Happy Mother's Day

Mothers: You're God's best gift to humanity; so invaluable that God chose to become part of the created world through you. Thank you is not enough. But THANK YOU for your loving nurture of your family and of the world. May your family continue to appreciate and celebrate you. And may God continue to increase your joy, your peace, and your smiles. Happy Mother's Day!

When A Country Has More Churches Than Schools

(By Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo) - The Acts Of Apostle Suleman 

“Few days after he was born, some Prophets came from Warri to Benin (the place of his birth) with a message from God. When his parents desired to know what the message was, they said God told them “a prophet who would minister in God’s presence has been born.” His parents refused to listen further because they were Muslims and did not see the possibility of their son leaving their fold.” From Apostle Suleman’s website biography.

Just like Prophet T.B. Joshua and other self-styled church leaders of their kind, little is known about the life of Apostle Suleman. The biography on his church's website simply proclaimed how he was born in a Muslim household and some prophets came and declared that the child would be a prophet. As he grew up, he battled with the prophesy; he read the Bible three times and one day he read Acts of Apostle 10: 38 and his eyes were opened, and he saw his mandate.

There is no record of where he went to school and what he studied. And there is no record of where he worked before he joined the vineyard. Like Jesus, he disappeared at a certain age and reemerged a preacher.

Apostle Suleman founded Omega Fire Ministry in 2004 in Auchi, Edo State and today it has over 40 branches across the world. The church is currently building an auditorium that can take 70,000 people. It also has a vibrant television station, Celebration TV, from where his message is heard across the world. He would've had his own private jet if not that he rejected one that was given to him as a gift.

When the Catholic Church Names You

“Very generous of you, Dr. Mandi.” I spoke too brightly.

“Ah, there’s the issue of nomenclature to iron out. I’m quite happy with my initials. You must call me S. P. J. C.”

“That would be presumptuous. Besides, it’s such a mouthful! Ess Pee Jay Cee.”
“Well, that's what you get when the Catholic Church names you. Simon Peter came with baptism. Jude with confirmation. My parents threw in Chika to appease the ancestors. For years I didn’t know how to hold the names together. You don’t walk up to people and introduce yourself as Simon Peter Jude Chika Mandi. Somebody might fall asleep while you’re at it. But my chemistry teacher in secondary school solved the problem. He strung together the initials I have used ever since. Saved me a lot of headache, that wise fellow.”

Okey Ndibe
Arrows of Rain, 2015, p. 81-82.

"It Is Your Fault Women"

(By Joy Isi Bewaji) - I remember K-solo's wife.

Beaten blue black and defrauded by husband, producer/musician K-solo.

She got the whole internet on her side.

Two weeks later, she's on Channels- with her abuser; his hand around her...

"Oh! It was all a joke," she says, "we were just fooling around. Akshually, we were trying our hands on acting. We want to see if we can build careers in Nollywood."

She dismissed the abuse. And we all moved on

One week later, K-solo parades another woman as the woman he will be spending the rest of his life with...

Whilst first wife is pregnant.

First wife tries again to hawk same sympathy on these cyber streets... we directed her to a tree, and advised her to fuck it.

The Man Who Sat On The Tor Tiv's Throne

(By Reuben Abati) - This is about Stephen Nyitse, the young man who on the day of the coronation of the new Tor Tiv managed to beat security and went straight to where the king’s coronation seat, stool, throne had been placed and sat on it. We are told this caused a stir, and not a few in the crowd must have shouted: “abomination!”, Even the President of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, Benue branch, Bishop Mike Angou considered Nyitse’s action sacrilegious. He went to the seat, to anoint and rededicate it. Bishop Angou’s intervention obviously was meant to cast out whatever demons Nyitse must have inflicted on the already consecrated kingship throne. It is possible also that the ordinary people in attendance and the chiefs of Tivland interpreted it as a bad omen. Africans including the educated live in a world of spirits, demons and magic. Every act or gesture among them, is considered spiritual or religious.

