The Misery of Nigerian Cheerfulness

If a Nigerian were to learn about the existence of a newfoundland called Eudamonia in God knows where, where happiness, laughter and festivities were the order of the day and night; before one could manage to sneeze out Goodluck Jonathan, hordes and colonies of Nigerians would have taken all over the landscape. Such is our love of life that we will do anything, short of the suicidal, in the pursuit and arrest of happiness. We, just like every other sane earthling, relish the importance of sensual pleasures – the pleasures of taste (edikaikong, pounded yam and big stout); sexual pleasure (ikebe super, ijebu chewing stick, omoge); the pleasure of hearing (highlife music, afro beat, fuji, owambe); the sweet emotions caused by the sight of beautiful forms (physiological, architectural and natural).

An original son of the Nigerian soil, in the person of Femi Anikulapo Kuti, once said during an interview on BBC Radio that he refused to believe that the members of the Boko Haram sect were Nigerians. This belief was anchored on the fact that Nigerians were people who loved to lead a happy existence. Such an existence might perhaps be defined as one which would be decidedly preferable to non-existence; implying that we should cling to it for its own sake, and not merely from the fear of death, and further, that we should never like it to come to an end. Contrarily, there is a school of thought which holds that coming into existence is always a serious harm, and that it would have been better not to have been born. The Boko Haram, in their metaphysical garb, could be seen as nearly approximating this philosophical view but because of the absolute lack of method in their madness, it is impossible to describe them as anything but murderous misanthropes.

Eudaemonology is the theory of the art of ordering our lives so as to obtain the greatest amount of pleasure and success. It teaches us how to lead a happy existence. The purpose of human life is the pursuit of happiness. This pursuit is twofold: the maximization of pleasure; and the minimization of pain. Apart from the congenital propensity of Nigerians to happiness, there are other variables which when resourcefully procured and harnessed, will lead to the maximization of pleasure. But there are limits to how much individuals can boost their own happiness, and that leaves a role for government.

In a world wide investigation of socio-cultural and political change conducted by an international network of social scientists in 2003, it was found out that the happiest people in the world lived in Nigeria (oropesije: the proposition swallows explanation). In 2014, Nigeria's economy (GDP) became the largest in Africa, worth more than 500 billion dollars, and overtook South Africa to become the world's 21^st largest economy.

At this juncture, let us pause and reflect on the Nigerian spirit, survivability and cheerfulness. How come that in the midst of so much inequality, oppression, poverty, exploitation and corruption, the average Nigerian experiences, at most optimism of strength. Having being denied access to the most basic necessities of life, and having suffered appreciably from a peculiar sense of dislocation, total disassociation and non-participation, he is psychologically driven to pursue happiness, and remains only happy at the thought of this pursuit which is , at best, a tantalizing will-o-the-wisp. This general predisposition of the people to cheerfulness could be traced to sadness, inveterate pain, privation, deficiency and melancholy. The Nigerian cheerfulness (suffering and smiling) is therefore an expression of a state of endangered comfort.

Government, they say, is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees. And both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people. Therefore, ask not what you can do for your country; ask what your country can do for you. The government has been involved, of late in a series of narcissistic self-congratulations; firstly, because of the aforementioned increase in the GDP, and secondly because of its success in combating the ebola scourge. But the question still remains: is it not a function of the state to promote the happiness of its citizens? Should the state not also see as the centrepiece of its domestic policy the need to ensure a sustainable growth in the Gross Domestic Happiness? Whosai! Instead the primus inter pares of the trustees has become more catholic than the pope in his efforts to narcotize the misfortunes of Nigerians. The downtrodden soul of the Nigerian man needs to prostrate itself in veneration before some shrine, be it okija, ogun or our Lady of the Apostles. Religion now provides the greatest source of lasting happiness, and he who is lucky enough to survive Goodluck's corruption is told on sunday that the Lord chasteneth those He loves. If you have a facebook account, you will see it printed in black and white at the beginning of every month with a picture of bills of dollars that if you type amen, that will be your month of financial prosperity. Some other times, it is the picture of a car's key. You are again requested by the pastor to type amen and you will gain possession of the car. Then you see Nigerians in their thousands, some with multiple accounts, typing amen amen amen amen. One would have thought that apart from being the happiest people in the whole world, Nigerians were also the smartest. Whosai!

Epicurus, the great professor of happiness, maintains that the aim of happiness is not the positive pursuit of pleasure but rather the absence of pain, a neutral state he calls “ataraxia,” which is freedom from all worry, which can be achieved through philosophical contemplation rather than through pursuit of crass physical pleasures or the primitive accumulation of wealth.

While in the vortex of this rat race which is further worsened by the government insensitivity to sensitive situations and the pastor's abracadabra, the victims will sooner or later be overcome by either a physical illness or an intense psychological/emotional pain. The greatest remedy proferred by one of the greatest philosophical minds that ever graced our planet, in the person of Friedrich Nietzsche is what he called “Russian fatalism”. This is but a variant of Nigerian survivability popularly referred to as “siddon look”. Who utilizes such a remedy ceases the attempt to cure himself and simply lies down and accepts his sickness and pain and inhibits any physical or emotional reaction whatsoever. In doing so, he conserves precious energy and hastens his recovery.

