welcome!
As the man once said, ‘just because I am a paranoid schizophrenic does not mean that I don’t have enemies.’ Given the opacity of our political system and the obtuseness of Nigerians, I have over the decades evolved to have a healthy skepticism about all things Nigerians. Nothing is ever quite what it seems, and…
The irony of this piece then and now does not escape me. Here we are inveighing on the psychological impact of British colonial rule in English. Then and even more so now, it clearer to me that two generations on, we really need to de-colonize our minds, way beyond the fiery rhetoric of the post-colonial…
This was a fun piece, taking a satirical look at the politicians of the Second Republic. I suppose the description is still applicable to most of the politicians of the Fourth Republic too. I chuckle at the youthful poetic license and the somewhat cartoonish archetype employed to satirize Nigerian politicians. Even so, judging by their…
This house is obviously Nigeria and this is my version of its history for the first 22 years of its existence. Even then it was clear to me that there was a peculiar strain of bad leadership that always seem to bubble to the top in Nigeria. If only I could see the future to…
Revolution…That word to me, readily evokes images of rebellions, uprisings, inquisitions, and angry hordes storming the Bastille of their resentment. Ethics – the system of moral principles that dictate the rules of conduct in society. Conscience, morality, and the like, are all ethical considerations. Ethical Revolution…when the President made a call for an ethical revolution,…
Ah.. Yes our favorite trope. As a young man this ‘conversational gambit’ as I described it used to drive me up the wall. The other one, popularized in my reckoning by General Ibrahim Babangida and beloved by all incompetent and negligent leaders/rulers is ‘the situation in which we found ourselves in.’ The former exposes the…
Sometimes we need to code-switch. This piece published 37 years ago is written in Pidgin English. It is not a perfect grammatical rendition of Pidgin English but it was an experiment for the writer to inhabit the persona of ordinary an ordinary Lagosian Joe Sufferhead, struggling to survive in the big city. The linguists among…
Oh, happy day! I offer somewhat grudging felicitation to Nigeria and Nigerians @60. This is the first of the thirty pieces excerpted from a forthcoming book of a collection of my writings mostly about Nigeria spanning almost forty years. Here is a fun fact, when this piece was published in 1982 perhaps 75% of Nigerians…
It’s beginning to look like 1983 all over again. I have this foreboding of déjà vu all over again. The recently announced austerity measures by the Jonathan government in a deep and deeply unsettling way is redolent of the last days of the Shehu Shagari government that ended the Second Republic. Even so, when…
“They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.” Owing to past neglect, in the face of the plainest warnings, we have entered upon a period of danger. The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and…