simply oroque's view

okay, so i have decided to give a whining alert whenever i am about to write blog posts on subjects that baffle the living daylight out of me. moving really past the whole election process that has successfully gone by in nigeria, i sat down to reflect on what the next set of leaders actually held for this country in the next four years. i will not proceed to bore you with any lengthy essay on the expectations of the nigerian populace from their elected officials because it is clearly a moot point. once again, the entire voting process was premised on personal characteristics of the individual candidates as against what their party stood for and that clearly leaves little room for any lofty expectations from a party run government. but one thing stood out of all this...and her name is Dame Patience Jonathan. she is the wife of the president. she is the wife of the president that fate thrust on this country at a very turbulent moment in our recent history. at the time, i could not ha...

good friday...it comes upon us annually. the day when the entire story of how Jesus died for mankind began. the commencement of the resurrection promise, and the fulfillment of a promise to man. its also the day when all of my friends suddenly become holy. you know, open pretensious holiness that smirks of an over dramatised emotional display of heavenly virtues all for the sake of the fleeting moment. as expected, i woke up to a blackberry recent activity page with 60% of my contacts posting "for God so love the world", "Christ died to set you free" and bla bla bullshit. don't get me wrong, i'm all for professing your love for the Almighty. For appreciating his goodness and mercy and the sort of kindness that we're taught in sunday school but we are not quite sure we understand. so okay, when i was younger i used to wonder, why is God so blood thirsty. you know, every single time he wanted to forgive, or to move or be appeased, he'd ask for bloo...

okay, today i will not rant. i will not comment on the ridiculousness of the riots in kaduna. i will hold my tongue and restrict my thoughts to good things...but i will ask one question: "where on earth does the illiterate northern nigerian get the impression that he can break the law without repercurssion?"... the presidential election have been held. the judge was apparently impartial. the results reflected almost eerily, what every nigerian expected. with the amount of money the PDP splashed around, it was poised to win. the other parties were too regional in their affiliations to make any national impact and as people were voting solely for the individuals and not party ideology, it went without saying that ribadu would clinch the south west states easily (he got ekiti, ogun, oyo and osun) although he is a northerner, buhari would clinch the northern states (and he did well in all northern states) but that jonathan would clinch the others, including some break off voter...

tomorrow is the presidential election in nigeria. many of you already know that. in an earlier post i had set out clearly who the contenders are and my opinion on their chances at the polls. apart from the fact that i am eternally grateful to be part of a process where people at least get a chance to pick and decide who they would rather have lead them (flawed as the process may be), i am even happier about the calibre of persons that now stand to run for these leadership offices. not so long ago, at the beginning of what we perpetually consider our "nascent" democracy, the best we had in terms of leadership were farmers whose only claim to fame was being a former military president, house of rep leaders who hadnt quite sat down to business before their forged certificates were exposed, governors whose only contribution to national discourse was their penchant for outting their political godfathers out of the nefarious deals that got them to the leadership positions in the ...

A 10-year-old boy escaped a sinking car after his distraught mother drove her family into the Hudson River about 8 p.m. Tuesday. According to the NY Times, Lashaun Armstrong escaped the sinking minivan after his mother, Lashandra Armstrong, 25, steered the car off a boat ramp and into the river a few blocks from the row house apartment where the family lived. “She was a very good mom,” said Tina Claybourne, who lives nearby. “She took care of her kids. She always was with her kids.” (link) Ms. Armstrong and 3 of her 4 children, Landon Pierce, 5; Lance Pierre, 2; and Lainaina Pierre, 11 months old, all died from drowning. The driver’s side window of the van was down, suggesting that LaShaun crawled past his mother to escape the sinking van. Lashaun “managed to hit the power windows,” Chief Ferrara said, and “climbed out before the vehicle sank.” LaShaun turned up at a Newburgh firehouse about 20 minutes after the domestic disturbance call. He was soaking wet. A woman had p...

you know, being on leave allows you reflect deeply. reflect on many different things that appear trivial, but that either form your character, or remind you of whats important in life, takes you down memory lane and sometimes puts things in perspective. and yes, i am on leave again (eat your heart out). i woke up this morning with renewed strength, a clear mind and a full stomach and thats when my mind began to wonder. i thought through a lot of the things that have happened in the past one year, the people i have met and the the people who have moved on with their lives. the love that almost was and the embarassing end to what could have been a wonderful romance (i'm never giving details so move on quickly along) and one thing struck me. there are only two kinds of people in this world. there are those who just want to sit around in your space watching you live so they can talk about it, compare your situation with theirs all along the way, and generally feel that they are so mu...

you know, sometimes i wonder why i do what i do? you know, even the most mundane things deserve some "why" thoughts once every so often. why do i avoid people? why am i so selective of friends and acquaintances? why do i write this blog? as a lot of my really good friends know, i'm very forthright about my motives and feelings. i'm the last person to give a noble reason for any mundane endeavour. and so, yes, i thought long and hard about the last question for a few weeks and it occured to me that i was writing the blog for one reason: to share my thoughts with everyone and try to use my little logic to effect some change in my own little way. you can give me a cookie now. lets face it. somewhere inside each of us lies a narcissist. to varying degrees of course, and sometimes shielded by layers and layers of good results and noble intentions but a narcissist all the same. by nature, humans rarely do anything without being certain that they will get some form of re...