Nigerians still remain the happiest people in the world, no thanks to the state. Our siddon look attitude should not be mistaken for apathy or lethargy. Even though our pursuit of eudamonia takes us to Utopia and Canaan, the land flowing with milk and honey, God, in His infinite wisdom, will never allow us to get to the promised land until we are able to guarantee ourselves and posterity that the land of our birth is the land of the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

The Politician Within Us: A Demon Overdue For Exorcism.

All life forms always begin from a state of absolute innocence and purity, after which these attributes mutate into a nihilistic depreciation of life, resulting in the corruption of the best into the worst. The history of man’s transportation into earthly existence and physiological manifestation, which we label evolution, also followed the same trajectory, beginning with his birth into a paradisiacal environment over which he had total dominion. The Bible’s account of our ancestors’ sojourn in the garden of Eden lends further credence to the assertion that the atmosphere that prevailed in the genesis of the world was one of total bliss, natural purity and unmitigated innocence. And here, I must say, there is a meeting of minds between the creationists and the evolutionists as both schools of thought seem to share the view that in its infancy, the world was a totality of processes,connections and relations which,if not relatively harmonious, were also not totally violent as to plunge the young race into a premature state of  attrition and extinction.  
The atmosphere of Arcadian simplicity had its own knell sounded by the great evil, an incident which, within the rubric of chaos theory, could only be rationalized as a tendency by long established states of systems equilibrium to oscillate towards a critical bifurcation point out of which an entirely different social system emerges.
What is referred to as the great evil here was actually one of the greatest events in the history of mankind as it opened us to a vast vista of infinite possibilities which enabled our consciousness to transcend the limitations of space, location and time that we usually take for granted. It started with the ingesting of a certain hallucinogenic plant which was instrumental in inducing an altered state of consciousness. As an aside, it is pertinent to mention here that during this state, problems can be solved in an intuitive way, perception is heightened, some people look ahead to future events or experience a view of things far distant from their physical body. Although the merchants of obscurantism will have us gullible mortals to believe that it was an apple that our ancestors ate to attain that state of non-ordinary reality, we now know better, except for the fact that we still do not know if and when the multinational corporation known as Apple Inc. may develop a virtual apple for out-of-body explorations.  It was during this epiphanic excursion that man gained knowledge of good and evil. Having seen all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, it became his fatal prerogative to use this newly-acquired knowledge to concoct ways and means of gaining dominion over these kingdoms and the people that dwelleth therein. But with his consciousness brimming to overflow with very definite images of evil, and with no definite image of good, he preferred the evil option to the good. And with this choice, ended man’s tentative sojourn in paradise.
After leaving paradise, men dwelled in small hordes, each under the hegemony of an alpha male who resorted to the appropriation of all the females, to the exclusion of his sons who were either killed, castrated or driven out if they should make the least amorous overtures to the women. It was at this point that man started living in the so-called Hobbesian state of nature. And even though there was a form of social order whose politics was strictly dominated and regulated by nexuses of sex, life was brutish, short and nasty.
The primeval alpha male was the archetypal politician: cunning, acquisitive, dishonest, greedy, power-drunk, power-hungry and despotic. One thing he never did, however, was to stoop low to throw golden words in advance of his deeds. He had no need for the hackneyed phrase “yes, we can.” He was the strongest man in the horde and the strongest man, not the dissembling orator, emerged the leader. With the passage of time, the form of social organization developed into a primitive-communal system in which people lived in clans, dominated by customs and tradition. The prestige, respect and authority of the elders and prophets were mythological and surrounded by a halo of divine consecration. Geron-theocracy, as a system of government whose aesthetics, ethics and politics were predicated on some divine commandments, gradually became entrenched and we saw the divine will being propagated by direct contact with randomly selected elderly individuals who were supposedly vouchsafed immutable laws that could then be passed on to those less favoured.
Under geron-theocracy, the political prophets and priests committed a great pious fraud on the people by manipulating them into believing that they were born into original sin and that they lived in a world in which the good were rewarded and the evil punished within their own lifetimes or, at most, in the persons of their children or grandchildren. Suffice it to say this rule of transgenerational punishment, or inter-generational moral anthropology coupled with the fear of going to hell after death, were not so much designed for the moral re-armament of the society, as for being a tool with which to inject the people with subservience and servility and to obtain unalloyed obedience from them.
Within the structure of the old society based on nexuses of sex and religion, the productivity of labour began to undergo a significant development which led to the possibility of utilizing the labour power of others to create more wealth and thereby the foundation of class antagonisms. New social elements arose whose raison d’etre was to create a conducive environment and enabling conditions for the emergent society to blossom into its glorious apogee, until, finally, the incompatibility of the old society and the new led to a complete revolution. The old society based on sex groups burst asunder, and in its place a new society appeared, constituted in a state, and the social elements, the nouveau-riche which were spawned in the course of the revolution, conquered for itself exclusive political sway. They constituted themselves into the executive of the modern state charged with the distribution of the available commodities, and the management of  the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. In the famous words of Karl Marx, bourgeois politicians have “...drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation...In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, they have substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.”
Is it not a testimony to the disdain and contempt in which politicians are held, that no great man of science, like Darwin; a great poet, like Shakespeare; a fine critical spirit, like Socrates; a supreme artist, like Michelangelo, ever graced the unhallowed corridors of power with their presence? Nostradamus, the greatest luminary in the field of astrology, the man who saw tomorrow today and could look into the seeds of time and announce with mathematical precision which of the grains would grow, was more interested in interpreting the influence of the heavenly bodies on human affairs than in getting involved in grandiose and ultimately suicidal adventures in secular messianism. Politics is the exclusive preserve of the insincere, the dishonest and the cunning, and to become successful at it, one needs no training in statecraft. Implicit faith in deception is the first article of the politician’s creed, and we do not need to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his insincerity. The 43rd president of the United States typifies the above axiom. He was quoted as saying after his first meeting with Vladimir Putin: “I looked the man in the eyes and I was able to get a sense of his soul.” In a language that was replete with esoteric allusions, George Bush was simply stating the obvious. He peered into the darkest part of Putin’s in which dwell the vices that he does not display. If politicians can tell lies without batting their eyelids, the electorates should learn how to look into those eyes in order to get a good glimpse of their goddamn and hell-bound souls.
The politician within us is a toxic intruder of infinite plasticity whose evolution over time into a determinate form is catalysed by our archaic heritage, which, according to Sigmund Freud, covers what we bring with us from the past at birth. The archaic heritage of mankind includes memory traces of what our forefathers experienced. Thus, one may say that men have always known that once upon a time they had a primeval father who in order to exercise his power appropriated all the women and drove out his sons. This knowledge, this fundamental truth of who we are, where we came from, and what we are doing here, has been appropriated and hoarded by the global elites who, claiming the colossal license of the superman, have established a network of shady organizations which include the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the most influential of them, the Bilderberg Group, whose sole hidden agenda is to create a new world order consisting of a world government, army, central bank and currency, and a microchipped population. Under this dispensation, the whole of humanity is to be organized into a global herd in which commonsense will be  kept as an esoteric item in the dark temple of culture. Those given the knowledge in the initiation ceremonies are said to be illuminated, and this gave birth to the name of a leading force within the conspiracy, the Illuminati.
Our present day bourgeois politician has succeeded in finally establishing a stranglehold and vice-like grip on both our archaic heritage and cultural heritage. With politics being seen through the intellectual prism of who gets what, when and how, this total domination of the process of acquiring all the knowledge and skill needed to control the forces of nature, and all the institutions that are required to govern the relations of human beings one to another and in particular the distribution of such goods as can be obtained, is reinforced through information management and advertising via the careful use of key words and phrases, sounds, colours, hypnosis and symbols, the latter of which fundamentally affect the psyche. The politicians, not content with invading the physical, have also gone beyond the threshold of consciousness in their bid to rule the world. People who desire to dominate the world and control the lives and thinking of billions are seriously imbalanced, and this imbalance manifests itself in their satanic manipulations of human consciousness by deliberately implanting thought forms into other people’s energy fields, causing them illness, pain, or mental and emotional distress. Such is the power of subliminal messages that whatever the politician utters is taken as the truth and stored for future reference.

