Chxta Profile picture
Apr 23 6 tweets 3 min read
I visited #Stonehenge today.

In researching before my visit, I learned that it attracts more than a million visitors a year.

Look at it this way: an adult ticket to Stonehenge is £22. You are encouraged to make a £5 donation as well, but let's stick with the lower figure...
By the time we finished the tour you can't leave the #Stonehenge ground without passing through the gift shop.

Unless you are an absolute Philistine, you are going to leave the gift shop probably £30 lighter.

So we're looking at £52.
As you're stepping out of the gift shop to head to the car park, the sweet smells of the kitchen assault your nose and remind you that you have been walking around for the last four hours.

Meal: £10.

So the whole excursion (minus travel and lodging) cost me £62.
Stonehenge gets an average of 1,000,000 visitors a year...

Just by having a set of stone slabs, #Britain generates more in revenue each year than 34 of #Nigeria's 36 states.
We have Iya, the Great Bini Walls in Edo.

We have Sungbo's Eredo in Ogun.

We have the Kano Walls in Kano.

Though not as old as #Stonehenge, these are evidence that our ancestors were every bit as creative and great as their European counterparts.

Yet what have we done?
We have opted to sit on our arses and wait to share oil proceeds each month.

To quote the late, great Pius Adesanmi, "Nigeria exists so that the world will see how not to run a country."

Tueh!

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More from @Chxta

Apr 24
One of my best friends offline is @ose_anenih, and for quite a few years he kept warning me about the error of my ways in my rather (at the time) stubborn stance in refusing to use my block button.

Thanks to Buhari's #TwitterBan, I saw how criminally naive I was in that stance.
Some people who come to one's mentions to chat shit do so with no measure of good faith. They aren't here to learn, they are here to worship their god, and derail your thoughts.

Flee from such demons of the twitterverse as they make your experience ugly.

I just blocked a few.
Considering the fact that I complained about our lack of tourism on this twitter before 2015 (the app has a search function), and complained about same theme back when I was active on @nairaland (pre 2010, again you can search), how the fuck was yesterday's thread about Buhari?
Read 12 tweets
Mar 1
I just published What is our interest in #Ukraine? link.medium.com/wJJXJfBD2nb

I’d like to begin this by saying something important: the attack on Ukraine is immoral and wicked, and deserves all the uproar that has accompanied it from wherever.
Sadly, that is about where it will get.

The world of geopolitics is not a moral place, and to quote the Athenians when they sent an ultimatum to the Melians during the Siege of Melios, “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.
Herein lies the meat of the matter from my POV: in the end, the world of international geopolitics is about might being right, not about anything else.

This is why @CondoleezzaRice could pontificate about what @KremlinRussia_E has done without irony despite her role in #Iraq.
Read 27 tweets
Jan 25
#Syria's war has been going on for 11 years killing 3,746 people last year.

#Nigeria is not officially at war but its death toll from insecurity in 2021 was at least 10,366 meaning that an average of 28 Nigerians were killed each day of last year by deliberate malicious intent.
Some days ago, more than 200 people were brutally killed in Zamfara, we've shrugged, and moved on. This is not front-page news.

We are now inured to violence and accept it as a routine part of our lives.

Violence is #Nigeria's culture.
Let's talk about culture briefly today, this was the subject of my column in today's @BusinessDayNg: bit.ly/3qYMznL

Culture is the sum of the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society to fulfil a range of purposes.
Read 15 tweets
Jan 24
There's a story in today's @THISDAYLIVE where Emma Nwaka, @OfficialPDPNig's chairman in Abia is pleading with @HQNigerianArmy "to exercise restraint in their reprisals on the communities of Obuzor and Owaza,"

You can read it here: bit.ly/3Iup9wh
These are the kind of things that tell you that #Nigeria is a banana republic where people have no confidence in the system to a) protect them, and b) give them justice.

Why the fuck should we be pleading with our own army to exercise restraint? What kind of country is this?
Of course, the army has form in this kind of matter.

Starting from Ugep in 1975 where they slaughtered the community because a soldier disappeared?

Later it was found that he was drunk and had died of asphyxiation.

Well, I've listed many before.
Read 4 tweets
Jan 22
I've read a lot of the back and forth with respect to @AfamDeluxo's suggestion that @nwanyi_ocha be made a commissioner in @CCSoludo's government.

At first glance, it looked to me like it was harmless banter, so I was shocked by what I can only describe as racism that followed.
To be honest, though, those who say that Afam wouldn't have made that suggestion if she was ethnically a non-Igbo Nigerian, or even from another country in #Africa, probably have a point.
But that point, whatever it is, does not remove the fact that Nwanyi Ocha has immersed herself in Igbo culture, and done everything to promote it.

That on its own deserves recognition if she so desires, an ambassadorship of sorts wouldn't be out of place.
Read 10 tweets
Jan 22
Interesting tweet that indicates a mindset all too prevalent in #Nigeria. The belief that everything is about money.

I recommend reading @tundeleye's 2017 piece on why many in his circle even then, were leaving the country: bit.ly/2WvirUH

Let me tell a story...
On 29 September 2021, I got on a plane to travel out of #Nigeria for a course in international security. Given the work I do with @sbmintelligence, the course fits.

At the airport lounge, I noticed an unusual amount of families, many of them leaving the country as whole units.
Many of these people were in the 35 to 50 age range. I mentioned this to a friend later on, and he found it ludicrous.

"Why would people who were in middle to upper management leave everything to essentially go and start all over again."

Months later, he sent me this...
Read 8 tweets

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