Saw a video of one of the Greenfield University abduction survivors being reunited with his folks.
They were busy waving their hands in the air and triumphantly praising their presumably Christian deity.
Sighed, kissed my teeth and closed the video. Nigerians will never get it.
Praise the Lord for saving my family member's supremely important individual life, which is apparently more important than the ones that didn't make it.
Instead of seeing it as proof of a horribly failing state, I see it as proof that my deity loves me more than other people.
"I better pass my neighbour😁🍾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾"
"Other people went to bed last night and didn't wake up, but I woke up this morning. Other people are in hospital but I am healthy. Other people are starving but I have food to eat. Praaaaise the Loooorred for being so good to me😁😁😁🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾"
"I BETTER PASS OTHER PEOPLE"
This same mindset finds its way into power, then surprisingly those without power who share the same mindset will start complaining bitterly about how Nigerian leaders are selfish and unconcerned.
Linking cause and effect is Astrophysics in this part of the world...
Every society really does get the exact leadership it deserves.
Nigerians deserve Remi Tinubu and Yahaya Bello, regardless of how bitterly we insist otherwise.
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Mentioned this on @AnthonyEhilebo's space a few weeks back, but it bears repeating.
I spoke to someone with links to the EU delegation to Africa in March and I asked "why is the international community acting as if Buhari has their nudes? Why are they cowering?"
The answer was-
"They want stability. They're terrified of a fresh migrant crisis. Stability is the only thing they care about. If stability can only be achieved using the Agadez solution, they are willing to do it."
For those who don't know,m about Agadez, a short explainer:
Agadez is an ancient Sahelian city in modern day Niger Republic, which marks the start of the the desert road to Libya, for West African migrants trying to (illegally) get to Europe by road.
The route is Agadez-Tripoli-Europe via a 120km Mediterranean crossing in a rubber dinghy
They will still attack this guy live-tweeting what is happening in Owerri and call him a spreader of fake news.
Everything in Nigeria is fake news.
Check your pulse if you're reading this. You might emnot even be alive. Your existence sef is fake news...
This was what I meant when I said dictators around the world were watching and learning from the Orange Dude in DC, but it sounded as if Trump stole my girlfriend or something.
What we're witnessing now is his global legacy. The concept of truth has been destroyed.
All information is now equal. The highly trained investigative journalist who risks their life to get objective facts into the open is now competing against Ovie Ali.
Nothing is true anymore. Expertise doesn't exist. If I say 2+2=4, you simply shout back louder until I get tired
Dear world, Pidgin is a language on its own. there is no such thing as "Pidgin English." Thinking of Pidgin as a dialect of English is like thinking of French as a dialect of Portuguese.
Just because two languages share vocabulary doesn't make one a variant of the other.
Pidgin uses a lot of English words =\= Pidgin is a type of English. Pidgin has its own grammatical structure and syntax which can never make sense to a non-speaker.
That's why there are lots of people who speak fluent pidgin and cannot speak English to save their lives.
It's very unhelpful to think of pidgin as a derivative of English because
a). That is a continuation of the "slave English" misconception about pidgin from the 1700s and
b). A large portion of pidgin vocabulary also comes from Portuguese, French and Yoruba among others.
The basic lack of regard for other people's fundamental human rights is the father of all the problems we're seeing on the TL this morning.
It's why authorities will secretly install CCTV cameras at a female UniAbuja hostel to watch girls bathing and jerk off to it.
It's why someone will yank a random woman off the street to kill her and sell her body parts.
It's why militia and herders from The Ethnicity That Shall Not Be Named waltz into people's farmland and homes to kill them and take everything they have.
Force is Nigeria's religion!
Arguably if you draw the line back far enough, it is the same disease that saw our ancestors raiding each other's villages to capture human beings who were put through unspeakable horrors right there on the West African coast before being sold to European slave buyers.
Middle Belters (2010-2015): "FULANI HERDSMEN ARE KILLING US!"
Rest of country: "Yes but apparently you're killing their cows too. These tensions are partly driven by climate change and demographic expansion. Wealthier countries must commit to lower emissions by 2040."
Middle Belters (2015-2019): "NO WE MEAN THEY'RE LITERALLY MASSACRING US IN OUR THOUSANDS!"
Kayode in Ijora: "I have been speaking to some of my friends from the north and based on my findings, this narrative is biased and untrue. You should commit to peace instead of agitation."
Rural Southern Nigeria (2019 - 2020): "HELP! THEY'RE KILLING US TOO! THEY'RE RAPING AND KILLING US INDUSTRIALLY!"
Adetoun in Idumota and Titus in Ijanikin: "Something something agitations something IPOB something Nnamdi Kanu something Igboho something stop threatening stability.
Nigerian: "You know, I can see why some say 22 and some say 4, and there is definitely an argument for both points of view. I just think we shouldn't lose sight of the foundational importance of civility while holding this discourse."
*Places purple cloth on the table*
What colour is it?
Pete from Sydney: "That's purple mate."
Osato from Ekehuan Road: "This is a very good question. You see, one of the founding principles of civil society is the right to disagree. Who says there must always be one answer?"
Osato from Ekehuan road (cont'd): "The writings of Aristotle from over 2,000 years ago impressively delineate objective fact and subjective perception. Insisting that this cloth is purple is what we call the Fallacy of Hasty Conclusion. Where is the evidence of its purplehood?"