The greatest pious fraud ever perpetrated in the history of political thought is democracy. This abracadabra draws its magical strength from the synergistic effect in human interactions. The more people who think or believe a certain way, the more who will find it easy to think or believe that way, and that is, that democracy is government of the people, by the people, and for the people. But the truth of the matter is that democracy leads to complacency. It softens the animosity of the electorate towards the politician for a period of  at least 4 years, after which the herd who thrive on a measly diet of tapioca (which lacking in nutritive value is barely enough for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency) as opposed to the national cake, which is the staple diet of the thieves in the corridors of power, are intimidated into queueing up under the inclement weather to fulfill their electoral obligations. Democracy is the brainwashing of the people, by the global elite, for the enslavement of the people. The rule of law is the law of the ruler, the instruments of coercion and other instruments charged with brutalizing the people in order to obtain the highest possible compliance from them. Any politician who presents himself to the people as a servant-leader is indirectly telling them “my predecessor chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.” Of such politicians, the herd should especially beware. They come with temptingly seductive offers and irresistible manifestoes. Mark my words. These are all trojan horses whose riders not content with your station in life are more so determined to harness and saddle you like a beast of burden whose sufferings they wish to alleviate by all possible means, except by getting off your back. When asked to solve a simple political problem, they proceed, convinced yes we can, to take the controls of an airplane in a nose-dive, and they often end up falling like a capsized ship, crashing into the turnbuckle.

