simply oroque's view

today on the way to work, i happened to be joined by a close friend who kinda came visiting yesterday cos she had work to do on the island. she happened to come to my house in the afternoon while i was at work and caught my neighbour violently beating her 8 year old son, in a way that only nigerian mothers understand. the natural reaction was to salvage whatever was left of the boy, from his mother's hands and at least try and figure out what unbailable offence the boy had committed. alas, it was a grave offence under the nigerian mother's code. no, it wasn't stealing meat from the cooking pot (you know you all did it), it wasn't being caught in a compromising position with the neighbour's daughter (don't even try to act like you can't relate, guys)...it was the worst of all. Bed wetting. wow, right? so first thing this morning, thanks to the internet, i checked up on this matter which, to be honest, i was plagued with during childhood. enuresis, as it is kn...

i'm the sort of person that doesn't have any favourite artiste. i just dig the songs and not the performers. so its often that i'd be hit by a single, and then proceed to buy the album and then realize it was a complete waste of my money. and i'm so hooked to good sound, that i actually find myself checking out the billboard hot 100 almost on a weekly basis so that by the time all the radio stations are doing their lame top ten countdown shows, i can already tell who is number one. but until recently, nigerian music just wasn't cutting it for me. everyone was raving about different artistes at different times, but i just wasn't feeling it. even as a young boy i knew that the standard of music just didn't do it for me. truth is, the reason that michael jackson's music still finds a place on radio stations today, is that the quality was timeless. same with fela (ignoring the lewdness of his lyrics, which got me in the gut each time). i kinda predict that t...

i've got tons of work lined up for me this morning so i'm gonna do this real quick. yesterday, i heard severally that the olubadan of ibadan (their king) was quipping about how he was being owed over 1 billion naira as... wait for it, salary for one and a half years! i had to hurriedly do the math. 1 billion divided by 18 months = 55 million naira a month. thats over ten years of my annual salary some dude is earning in one month. don't get me wrong. i love kings. i love royalty. i'm all for giving one guy way too much respect than he's worth just because we gave his grandfather the same respect (which the man probably deserved in his time for waging a tribal war etcetera) and although i just checked my calendar and we're in 2009, way beyond the era of tribal wars and conquests wherein kings were relevant, i begrudge him not. what i do not understand is: why on earth are we paying anyone, king or not, 55 million naira a month just to sit on some old chair and ha...