simply oroque's view

i swear i can't. you know how i promised to stop talking about my church some months ago cos all y'all said i was going to hell for disagreeing with some of their over the top teachings? well, scratch that, cos try as i do to hold my peace, they sha must say something that pushes my fingers to the keyboard. so yesterday at church, of all the topics in the world that the pastor could preach on, he chose tithe. as a child that grew up in a christian home, i am very conversant with all the bible verses used to justify the continued practice of tithing. malachi 3 shall a man rob God but ye have robbed me thingy thingy. naturally, that was used in abundance yesterday talking about how we have to pay tithe and how in the 3 years the pastor has been in our church he knows a few people who have never come outside to drop their tithes into the basket etc etc. naturally, this preaching is never complete until you talk about the removal of cankerworms and palmerworms from people's f

this is 2013. the year of no excuses....and this applies to my readers more than anyone else. over the years, i have joined the throng of people who sing the whole "multiple streams of income" song. the belief is that one cannot ever survive or build a life on his salaried employment. this song is not new and everyone of us probably has an aunty who has done everything from fishery to tailoring in the pst, opening and closing each business venture within a year of launch. i know that a lot of people think opening a shop and stocking it is all it takes to have a successful business running. that was in the 70s. now, with the extremely aggressive tax regimes in nigeria, coupled with no access to capital, the decayed infrastructure and expensive real estate, a successful small business is magical to say the least. by the time you register your company name, get a photographer or artiste to prepare your logo, talk about print advertisement concepts, get a model, pay the model

lets not start off the year with apologies for not writing my blog etc. you already know the drill. something ludicrous happens, i write. something interesting, i might write. something 'nigeria only', i should write. anything else is just not worth my time...and i'm guessing you have better things to do as well. by way of an update, nigeria is still there. just there, but there still. our president is still as clueless as ever, the world is still as surprised that we can still move on despite the odds, and the usual wranglings and attention seeking is hale and hearty. the other day on my way to work i heard that a few people went to a remote village and vandalized petroleum pipelines (the things poverty causes). as has happened a million times before, the pipeline exploded and there was a fire outbreak and they died. the only reason why this is even remotely intriguiging to me is the fact that we can even still have stories like this. over and over, year on year, we have