About the much hackneyed quotation  “yes, we can,” something needs to be said. This is simply the act of a politician throwing golden words in advance of his deeds. A respondent should produce a number of utterances consisting of the same grammatical structure as the question directed to them. The information that directs the respondent to produce the right answer must, then, be given in such a way that it is unambiguous and cannot lead to more than one answer. Thus, when asked “do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?” , the right answer under most circumstances is “I do” or “I do not.” But the modus operandi of the politician is to holler “yes we can” when no question has been or is being asked. It is the declaration by those who consider themselves to be great that they can fly. We cannot be expected to have any regard for a great creature if he does not in any manner conform to our standards. For unless he passes our standard of greatness we cannot even call him great. In the presence of the truly great, the pretender always seem vain and petty. To use the metaphor of foundations, he is down to bedrock, but has no building materials. And while those who dwell in the savannah of the morally fallen are courageous enough to go mad for the love of sanity, politicians, however being political, reserve the right to remain sane from an insane dread of insanity.
One would look in vain for a greater example of cowardice if not from this thieving, dissembling, scheming, contriving, double-dealing monster whose extirpation through unnatural means has become an absolute necessity. The whole world was privy to how a much-hallowed man courageously opted to die proudly when it was no longer possible for him to live proudly. Before his final hour, he was said to have requested for two politicians to stand by his bedside, one on the right, and the other on the left. This was in order to replicate the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ amid two thieves, who were probably politicians. The same universal audience saw how the family of a less-hallowed being who had vegetated for ages finally decided to place her under the care of the ultimate physician. And then it was the turn of a much-revered politician to die. Guess what! The proverbial will of the politician to defraud came up here, overcharged, but against a most formidable opponent on whose deaf ears his entreaties fell. A dying politician’s instinct for self preservation reeks of a morbid desire to vegetate.
Tons of tomes could be written on the evil posed and represented by the politician, but the greatest handbook on power politics was written by Niccolo Machiavelli. The Prince, as the handbook is infamously titled, is a master plan for seizing and holding power which even today remains a disturbingly realistic and prophetic work on what it takes to be a prince, a king, a president, a politician. Since politicians do not have time to read, that is if they can read at all, I very much doubt if they even know about the existence of this book. But what surprises me is that they all as a group act very much in accordance with the typifications set out in this book. As a parting shot, I will leave my readers with an excerpt which I enjoin you all to seriously reflect on and thereafter decide whether the gangrenous plague known as politician should or should not be extirpated with a hot iron.

Princes become great, doubtless, by overcoming opposition and by

removing obstacles that are set in their way. Therefore, when fortune

wants to bestow greatness on a new prince, who has more need of

fame than hereditary princes do, she creates enemies and urges them

on to attack him so that he may have cause to vanquish them; and thus

he scales the heights with ladders they themselves provide for him. For

this reason many believe that, when occasion serves, a wise prince will

cunningly provoke opposition and then, by routing it, increase his own

stature.

A Sinner's Favourite Sin.

Sages and philosophers have always maintained that the pen is mightier than the sword. And yet, in all its prodigal magnificence, it remains dwarfed by our manhood. In order to give it back its pride of place, it is necessary that the wielders of this small but mighty device must be ready to shed blood. And that is why today I have chosen to write in blood, for blood makes the pen holy. At the risk of displeasing innocent ears, what I intend to propose here is not a theory, but an observable fact of human nature. Yes, I intend to bestow my favour on that which has hitherto had a bad reputation. And by so doing, I undertake to face the possibility of being branded as an atheist (thank God, I am not one), or a sceptic (which of course I am) in order that the truth I now put forward may cast its brilliance over the world in its visibility to the blind and audibility to the deaf. Or worse still, brand me a lunatic. But, you will see that all lunatics have their lucid moments. And this is one of them.

And what is this bloodied truth for which I am the unpopular megaphone? Of the seven deadly sins, my favourite is lust, and as a matter of fact, I see it as a virtue, and I am ready, willing and able to play the role of the devil’s advocate here. The seven deadly sins which comprise pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth, are the root of many of humanity’s positive characteristics, and there is no way man could have become conscious of the beautiful and good without becoming conscious of the ugly and evil. To perfect himself, Friedrich Nietzsche maintains that man must first develop the feeling that his impulses are evil. Without the fascinating seven, we human beings would never rest or eat or procreate or build or aspire, nor for that matter, would we murder, steal, or lie.

It was no less a philosopher than David Hume who represented virtue concretely as any quality of mind useful or agreeable to the person himself or to others. There is no doubt whatsoever that lust exercises a good claim to qualify as a virtue since it is not merely useful but essential. It is the ultimate goal of almost all human endeavours, and insofar as an erect manhood has no conscience and will naturally dangle, incest aside, after anything in skirts, lust remains the great sacrament of life and none of us would be here without it.

It is proper to point out at this juncture that while many people are wont to use the word “lust” in conjunction with such prepositions as “after” and “for,” to refer to a passionate and overpowering desire or craving, as in, “a lust for power,” we will do well here to zero in on sexual desire as just one kind of desire that is primus inter pares. Lust, as the thing- in- itself, transcends sex as a means to an end, as it is biologically or socioeconomically portrayed. It is an end in itself that is predicated on a web of interlocking physiological systems, different regions of the brain, distinct biochemical mechanisms, and literally hundreds of specific genes supporting these various processes. When our evolutionary ancestors started experimenting with sex, they did not see it as a means to an end. They definitely did not know it was going to result in pregnancy and procreation which is the happy aftereffect, not the logical forethought, of most sexual experience. Human beings desire to couple and copulate as soon as they feel the inner signal which says they are ready. But the different functioning of the interlocking web on which sexual desire is based, will in different people and at different times direct the intensity with which lust is felt, and their dormancy may give us good reason for denying that the fire is still burning.
Any definition of sin has to include within it the concept simply of going beyond the confines of appropriate behaviour. If we talk of boundaries, it seems we ought to be able to strike a balance as to what constitutes a just and proportionate sexuality: one that has an appropriate intensity, short of obsession but more than indifference, and directed at an appropriate object. Some critics of sex say that the pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and its conversation is made up of animal grunts and cries. If, as they maintain, the pleasure is momentary, then this flash of bestial pleasure is simply inadequate and does not therefore transgress the boundaries of appropriate behaviour. If God created the world, He created sex, and one way to construe our inexhaustible sexual interest is as a form of praise of creation. Somebody shout alleluia! Says the Song of Solomon, “The joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman.” (7:1, King James Version). Lust, as objectified by sex, is our God-given appetite, and sex is the most powerful of all human drives. The need for the physical union of a man and woman is among the most deeply rooted, innate and genetically programmed of all human behaviours. Can any of the nay-sayers still tell me why sex should not be used for purposes of simple personal gratification? Can anything be more self-contradicting than to be told not to use for personal gratification something which is intensely personally gratifying?

