simply oroque's view

i just realized a minute back that i mostly start my blog post by saying "i won't say much today" or something to that effect, and then end up writing an epistle. now, i'm not sure if i do this to get you to read to the end of the post - on the assumption that its a short read, or its that i sub-consciously believe that a 12 paragraph write-up is actually short. either way, forgive me and i'm just gonna keep this really short. that is, if nigeria and its daily offereings of the unbelievable and sometimes downright ridiculous will let me. on my way to work today, i noticed a molue (huge lorry-like bus often without brakes and used to convey tons of people in lagos nigeria) with the following inscription on the back "model 2010". i guess that was supposed to intimate prospective passengers that they would be cruising around town in the latest breed of this contraption. truth is, i haven't seen a more rickety bus in a looooong time. soon after, another ...

i'm not going to say much today, not because the general news around the country has suddenly become positive (well, it has for our foreign affairs minister, chief maduekwe) but because only very few things are worth my thought process... i have been accused severally of taking sides with governor raji fashola in a battle that is uneven...uneven because there is no way i can tell if, say, obanikoro would have done a better job were he elected governor instead. basically, i am told there is nothing to compare fashola with. and i agree... i agree that in nigeria today, there is indeed nothing to compare fashola with. in the last one week, all i have heard about other government officials are 1. The Federal Executive council could not hold its weekly meeting because ministers had not submitted their memos for deliberation, as many of them hadnt returned from the sallah break (really? sirs, the rest of the country which you govern were back at their desks almost immediately after) and ...

now, i'm sure its general knowledge that i've been on vacation for the most part of the last month and a half. it was a great time, knowing that i could wake up at noon and then slowly decide what the rest of my day should be like. having to work from 5 am to 9 pm everyday, makes it impossible for one to want any activity during his break but i did try to hit the gym during that time and kick start my belated "get fit" program. you know, for someone who has every edition of "men's health magazine" from 2008, its ludicrous to be in the shape i'm in. i'm not in entirely bad shape, ladies, just picture an avocado pear...thats a shape too isn't it? so anyways, i'm back here...just in time to gasp unbelievably at the fact that ASUU is still on strike? we might as well ask everyone to become artisans and scrap the entire school system. its good that the someone finally has the balls to stand up to the bullying teachers who do nothing for the ed...

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...

let me start by saying that today isn't my best writing day, so forgive me if i appear incoherent at times. to be honest, i'm a lil overwhelmed by not just the standard of living i have, but by how much worse things are indeed becoming. pretend as i want, that most of the issues on the news don't affect me by a mile, the truth is that as i have found out, life is a cycle. and someday, somehow, it will all link up to me. black is often associated with negative things. sorrow, grief, mourning...illiteracy, ignorance, violence. many arguments have been made linking these acts and tendencies to the era of the slave trade and how this was the psychological mindset that ensured that africans got through the brutality of the time. whilst i have no empirical basis to argue for or against this proposition, i am completely unwilling to even argue. in nigeria, every event worth mentioning erodes our faith in our abilities to govern ourselves. it appears, as you look around the contine...

i had promised a long time ago that i wasn't going to write piolitically themed posts anymore especially since i realized that my readership increased when i focused on life themes like love, trust and family. however, nigeria just won't let me be without something politically ridiculous that gets me started. 2 things: where on earth did we get our current president? and how on earth can we get a new one before this country completely collapses? In my near 30 years of living, i have never witnessed the levels of insecurity that are facing today as a nation. we have somehow accepted that one in five persons will be kidnapped and most parents today are saving money frantically, not for school fees, not for rent, but for the almost inevitable ransome money that they will be forced to pay at some point in the lives. unbelievable. we just finished two intense fuel scarcities and kerosene prices are through the roof. all universities in the entire country are on strike and have been ...

as many of you probably already know, my younger sister got married a few days ago. as a matter of fact, just last weekend. its amazing how these things happen. one minute you can bully your siblings, next minute they're all grown and married. at the wedding, you could just feel the joy, and see the excitement on the faces of the couple...and then some. i am her elder brother by 5 years. "so what" you might ask. i'm not yet married..."ooh, that" you now say. to be honest, and i know this may sound sexist, i always thought the expectation to marry in order of seniority was a girl thing but apparently, from the looks and overly-polite smiles that greeted me everywhere i went during the wedding, its not quite so. you should have seen the looks i kept getting. old aunties would come up to me, ask if i remembered them (i almost replied: "you're the old 'most-likely-to-be-senile' one, so i should be asking that question"), and then o so polit...

i've been accused severally of writing content that has nothing to do with the topic...i apologize, but thats my way of being creative (i know, crap right?). so before i say anything, i need to render my sincere apologies to anyone out there who's been checking my blog to see if i've got any new thoughts on the state of nigeria, written down. unfortunately, i haven't been here for over a month. i lost my phone under very mysterious circumstances and i used to access my gmail account on there by default. so it meant that as soon as you clicked the gmail icon, it would immediately open my email box (not good enough)...so i frantically changed my password from the one that i had used for over 3 years, and in the panic, totally forgot what i'd changed it to. so basically, i locked myself out of everything that required my google account (including this blog page). so thats it basically. i watched television some time ago (hurray) and stumbled on the hip hop world awards...