Beyond the laughs, what Paul Graham did and doubled down on is dangerous and colonial. Any of us were flogged for using vernacular in school. We are treated with suspicion when we travel to the west, made to prove our knowledge many times over. Our knowledge is doubted, belittled He wrote someone off because they used delve in an email. Yet in the same country he lives in, we have to write extra tests to prove our proficiency in a language we were forced to learn better than others and constantly forced to prove we know well.

It is so easy to penetrate Nigeria (and most of Africa) if you are a spy. You don't need to do any deep espionage especially if you are a light skinned foreigner. Nigerians will help you plant the bugs even. Just send them an invitation and they will fall over themselves to come As a white or light skinned foreigner in Nigeria you can walk into any building with little difficulty. I remember this grifter, I think he was Algerian, a young slimy London based fellow who just arrived and within a short time had summoned all the young influential Nigerians

"He is a former member of Jehovah’s Witnesses who left the community voluntarily... but apparently not on good terms"

There is nothing like leaving the JW's on "good terms". It does not exist

Hamburg police were tipped off but did not take his weapon theguardian.com/world/2023/mar… Also there is no real distinction between leaving voluntarily and being expelled, what they call "disfellowshipped". All who leave are shunned by members. They will not speak to you at all whether you left voluntarily or not. Members are forbidden from talking to those who leave

With the virulent tribalism I am reading from Nigerians, we have no moral right to talk about racism anywhere. If Nigeria was not a country of black people it would be one of the most racist places on earth. Every ethnic group deems itself superior and peddles vile ethnicity. This is why I think when African Americans are speaking about their racism and white supremacy bla bla Nigerians should just shut up and keep moving. Because we have enough ethnic supremacy, violent ethnic supremacy which we do openly and confidently.

There is not a single person on the ballot who is a saint or not somehow connected to the very system of dysfunction that produced the hellhole that is Nigeria. Voting is not a magic bullet. Whoever wins, Nigerians must prepare for 4 years of demanding accountability. The National Assembly is compromised. The judiciary and civil society are compromised. Governors range from corrupt lunatics to violent narcissists. Politicians have access to cheap violence. There is no savior. After voting Nigerians immediately begin holding winners to account.

I have a recurrent dream. About a rebel leader from east Africa. I still am not sure if he is Ugandan or not. The only thing I know for sure is that he is not Rwandan. I know this because at some point someone suggests he flees through Rwanda to escape gov't forces hunting him. As with dreams, most of the details are lost by the time I wake. The things I remember however paint a good enough picture. The backdrop of the dream is always green and lush. He sometimes hides in thickets. He is actually more cult leader than rebel. He has strange beliefs.

On this Sunday, day of our lord I am hanging out in this cool high tech place, brought over by exclusive transport with two assistants who picked me up from home. The sun is finally out and they have spiked my drip with the most powerful painkillers. They swear it helps. I'm in the worst pain I've ever experienced. But everyone is nice. As a person who dislikes clutter though, there are so many wires and tubes and little plastic labeled containers and there are so many containers. But the bathrooms are spotless. I should review them on Yelp.

It is a bit embarrassing that like clowns on a stage Nigerian politicians running for President have to go do the traditional colonial dance at Chatham House London instead of debate each other in Nigeria and hold serious townhalls. How and why have we normalized this travesty? What hold does Chatham House have over Nigerian politicians? Why do they all respect this British institution more than they respect any Nigerian institution? Does any of them have any sense or see the irony in making their biggest platform a colonial one? Voluntarily? Why?

It is dangerous to present any group of people as absolute victims or villains. History is much more complicated. Victims can themselves be violent oppressors. The British invaded the Sokoto Caliphate for example. Many of those they attacked were themselves vile slave owners. There was a genocide of Igbos during the Biafra war. Yes. But if you ask children of those murdered in cold blood by Biafran soldiers and fighters for being sabos (saboteurs) they will tell you a different Biafra story. As will the kids of Biafrans killed by Nigerian soldiers.

Absolutely not. JSS1-JSS2/3 Bullied by a guy in my class who claimed he had magical powers and would make up to four of us boys buy him food during break with our own money and give him OUR change. He claimed to be able to hear if we were speaking about him behind his back...

https://twitter.com/kemiadetiba/status/1559302913939456009

He was great at mind control. He wasn't big, wasn't particularly strong (I would later learn). And he wasn't the brightest in class. An average student at best. He had a mole on his arm. He would sometimes randomly start stroking it and shut his eyes claiming to be getting signs

I was born and spent years in a face-me-I-face-you in the heart of Unguwar Rimi, Kaduna. The compound was right in front of the tree that was the center of Unguwar Rimi, where it was rumored to begin (not sure if it is still there). It consisted of single rooms. One room. This one room of ours was turned into a "room and parlor" using a curtain to partition the room. Our meter was nailed to the wall outside by the street. I remember clearly one night seeing the silhouette of a thief cutting the meter as we(brother, dad and mum) slept.