There is no intrinsic reason why Adam and Eve should not have been granted sexual pleasure in Paradise, because otherwise Eve would have been no use to Adam, whereas the Bible tells us that she was. Since there was no housework to be done in Paradise, it is difficult to imagine what other use Eve could have been to Adam. What has been described as the fall of Adam (if he ever did fall) was actually his upliftment. This remains the single greatest event in the history of humankind. They used the knowledge of good and evil of which they partook, to create the world of relativity. Until they understood this, there could be no life as we know it today. This act of Adam and Eve was therefore not original sin, but, in truth, first blessing.

Nothing accelerates our gravitation towards hypocrisy more profoundly than every sacrifice to the Beelzebub of etiquette, which begets the corruption of the best into the worst. By this argument a posteriori, and by this argument alone, a man who spits, farts or picks his nose publicly where such acts are frowned at, commands my respect and admiration. Conversely, I have nothing but contempt and disdain for the animal that indulges in these all-too-human acts only when nobody is around. By way of analogy, am I therefore to stand alongside the philosopher Crates, the Cynic, who, believing that nothing is shameful, openly copulated in public with his wife Hipparchia? At the risk of displeasing innocent ears, all I can say is that any quality of mind that is useful or agreeable to the person himself or to others, ought to be objectified.

And now for my coup de grace as the inexhaustible source of blood for my almighty pen is gradually nearing exhaustion, I invite all readers, including Bill Clinton, Jacob Zuma, Condoleezza Rice, the Dalai Lama, Dominique Strauss-Khan to answer this simple question. Let us assume you were stranded on a desert island with an attractive stranger. How long would it take before you answered the call of nature and have sex? Years. Months. Weeks. Days. Hours.

Facebook And The Immortality Of Its Users.

Every now and then, man that is born of a woman ceases to breathe. While this, in itself, is a natural phenomenon, the onus of serving as the official megaphone of unnatural death lies on a society that is neck - deep in traditional values and superstitious observances. The aged, the sick, and even the young whom the gods love and whose transition is supposed to be a rebirth in another dimension of life are constantly hounded by archaic principles which seem to express themselves as anti - nature.

The purpose of human life is the pursuit of happiness, and life’s drama is constantly played out between the extremes of pleasure and pains being maximized and minimized at one time or the other. It is to man’s credit that he is the only species that is capable of pursuing happiness, which is conceived as an ideal life that is joyous, contains achievements of love and friendship and activity, and is above all sufficient to itself. An integral aspect of the achievements of love, friendship and activity is our proclivity towards social networking, as evidenced by the exponential growth in the users of Facebook. As pointed out by this writer in a previous article, Facebook is a bridge that grants you a safe passage into the past in order to make the present more memorable and more enjoyable. And what better way of making the present more memorable than to be able to reminisce with your friends over shared experiences, and get an insight into their recent activities. Add to this the infinite possibility of making more friends from all over the globe, i.e., if you are not averse to fraternizing with strangers.

A man’s friends’ list speaks volumes about the person. It is like the saying goes: show me your friends and I will tell you who you are. With a miserly figure of 30 friends, spanning a period of 3 years, this writer sets a record of being the most economical with friendship. Perhaps, this is in keeping with his public declaration of excessive love for dogs from whom he claims to have learnt life’s greatest lessons: abnegation of the ego, instinctual renunciation and ascetic self - torture. What a pity these canine beings can neither read nor write. We therefore have to rub our minds with persons of similar and dissimilar interests: commenting, liking and unliking comments and pictures, currying God’s favour and attempting to bribe Him by adducing as petty a matter as one’s good looks in a picture to His grace in our mundane responses to comments. Human beings are indeed common bipeds! All these activities take place within the confines of our walls, provided by the grace and technological savvy of Mark Zuckerberg. And it was here the author of this piece had his first baptism of fire.

What is however enigmatic about the whole operation is the fact that while we are constantly updating our profiles and changing our passwords, the thought never crosses our minds to let a close person in on our password which remains our most guarded secret till our dieing day. This in itself gives birth to the phenomenon of some of us being born posthumously. Having made no conscious efforts to make a living will pertaining to the disposal of our Facebook account in the event of our eventual journey to thy kingdom come, a deceased user’s account continues to exist and the deceased’s recent activity makes the headline as if he had risen from his resting place. What better way of giving a real - time user the shock of their life when they log in than to be presented with a scenario of a deceased user showing up in Facebook suggestion and status updates. Facebook! Facebook! How we wished you could really bring back dead people with status updates.

In order not to encourage real - time users to cry for the moon, there is a proviso embedded in the privacy policy of Facebook requiring the family and friends of any user that has passed away to contact the company to request that their profile be memorialized. Family or friends must fill out a form, providing a link to an obituary or other information confirming a user’s death, before the profile is officially memorialized. This is done, no doubt. in order to discourage pranksters from posting obituaries of users who still have the breath of life pulsing through every fissure, rent and pore of their system.