The other side of it has to do with social hierarchy and customs. Our social life is heavily stratified. People are expected to know their place. Young persons are not supposed to disrespect or question elders. Wisdom is necessarily attached to old age, even if that is definitely untrue. Women are expected to submit to men, and that remains the case for all women in many of our communities. The poor are expected to worship the rich. Employees are expected to be loyal obedient servants.

This is the content of our socialization in traditional communities,

Battered, Bruised and Broken

(By Olusegun Adeniyi) - In the past three weeks, no fewer than a thousand Nigerians have been deported from the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Belgium, South Africa and Libya. Meanwhile, we are still awaiting the deluge that will come from the United States given the resolve of President Donald Trump to unleash a policy of “settlers and indigenes” on his country. It doesn’t matter that his own grandfather, Friedrich Trump, in 1905, wrote a letter to the German authorities begging that he and his family be spared the pain and humiliation of deportation.

 If you excuse the diplomatic blunder in issuing an American travel warning which is not within her remit, I still believe the Special Adviser to the President on Diaspora, Mrs Abike Dabiri-Erewa has done well on the issue of Nigerian deportees from abroad. But it is time the authorities began to find a lasting solution to the problem of our citizens who, desperate to get out of Nigeria, now find themselves in a bind in foreign lands where they are no longer welcome.

People "Think I am Letting God Down"

(Hymar Idibie David) - Meanwhile, as to the Apostle matter, I laugh when people tell me to go and join seminary because of small bible teaching, they think I am letting God down.

I have said, If a madman come my house now and I am inside with two friends, one a born again believer, the other an atheist like that fool Akorita, and the madman asks me to pick which one of them he should shoot as e get only one bullet, I will tell him, shoot the Christian.

Because if the Christian dies, he goes to heaven.

If the Christian dies and wakes up in hell, na him own fault. Nobody send am to form wetin e no be.

So, If you wan sin, sin in peace. If na righteousness in Christ you wan follow, go all the way.

If you try half measure, the devil will embarrass you and God won't do anything about it.

If you like, carry the combined anointing of A. A Allen, Smith Wigglesworth, Jack Coe, William Braham, Benny Hinn, Rod Parsely and David Du Plessis, if you try half half, the devil will deal with you and rubbish your ministry.

Why did Judas fall? Greed. Pesin Jesus give power to cast out demons fa. Pesin Jesus earlier sent with the disciples to preach and heal. But he wanted to play away match. He wanted to buy house in Banana Island.

"Does Nollywood Actually Portray Igbo Culture?"

(By Eddie Iroh) - I know that aficionados of Nollywood will have my guts for garters for saying this. I will say it all the same. But there again this is directed mainly to Ndigbo who, with some justification, traditionally claim “ownership” of the genesis of the Nigerian film industry because of their pioneer role in the home video enterprise.

To be sure Nollywood is said to have bumped up the re-jigged Nigerian GDP a few years ago and helped propel the economy to the biggest in Africa. The industry provides substantial outlet for the employment of scores of Nigerians from actors to crews and staff. No one can sniff at that.

While this is not a critique of the quality of Nollywood’s output one cannot but observe similarities between Nollywood and the excessively exaggerated plots and storyline of the Indian films of the 60’s – even though art and technology have moved on in the five decades of the then nascent Bollywood.

But my concern here is whether the Igbo people take any notice of how Nollywood portrays their culture in the so-called Epic movies? Is art imitating life here or is it an instrument of correction and change? Do Ndigbo notice how they are portrayed as a people who can do just about anything for money, thus reinforcing the stereotype even though those who have looted Nigeria since independence are predominantly non Igbo?

Nollywood’s Igbo characters will allow any moneybag however unscrupulous and questionable the source of his wealth to marry their daughters, however miss-matched. The parents will swallow even her most serious reservations the minute a wad of Naira enters their hands.

Nigerian Patriarchy, American Patriarchy

(By Temidayo Ahanmisi) - 

America (read: The US) is a patriarchy.

Nigeria is a patriarchy.

America strongly discourages polygamy, domestic violence, spousal rape and other acts which denigrate the self-worth of the female person.

