There has been a lot of recrimination due to the musician, Brymo's misguided tweets. I won't join issues with him except to mention that as a Tinubu supporter, he is simply doing what I have said, so many times, would be done by Tinubu supporters, ethnicise the elections. What I want to talk about, very briefly, before returning to @EdPaiceARI's excellent book is the tendency for Nigerians, in general, to keep behaving like our country's civil war did not end 52 years ago.

I had a discussion with someone yesterday that brings to my mind the nature, to some extent, of the damage that the current Japa wave is doing. This time, not to the body-corporate #Nigeria

https://twitter.com/Chxta/status/1443884012322361345

I've discussed that in some form here, and I've done a thread on the effects on the middle class, who are the primary movers of this migration.

https://twitter.com/Chxta/status/1484790946046877699

I recommend reading @tundeleye's 2017 piece about why people were leaving #Nigeria bit.ly/2WvirUH

Words matter, especially when they come from someone with influence.

That is the theme of my latest column in @FinancialNG bit.ly/3VhvOAI, the impact of the words of @JoeBiden before he became POTUS.

Bear in mind, this was written before #America's mid-terms... Faced with the implications of his words during his presidential campaign, the Biden administration rediscovered the concept of realpolitik and tried to make good with the Saudis by visiting #SaudiArabia in July and ending up with that infamous fist bump.

On #FreshlyPressed981 with @SopeMartins and @monsieurceee this morning, we'll be asking how the NNPC came to the conclusion that petrol will sell for ₦462/litre without the subsidy.

@Smooth981FM in 15 minutes... The NNPC is just involved in unnecessary fear-mongering.

Our neighbours, who are poorer, pay a lot more than we do for petrol. What I see in all this is people committed to maintaining their cushy subsidy scam going on.

“We have seen your type before, and they all fizzled out. Let’s see how long you will last.”

That's what someone told @DavidHundeyin as recounted in his @BusinessDayNg column today: bit.ly/3JZzB0N

That thing cut my soul because it is true... For all the flak that the Nigerian media gets, people tend to forget one crucial fact: they are products of their environment, working within that same environment.

Only a very few people in this life have the fortitude of Job.

In the 1963 movie, Cleopatra, there was an interesting dialogue between Mark Anthony and Octavian, the man who would later become Augustus Caesar, the first emperor of Rome about the birth of Julius Caesar's son, Caesarion:

https://twitter.com/sbmintelligence/status/1557630395125944321

Mark Antony: "You were so shut at the mouth just now one would think your words were are precious to you as your gold."

Octavian: "Like my gold, I use them where they are worth most."

This is instructive...

This tweet, and the reply, are both hilarious and sad at the same time. I normally don't engage such nonsense, but herein lies a teachable moment, so let's go.

First, in a thread of 5 tweets, it's the single one that pointed out the flaw in the strategy of the victims you saw.

https://twitter.com/emaenimofficial/status/1534973088118493185

It says a lot about your ability to assess multiple streams of information at the same time, and as important, it speaks to your emotional state.

Basically, you're looking for affirmation, so anything that runs contrary to what you'd like to hear, can only be from an "enemy".

This map is from a presentation made after #NigeriaDecides2019. Note where state actors engaged in violence. Opposition strongholds.

Today's nonsense in Alaba is same just earlier in the process. Voter suppression. You can download the full report here: bit.ly/3O3j6l7 Present at that report were people from @inecnigeria @HQNigerianArmy @PoliceNG @official_NSCDC and a host of other actors in the election and security matrix.

The report was adopted, and INEC promised to do better. bit.ly/3aIxnp4

This chart shows that you are actually more likely to be lynched in Southern #Nigeria.

It should be food for thought for Southern Nigerians.

It should be food for thought for someone like me, who is a parent.

https://twitter.com/sbmintelligence/status/1531176081520140289

Imagine sitting in your house, and your child goes out, then you hear that he has been killed because of ₦100 ($0.17)?

That is what happened to #DavidImoh's parents. bit.ly/3a0EtF7

One of the best pieces written about #Nigeria's Igbo problem by a non-Igbo person was recently republished by @DavidHundeyin in his @BusinessDayNg column.

There are two parts to it: bit.ly/3ktNrga and bit.ly/3LHJDnp

I highly recommend it. Reading both articles, no one should be surprised about the almost visceral reaction to my tweet from a few days ago in which I quoted something that Chinua Achebe wrote in 1983.

https://twitter.com/Chxta/status/1520541024547921929

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.

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.

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.

#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.

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?

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.

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...

https://twitter.com/rogzy_/status/1484439254033965057

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.

In 1962, #Nigeria decided to dam the River Niger. The area chosen was the area around the catarats wher Mungo Park died.

After the architects, Balfour Beatty, finished the plans, it became clear that the ancient town of Bussa, the capital of the Bariba people, would be flooded. Plans were made, and it was decided that the entire town of Bussa would be rebuilt elsewhere before the dam was filled.

Thus, New Bussa came about, and the people of Bussa were relocated before the Kainji Dam became operational in 1968.

But there was a problem...

In his independence day speech, @MBuhari failed to mention anything about the doctors' strike that has paralysed the health sector, kidnappings, which have become a frighteningly regular occurrence in the country, or the unemployment crisis. These three in many ways have contributed to the "japa wave" that we are currently witnessing, something which he only mentioned in passing to refer to "so-called leaders run abroad to hide".

This japa-wave is our independence trek: bit.ly/3D1y4Th

So @niyiadebayo has been taking me around Moscow. The man has turned into a proper native. This drink is called Дюшес. Made of pear, lime and some syrup that looks like water. I'm bringing some home!

In all the hullabaloo about the Twitter ban, Pantami, and Biafra boys, an important matter got lost in the noise, and that was a kerfuffle over banks v the telcos, mainly personified by MTN. Two weeks ago, I talked about it in my BusinessDay column, then forgot about it, so here is the link: businessday.ng/columnist/arti…