In memory of Francis Orumwense and Roland Igbafe, two worthy soldiers and users of Facebook, who recently passed away. Rest in peace.

The Naked Professor.

What a great pity that those who are able to look into the seeds of time and predict with mathematical accuracy which grain will grow and which will not, were not able to foresee the situation whereby a teacher's trajectory on the scale of values will take a sudden plunge from indispensability to expendability. The teaching profession in which its practitioners are charged with the duty and responsibility of not only imparting knowledge, but wisdom as well, to their wards, is one of the most respectable professions in the world. But, time after time again, experience has shown that what is often imparted at the end of the day is just pedantic knowledge, and not wisdom. This writer wonders how come no one ever hears wisdom when she stands on the corner of every street and at the centre of every market place wailing that the sweetness of a woman is the downfall of man. Not even the most knowledgeable professor in the world is wise enough to know this. Granted that the teacher is not wise enough to know that the only thing he is supposed to know is that he knows nothing, does that mean that whenever the possibility of infallibility presents itself as a character trait, the all-knowing teacher has to be sacrificed at the altar of extra-judicial manipulations?

One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil, and a bad one at that. It is therefore meet that whenever windows of opportunities open to let such bad pupils into the good books of the almighty teacher, they have to resort to using what they have to get what they need. Such is the nature of the dramatic spectacle and spectacular drama that presented itself on cyberspace a couple of days ago. It was like watching the phony video of Diya kneeling down before the almighty Abacha and crying his heart out for allegedly planning a coup against his master. The opening scene showed a half-naked man sitting on a chair in great distress, with his face wreathed in the disguising smile men put on as a mask to conceal their secret agonies from the pitiless gaze of unsympathetic fellow creatures. The dishevelled man, an engineering professor had allegedly being bartering grades for sex with his students and had come for one more roll in the hay with a student who had offered him contractual and consensual sex before. The professor's crime was that he had reneged on his pledge to pass the student. To an unsuspecting and gullible mind, if that was what actually transpired between the professor and his student, then it was pay back time. But caution dictates that we should take a more than cursory look at the video and examine it with not only a telescope, but a microscope so that we are able to fathom the seemingly unfathomable pieces in this jigsaw puzzle.

If there was ever a contract, it is clear that something went wrong somewhere to lead to this comedy of errors. There was a breach of contract. A breach of promise ultimately leading to a breach of peace. Every human creature has a capacity for good and evil. Like Lucifer, who used to be an angel before his descent into the depths of moral depravity, we represent the unfathomable see-saw between light and darkness. Which way we tilt, is more often than not, dependent on the interplay of nature and nurture, and which of these plays a dominant part here is hard to say. What is clear however is that no law proscribing sexual activities between two consensual adults had been broken here; whether between teacher and student, master and servant, government and the governed, pastor and female laity, Adamu and Frank or Agnes and Iyabo.

What portrays this video as totally absurd and crass is the total lack of evidence to buttress the allegation that the professor ever slept with the student. There were no amorous scenes. No foreplay. No penalty kicks. No dribbles. No afterplay. The only thing our innocent ears were subjected to was hearsay. But our innocent eyes saw the look of anguish in the eyes of a man held against his will, forced to display his manhood before a coterie of paparazzis and made to sign a cheque under duress. It is even possible that the professor may have been kidnapped by the cultist students who were acting on the order of their female head, a whore, the kind of whore that wants her money up front and then jumps out of the window of the car leaving you naked in the driver's seat of a moving vehicle. All the telltales were there.

This is not the first time the evil of blackmail has been painted on the cyber canvas. We have seen it a number of times. They fill the pages of all history, ancient and modern, and they fill our cities, homes, universities, churches, corridors of power. In all these places, they put sex and money in everything. These are the only variables that are capable of rubbing the shine off the halo of honourable men, rendering their every action dishonourable and making the most rational of all creatures, less than honourable.

It is good to hear that the governor of Edo state has waded into the matter by asking the university authorities to set up a commission charged with investigating and ascertaining the circumstances surrounding this criminal display of jungle justice. Although the good it will do is debatable, it will do no harm especially if the culprits were brought to book. One thing though is clear: this is the genesis of a gender war! The naked professor should see no shame in his nudity. There is a haven for you in Europe where there abound enough nudist gardens and every naked and clothed soul just goes about soaking in the sun without much as a glance at the person sitting next to them.

Oops, Obasanjo Does It Again!

