank for prominence are found in commercially unviable places. First Bank usually would have been there, sensitizing the people, creating the banking culture, building their businesses and their lives. Then, when the foundation has been laid, the others unashamedly, with funfare come in to cash-in on the labours of First Bank Nigeria plc. Suddenly, they would have a solution to the peoples' needs which they would bandy about that the bank does not have. And in the heat of the onslaught of their propaganda, the people would forget their first love. The bank which stood by them through rain and sun, the bank who placed them on the map!
This behaviour is un-african. Disloyalty, the forgetting of the good done us is a strange phenomenon in Africa. We used to always remember who our friends are. This un-african practice is even ruling the corporate landscape of Nigeria - the discrediting of pioneers and experience. It is like being unfaithful to the wife of one's youth. Such one will not prosper, the scriptures say. The philosophy now seems to be that the pioneers, the experienced, the old should pack-up and leave. This probably informs the un-ending attempts at branding and re-branding, trying to shake-off stereotyped images.
But you know, one is who one is. Anyone ashamed of his history is not fit to be. There is room enough for all in the world. The new should not run-aground the old because they are eager to make a good showing! I value my aged parents. I would not live to see them in a home for the old. It is not african. It is not human. We should remember that we are first and foremost human beings, not animals.
I decided to have a look around the place called Ogbere. The place looked like a lost town. Set in the midst of the thick rain forest, the only feeder road is weathered and begging for repairs; just like all the inter-state and intra-state link roads I drove on getting there from Lagos. 'N E P A' men on a ladder reaching for their cables in the forest was the first sign I got of life existing in the place as I approached the location. You'd notice that am playing safe in not using town or village or hamlet in describing Ogbere because I did not know which it is.
After about five minutes cautiously approaching, I entered what looked like the center of the place. Scanty houses lined-up both roadsides. There is a small general hospital, a this and a that. And as I drove along I noticed I was obvious to the inhabitants of the place. I suddenly remembered the tales of the many armed robberies on the only bank in the place. So, my self-preservation instinct made me drive into the police station as I came to it. An officer met me on the grounds and I immediately introduced myself and my reason for being there. And that seemed real smart because he told me of a reported robbery at a nearby village to which his DPO and men had gone see.
There is only one bank there at Oghere. First Bank Nigeria Plc. The bank is usually found where many others would not go. It is clear that it is not out of business sense, but out of caring. None of the other banks currently competing with the bank for prominence are found in commercially unviable places. First Bank usually would have been there, sensitizing the people, creating the banking culture, building their businesses and their lives. Then, when the foundation has been laid, the others unashamedly, with funfare come in to cash-in on the labours of First Bank Nigeria plc. Suddenly, they would have a solution to the peoples' needs which they would bandy about that the bank does not have. And in the heat of the onslaught of their propaganda, the people would forget their first love. The bank which stood by them through rain and sun, the bank who placed them on the map!
This behaviour is un-african. Disloyalty, the forgetting of the good done us is a strange phenomenon in Africa. We used to always remember who our friends are. This un-african practice is even ruling the corporate landscape of Nigeria - the discrediting of pioneers and experience. It is like being unfaithful to the wife of one's youth. Such one will not prosper, the scriptures say. The philosophy now seems to be that the pioneers, the experienced, the old should pack-up and leave. This probably informs the un-ending attempts at branding and re-branding, trying to shake-off stereotyped images.
But you know, one is who one is. Anyone ashamed of his history is not fit to be. There is room enough for all in the world. The new should not run-aground the old because they are eager to make a good showing! I value my aged parents. I would not live to see them in a home for the old. It is not african. It is not human. We should remember that we are first and foremost human beings, not animals.
7.9.08
Dear Whitney, I Expect You To Come Back !
A few days ago I saw Madonna on television. She had turned fifty and she was on tour trying to break her own record. By the way, she still looks smashing at fifty, and natural too !
Madonna made me recall some web photos I saw of Whitney a few years back. It made me weep, Whitney's troubles I mean.
And I wondered what made the difference !? Aside from lifestyle and the ability to keep standing. Some cynics might add : one is white , the other is black; supposing that white people
know how to take care of themselves better than black. Could this be true ? Sadly, many black celebrities tend to end up that way. I concede, I may not have all the facts. However, away from generalizing, I feel Whitney was a kid who hit the good life and took charge prematurely. Bobby said it was his prerogative! He too was a kid ! You all know how they are today. The adults around them failed them. One needs to learn to rule money, or it will rule and ruin one. The kids got carried away, and the adults with them.
Dear Whitney, if you can find the cohesion to read this, I want you to know that I expect you to come back . The story must not end as it is now. Inside every person is the ability to survive if only they want to.You must want to survive. You are older and wiser now, you must come back. The world and I await your revival. And when you do, search me out, I want a seat front row to watch you glow again, glowing this time from inside out !!!
Madonna made me recall some web photos I saw of Whitney a few years back. It made me weep, Whitney's troubles I mean.
And I wondered what made the difference !? Aside from lifestyle and the ability to keep standing. Some cynics might add : one is white , the other is black; supposing that white people
know how to take care of themselves better than black. Could this be true ? Sadly, many black celebrities tend to end up that way. I concede, I may not have all the facts. However, away from generalizing, I feel Whitney was a kid who hit the good life and took charge prematurely. Bobby said it was his prerogative! He too was a kid ! You all know how they are today. The adults around them failed them. One needs to learn to rule money, or it will rule and ruin one. The kids got carried away, and the adults with them.
Dear Whitney, if you can find the cohesion to read this, I want you to know that I expect you to come back . The story must not end as it is now. Inside every person is the ability to survive if only they want to.You must want to survive. You are older and wiser now, you must come back. The world and I await your revival. And when you do, search me out, I want a seat front row to watch you glow again, glowing this time from inside out !!!
3.9.08
Yaro Starak, Thanks A Lot !
In my inaugural post headed 'intro' I spoke about the many solicitations for subscription to work-at-home businesses. They interested me greatly. But every time I tried to subscribe the merchants rejected my debit mastercard for inability to verify it due to my location. So, it seemed I was stuck, only able to read of all the opportunities on the web, but never to to take part in them. Until, Yaro Starak sent me his report ' The Blog profits Blueprint' with the training video- free. He did not even ask for money, in the first place. None of the other merchants agreed to let me use their product without payment since my location posed a challenge to my participation. Don't you all agree that Yaro Starak is a great guy? Thanks to him I am posting blogs on my own blogsite now. more of the web superstars should be like him, rather than offering money -back-guarantees that do not hold any water. Yaro Starak, thanks a lot ! May God bless you the more.
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