As a satirist I am appalled by Smith's reaction. When Islamists shoot people who satirize them and their religion we condemn it regardless of the content of the satire. When a grown man acts like a child and assaults another on TV we must condemn this regardless of the joke. Will Smith committed what could have been a felony on live television because of a joke. Imagine if everyone who felt butt hurt by a joke acted physically. If he had a gun on him would he have shot Chris Rock? What is this stupid performative masculinity? Is this the stone age?

I predict that unless something happens quickly in Nigeria, mass resentment against government and bandits of Fulani extraction will lead to attempts at a "Fulani cleansing" all across Nigeria, even in parts where there are Muslim Hausa. We are heading there unless we act fast. * Often when people speak about "Fulani" they conflate many groups and issues. Do you mean Fulani the ethnic group making up 3-6% of our population (and not the Hausa who make up 27-30%) of our population? Do you mean herders, who make up less than a third of that 6%?

Not sure whether to feel sorry or laugh when I see the hordes of Nigerians especially Nigerian women spending much money on scams like black magic, juju, kayan mata etc to influence partners or potential partners. Men already act in irrational ways so the scam is easy to "prove". All of the claims of black magic and spiritual powers cannot improve their lives one bit, cannot build one road, cannot cure one real illness, cannot remove people from poverty, cannot stop massacres and genocides and kidnappings from happening. How utterly useless this scam.

Thinking a lot about men. And boys. About how many spaces and communities are at danger of alienating and leaving them behind and breeding sad, disappointed and ultimately spiteful men who become easy targets for people desperately hold onto the pillars of patriarchy. I am thinking how few young boys have spaces to learn healthy ways of growing into masculinities that affirm them and do not hurt others. Where are the men holding the hands of boys? Not men teaching them to dig down because they are losing their place in a weakening patriarchy.

Man, this country is like a minefield. You can be having banter with a *well meaning* white European and the most fucked up shit emerges.
I was laughing with this woman I had just met and she just said, unprovoked "hahahaha, you remind me of these orphans I taught in Zambia." These days, I resist the urge to chalk every fucked up thing a white person does up to racism. Because life and humans are much more complicated than that. But man, I froze for a second as she carried on telling me about these orphans she taught in Africa and how sweet they were

Don't be bullied into taking the most extreme position before you know the facts. Don't feel pressured into joining a mob before you have heard the other side. Silence is not always complicity. Silence can be wisdom, especially when used to learn more before joining the fray. Do not feel pressured to declare your morality. We can all be wrong. And if you live long enough you will be very wrong on even the most important things. You will look back in embarrassment on many things you have done. Think of this before you join a mindless mob of idiots.

I think one of the early obstacles to convincing very many people who might ordinarily have eventually taken the vaccine (because we are not all robots who will just do as we are told) was this silly term we quickly began using as a cudgel: "anti-vaxxer". We made it a religion. We made it a religion and very quickly, like with most things these days we haughtily positioned ourselves on moral highground and condemned any who even hesitated for a bit, even those whose hesitation was completely rational, we called them heathens and burnt them at the stake.

Interestingly "Welsh" is trademarked in the UK (under the EU protected symbols rules). As is "Swahili", whose private owner is somewhere in Italy. Please take the time to read trademarks rules of the Intellectual Property office of the UK. And understand what trademarks mean.

I wish Nigerians were interested in and read Nigerian history. I wish we understood the reasons why we are so different from each other. The things we glorify today, I wish we knew their history. How many for example have read the treatise upon which the jihad was premised? How many have read or know of Wathiqat Ahl al Sudan, which represented the formal declaration of jihad by Shehu Uthman dan Fodio? About the status of a country being that of its leader, namely, a Muslim country is that governed by a Muslim. Have you even heard of this?

Listening to the most fascinating stories of Nigerians who grew up in Face-me-I-Face-You. I am dying with laughter hearing the stories. As someone who was born in and spent my early childhood in a Face-me-I-Face-You I want a novel based on this. Brings back memories. I remember one next door neighbor who used to connect a live electric wire to his door handle on his way out to deter thieves. I touched his door handle one day and almost got electrocuted. Growing up poor in Nigeria is wild.