The history of the evolution of the Nigerian State veers towards haphazardness at a certain point when it fails, either by omission or commision, to illuminate the roles played by certain actors in either propelling the State towards ever greater heights or in tarnishing its image beyond redemption, by words or deeds. Inasmuch as these personalities were all products of definite social circumstances which enabled them to become gladiators in the political arena, so do they all remain today, products of history, and whenever mention is made of the labours of our heroes past, we should never become oblivious to the disservice of our past and present villains in power (V.I.P)s. Our heroes wrested political independence from the colonial masters, while the villains did absolutely nothing, except to facilitate our economic dependence on the former lords. Today, we are saddled with a structure which, if it were really a giant, would stand on 2 sturdy and robust legs. Seeing that it lacks the attributes of a giant, this structure has metamorphosed into a behemoth set on a tripod. To use the metaphor of foundations: the structure is down to bedrock, but the building materials are lacking. Due to the aberrant nature of this sub-Saharan beast, a distinct Nigerian aroma exudes from its fissures rents and pores which is very poisonous and which proliferates into a tropical vegetation of concepts like federal character, quota system, bicameralism, rotational presidency and such other petty bourgeois concepts that throw more light on the centrifugal nature of the State than the centripetal. Of all the political actors that militocracy and democracy have given birth to in Nigeria, none has had a more checkered career than ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo whose antics and public pronouncements both in and out of office have become wilder and weirdier. This places him at par with other national leaders like Boris Yeltsin, Idi Amin, Muammar Ghaddafi, Hugo Chavez and Silvio Berlusconi, who, while lost in the ocean of narcissism and megalomania speak/spoke or behave(d) in public in ways that would hurt the sensibilities of some of us mortals. Obasanjo's role in the history of the evolution of the Nigerian State is that of a cross-dresser. As a military Head of State, a position which he reluctantly assumed, he was known to have willingly handed power over to a civilian president. As a civilian president, he became involved in grandiose and ultimately suicidal adventures in secular messianism and was quite reluctant to let go of the aphrodisiac of power, even after a second term. During the transitional phase of his cross-dressing, his farm at Otta became a sort of Mecca for political tourists from all over the world, especially, from Africa. We do know that during this period, the ex-General had not yet seen the light because what he was reported as saying actually originated from the bowels of a decaying and despairing decadent, groping in darkness, helpless and broken, before the Christian cross. The whole world was shocked to hear Obasanjo's suggestion that juju should be employed to dismantle the South African apartheid regime. A lot of us were amused and those who saw nothing funny in that statement made sure he was frustrated in his bid to become the Secretary General of the United Nations. What we do not know is what would have happened if he had been able to secure that appointment. That statement alone was not the only albatross in the way of his secretarial ambition. The whole world also became aware of the gladiatorial abilities of the ex-General when he was seen wrestling with a camera man on national television. If Obasanjo did not make Secretary General, it was because he lacked the qualities of one. What we know that we know is that Obasanjo was not a man of real secretarial calibre. And that was his undoing. No sane man ever leaves BBC's Hardtalk without being discombobulated. When Tim Sebastian was the anchor man of that programme, he acted like an inquisitor. His successor, Steven sackur, is just worse. Both have an inclination, born of strength, for questions that no one has the courage for; the courage for the forbidden. Whereas Sebastian chastised his guests with whips, Sackur chastises with scorpion, and Obasanjo was at the receiving end of both whip and scorpions. Asked by Sebastian what he thought was his legacy to Nigerians, our conceited ex-President replied that he had given HOPE to Nigerians. I was left stupefied because of all the tangibles that a performer of a particular task could enumerate, Obasanjo was only able to focus on a mere intangible which could not even be measured if it existed. What manner of hope was he exactly talking about? Definitely, not hope in the kingdom, power and glory in another life. And certainly, not hope in the realization of a nation where no man is oppressed. In late April 2009, Obasanjo made the following remark in Dutse, Jigawa State: "In 1999, Nigeria was not looking for a president that will build roads, fix power or provide water; Nigeria was looking for a president that will hold Nigerians together." If Obasanjo sees the duties of a leader or servant-leader as not trascending the confines of evo-stick glue, then the less government we have the better. Even though in the long run every government is the exact symbol of its people, that is to say, like people like government, we still see it as the business of government to promote the aggreggate happiness of the society by providing in adequate quality and quantity the basic necessities of life; providing a salubrious and conducive environment for the propagation of the human race resulting in higher life expectancies and lower infant mortality rates. Haba, Baba Iyabo, U yab o! Penultimate Monday, Obasanjo returned to Nigeria from Senegal where he attended on the invitation of that country's leader activities marking their 50th independence anniversary. While fielding questions from reporters at the airport, the ex-General remarked there was no basis to compare Senegal and Nigeria because "one is a francophone country and the other anglophone." Arrant nonsense. Typical Obasanjo. It is like saying there is no basis of comparison between Anambra and Osun States because one is an Igbo speaking state and the other is Yoruba speaking. The last time I checked, Senegal was practising a semi-presidential system of government, with little dissimilarities from our own. Both countries are republics and have bicameral legislatures. Senegal has never experienced a coup, and has never had a cross-dressing president. It is one of the most successful post-colonial democratic transitions in Africa. In 2008, Senegal finished in the 10th position on the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, which is a comprehensive measure of sub-Saharan governance, based on a number of different variables which reflect the success with which government deliver political goods to its citizens. To drive home the comparison, take alook at these figures from the 2009 Ibrahim Index. Nigeria had an overall score of 46.46, while Senegal had 55.98. Under safety and rule of law, Nigeria scored 50.57, while Senegal scored 61.85. Participation and human right gives Nigeria a low of 41.84, while Senegal gets a high of 61.12. Under sustainable economic opportunities, our own dear native land could only secure 42.65 while Senegal dominates with 50.06. Human development is the only category where both nations were almost at par with Nigeria having 50.77 and Senegal, 50.90. What we do not know that we do not know is whether Obasanjo was simply displaying his ignorance or he was well aware of these facts but was ashamed to own up to them. Whichever way we see it, Obasanjo as a phenomenon is not just an eccentric or enfant terrible. He is a chartered libertine whose excesses have to be explained away as due to the freakishness of nature, or we should be forced to accept the other excuses with which his goons have sought to palliate his antics.