Beyond a sociological aversion for all these, America creates and maintains institutional agencies to push her cultural preferences, so that even though she remains a patriarchy, the birth of a female child is not as tantamount to a mild tragedy which must be endured and borne stoically at best, as most in Nigeria have been forced over time to see it as in our enclave.

America is a patriarchy.

Nigeria is a patriarchy.

The American legal system won't let anyone on their soil withdraw their underaged daughter and go marry her off to a man because she is a girl.

In patriarchal America.

No cultural paradigm can be foolproof as they are results and by-processes of conscious evolution of a developing species.

Responsibility to Family--Extended

(By Okey Ndibe) - “The first time we sat down to talk, my parents remarked on the jumbo salary I was going to earn in America. I was not to become spendthrift, they cautioned. Instead, I was to cultivate a frugality dictated by an established practice within our extended family. That practice imposed an obligation on members of the family with the financial means t help pay school fees of those coming behind. It was a formula for lifting up everybody in the wider extended family. In that spirit, my parents said I was to take up responsibility for paying the school fees of my youngest brother, Oguejiofor, and two male cousins, Emeka and Ndubuisi. Once pronounced, the matter was settled; I proudly accepted the responsibility.

            My parents must have expected that I would regularly send money to support them. Parents made sacrifices to put their children through schools or into some profession. In return, once established in a job, trade, or profession, children were expected to cater to some of their parents’ needs in old age or after retirement. I recognized the sacredness of that obligation. My parents didn’t raise it explicitly because they knew that I knew my duty by them; it went without saying. . . .

"Don't Bring Us A White Woman for a Wife"

“At the farewell feast, my parents and other relatives piled me with advice, instructions on what to do, what not to do.

            ‘Make sure you don’t bring us a white woman for a wife,’ Auntie Eteti said. Her face bore a mischievous expression, a look that implied I was the sort of rebel to surprise her and other relatives by taking a Caucasian bride. Everybody fixed yes on me, reading my reaction.

            ‘What have white women ever done to you?’ I asked my aunt, laughing.

            ‘Did you hear me say they did anything to me?’ she said.

‘Don’t you think there are good white women?’

‘I am sure they are,’ she answered. ‘Every people have good and bad women. But we want a wife whose tongue we can understand.’

Eleti was the only one of my father’s siblings without a scintilla of formal education. She spoke no English, even though—like most Nigerians—she understood a few basic words of the language. I sensed that her stipulation that I not marry a woman with a foreign tongue was not exclusively—or even primarily—about language. Her concern was much deeper: she didn’t want me to have a wife who would disdain or reject the bonds of kinship she and other kinsfolk considered sacrosanct.

I promised not to bring home a wife she would not approve of.

‘Ehen!’ she exclaimed, relieved.”

Okey Ndibe

Never Look An American in the Eye, 2016, p. 33.

Nigerian Harmattan Vs. American Winter

(By Okey Ndibe) - "I was not altogether ignorant about winter. . . . I had always thought that winter was the American version of what the Igbo call ugulu, otherwise more widely known across West Africa as harmattan. Harmattan is a dry cold wind that emanates from the Sahara Desert and sweeps through much of West Africa from the latter part of the -ember month through to March.

            Growing up in Nigeria, I had witnessed many harmattan seasons. The harmattan brings fine granules of dust that cause coughs, redden the eye, color the skin ashy, and lend the atmosphere a patina of grey. It also gives the air a tinge—a mere tinge—of cold. At the height of the harmattan season, the temperature drops in the mornings, hovering around fifty-five degrees fahrenheits. In tropical Nigeria, that’s what we call cold.

            Whenever I had come across the word ‘winter’ in print, I mentally transposed ‘harmattan’ in its place. Why would I pack a special winter jacket for my trip to New York City when my people had never needed to invent harmattan jacket? The entire arsenal of our combat against ugulu-grade cold consisted of Vaseline (to sheen up dry, scaly skin), a sweater (usually worn by the very elderly and children), a handkerchief (to ward off dust), and a pair of sunglasses (to protect the eyes from airborne sand).