Ezekwesili Slaps Jonathan Goodluck In The Face.

A table of values hangs over every people. Behold, it is the table of its achievements; a table that legitimizes political dominance and social segregation; a table that deepens the chasm between the truly rewarded and those consigned to the dustbin of obscurity. Strange as it may sound, we have all grown to internalize this petty-bourgeois mechanism that serves as a platform for rewarding, either in cash or/and kind those who are seen to have contributed to the elevation of the society materially or culturally. This reward system is the carrot end of the carrot and stick approach in management. The stick is reserved for those who either, as a result of complacency or disinterest or inability, are not considered worthy of being inducted into society's Hall of Shame. So, whenever it is required of you to stand back and make way for the members of the high table whose crumbs you must feed on, you should know that the society is peeing on your back and telling you it is raining. It is indirectly telling you to ask what you can do for your country and not what your country can do for you. Strangely enough, in Nigeria, it is those who do not do anything for the country that end up with oil blocks and the largest portion of the national cake. They are richly rewarded with prizes, awards, national honours, chieftaincy titles, governmental appointments and contracts, grammys and oscars. Those who have not been able to leave their footprints on the sands of time are left with no other option than to debate over the merits and demerits of such awards and whether the recipients are actually worthy of them or not especially after having one or two previous awards conferred on them.

Inasmuch as this reward system is a reification of plutocratic self-congratulation, we are not blind to the fact that certain individuals' stellar qualities and accomplishments stand out so clear that others perceive them as well and venerate that strange electromagnetic force oozing from such persons. The madness of the generation starts when the system, apparently in need of an act of social surgery and being persistently denied it, is propelled to travesty itself by blatantly bestowing prizes on undeserving persons, who while being conscious of their shortcomings, are however audacious enough to accept them. Barack Obama's audacity of acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize, inspite of his paltry records and achievements, sends a clear message: the system stinks. If he had had the modesty of turning down the prize, he would have succeeded in endearing himself not only to Fidel Castro, but also to the Talibans. It is disheartening to say that our beloved president, being unable to reject the urge for instinctual gratification, went ahead to accept the prize. One must actually be very careful when turning down such awards especially if they are financially gratifying. This is because the whole world has become so obsessed with money and nothing accelerates our gravitation towards perdition more profoundly than every sacrifice to Mammon. You will be declared certifiably insane if you were to turn down an award that had 3 million dollars attached to it. Such was the case of Dr. Grigori Perelman, a reclusive Russian genius who refused to accept the prestigious 1 million dollar "Millennium" Mathematics Prize awarded by the Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, MA. A lot of people said he was was suffering from autism, or aspergens or schizoid personality disorder. Just because he refused to accept a 1 million dollar prize.

Every once in a while, there comes along a clown who thinks they have contributed so much to society and yet are left unrewarded by the ungrateful society. They throw tantrums and constitute themselves into nuisance at every public gathering where awards are being given. Although American hip hop singer Kanye West is not the only person in this category, he is the uno numero cry baby. When society does not consider you or your work worthy of an award, then you shut the f**k up instead of crying a river. Better still, a man that craves so much for recognition and awards and is not getting it should go ahead to dig his own grave, so that in the event of his resurrection, those who were wont to class him with beasts and monkeys will be calling him a god.

The word maverick best defines Senator McCain and the Russian ex-President Boris Yeltsin. As a matter of fact, the world has a plethora of mavericks most of whom are unknown because they are either not in the public limelight or they originate from the Third World. Nigeria has its own fair share of mavericks, people who are not afraid to do or say something that the majority think is unthinkable. Professor Chinua Achebe, a literary icon, shocked the nation in 2004 when he turned down the award of Commander of the Federal Republic. Another shocker occurred a couple of days ago. In this age when the characteristic feature of the Nigerian political system is machiavellian power play and jostling for offices and governmental appointments, the innocent ears of the upright in the savannah of the politically corrupt were subjected to a rude shock when Ms. Oby Ezekwesili turned down the offer to serve as the nation's finance minister. Although she had in the past served as Minister of Solid Minerals and Minister of Education, her decision not to become engulfed again in the murky waters of nigerian politics, is not bereft of reason. She represents the best of homo sapiens, a thinking, wise and clever being who does not want to be used as a pawn in the chessboard of Goodluck Jonathan's power play. She must have listened to her inner voice, the same inner voice that told Sonia Gandhi not to take up the reins of Prime Minister after she led the Indian Congress Party to victory in 2004. Maybe it was the same inner voice that advised Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent and practising surgeon, not to accept the position of America's surgeon general.

Although a lot of people would argue that accepting the job would involve a massive financial sacrifice, we should not lose sight of the fact that this woman is a Nigerian afterall. And Nigerians are known for not ever getting bellyful. And her present position at the World Bank does not make her more visible and popular than she would have been if she were to serve as Finance Minister. It pleases me to no end to know that there are still people who would prefer to keep their dignity and values intact. One of such people is Ms. Oby Ezekwesili. If you nominate me, I will not run. If you elect me, I will not serve.