Miracles

(By Hymar Idibie David) - MIRACLES. 

You stare at the handsome, three-piece suited up man on the telly as he approaches a row of people holding up rectangular sheets that proclaims illnesses, diseases and other physical conditions. His suit is white. He always wears white when ministering to the sick.

As usual, your imagination makes up for the lack of audio. When he speaks, you imagine what he is saying. In your little corner of the world, 'imagination is everything ' is not just a badass quote.

"Healed! " he roars and a woman jerks and goes down.

"Out of her! " he thundered and another woman, a white woman, starts vibrating like powerful volts of electricity were running through her body.

You switch off the television and return to shuffling papers. You are tired of miracles.

Faith this, faith that. Believe this, believe that.

Hey, if you love me, prove it. Don't make me ask you twice. Or three times. Don't tell me something about having faith moving mountains. I just want to use faith to cut some stubborn grass in my own backyard. Leave mountain matter for pro climbers. 

If you love someone, you go out of the way for them. You bend every rule in the book. You bypass every law. It ain't even up for debate. 

Actions speak louder than John 3:16. Burn me. 

Wole Soyinka on Religion, the Pope, and Wine

#Literature Is Global Because It's Specific

L-R: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Trevor Noah, & Chris Jackson; Photo credit: Beowulf Sheehan

“‘People are surprised they connect with my characters,’ said [Chimamanda Ngozi] Adichie. ‘And

men are surprised they liked a book written by a woman.’ That surprise illuminates the privilege of thinking only one type of story is allowed to be ‘universal.’ After all, white authors aren’t asked to change the names of their characters to appeal to African and Asian markets. The assumption is that the specificities of nonwhite, non-Western life cannot be universal, and that anyone else has to change themselves to be heard. But, for both Adichie and [Trevor Noah, diluting themselves is not an option.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (by Jaya Saxena)
@2017 PEN America Voices Festival, New York

The Sycamore Tree Christian

(By Hymar Idinie David) - He is like Zacchaeus. He has fallen from grace. He has lost sight of the master. So he climbs a sycamore tree to see Jesus pass him by. 

He is so focused on the crowd of people seeking Jesus. He thinks the master won't have his time. He thinks the master won't hear him. He doesn't believe like the Psalmist that he can seek the Lord and would be heard and delivered from all his fears.

So Zacchion went and climbed a sycamore tree to watch Jesus pass him by.

Like some of us, we are in that place where we isolate ourselves from the presence of the Lord. We go out of the way to get out of the way. Why did Zacchion not stand there and wait?

Because he felt he was too short.

Another reason was because he felt he wasn't worthy.

Zacchion was a cheat, a rogue, a corrupt man. The later verses explained it clearly. He thought Jesus was going to take one look and judge him. So he put himself out of reach. He climbed a sycamore tree to watch Jesus pass him by.

Jesus, surrounded by crowds, was walking past the tree. Then he stopped. And looked up.

Of Nigerian Stars and Celebrity Gossip

(By Joy Isi-Bewaji) - In Nigeria, a celebrity will give birth to quadruplets, hide them in a sac, marry a second time, kill her neighbour's dog, buy a house in Miami, sleep with Drake, enrol at a strippers club, amputate her left leg, suffer a heart attack, go clubbing on a yatch, have a street fight with her best friend, steal her best friend's third husband, have his baby and poison his tea with arsenic...

No blog or "gossip website" will know a thing...until the celebrity, by herself, posts it on social media. 

We do not have exclusives. There are no paparazzi waiting at Genevieve Nnaji's gate to tell who she's dating.

If Genevieve doesn't take a half nude picture with a man in bed and post on Instagram OR her friends have the mouths of worn baskets... then no blogger gets to know jack about her life.

It is why I find it ridiculous when Naija celebrities rant about privacy.

You can have all the privacy you want in this country. Nobody is snooping. I have met many A+ celebrities at malls, and people just walk by. Maybe a smile from a few shoppers, but mostly serious boning and prouding from Nigerians. 

Thank God for selfie sticks, now they ask for a selfie.

But nobody... not ONE photographer will bother taking pictures of his life or her activities.

Why I'm Not A (Nigerian) Feminist

(By Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu) - There are two ways to describe patriarchy. First, as a sociopolitical system marked by the privileging of men over women. Second, as an unfair system with a conscience which, without any real, palpable threats, admitted its own mistakes and injustices and made amends. A system that refused to call the bluff of feminine logic, that turned against its own gender and cut itself to size. Feminism owes a large part of its success to the support of men. 

A trite remark, nonetheless it is necessary to help us avoid the danger of a single story. Patriarchy has been so demonized you'd think it's all sour grapes: a system that is, arguably, responsible for the glory of the developed world as we see it. The skyscrapers, the physical developments, the moon landings, the technological revolutions that make life easy today—all owe their actualisation largely to patriarchy, to men who worked the dirt spreading bare backs in the sun to build our infrastructures—but these are ignored by the single story. To this point, we shall return later.

There are at least three major areas of human empowerment: politics, economy, and culture.

Onitsha, Gift of the Niger, By Chinua Achebe

"Onitsha is such a phenomenon. ...

Onitsha is an Igbo town which claims Benin origin. If we are to believe historians, this claim is not very well founded. But what really matters is that Onitsha feels different from the peoples and places in its vicinity. And it is different. It sits at the crossroads of the world. It has two faces—a Benin face and an Igbo face—and can see the four directions.... Its market, which had assembled originally on one of the four days of the Igbo week, had likewise grown ‘big eyes’ and engulfed every day in the sky....

Because it sees everything, Onitsha has come to distrust single-mindedness. It can be opposite things at once. It was both a cradle of Christianity in Igboland and a veritable fortress of ‘pagan’ revanchism. Many hinterland peoples ... would often say with a sad shake of the head that an Onitsha man had too much of the world in him to make a good Christian.

There is a story about one of the earliest converts in Onitsha at the turn of the century who did so well in the new faith that the Church Missionary Society decided to send him to England for higher studies and ordination. While in England he quickly lost the faith that took him there and returned to Onitsha where he obstructed the work of evangelization by his nefarious example. Why did the church preach so vehemently against heathen titles, he asked? What were all those knights and barons and dukes if not hierarchies of ozo? He took all the titles he could find and died a pagan.

Nigerian Catholic Church, Project Sundays, and Second Collections

(By Uzoamaka Doris Aniunoh) - I went to church today. The Catholic Church of Assumption, Umuoji. For our family thanksgiving, post funeral mass.

I came late, thankfully. All is well. Never mind the many 'second collections' that happen. At the end of mass, Father tells us about a project they are working on and how they need people to contribute. He calls on one man like that, the one who has the convincing voice. The man kneels down, Father blesses and hands him the microphone.

He prays and sings and tells us how he was speaking to Jesus before he came to mass that day. About how brethren of the church would give mightily. Amen.

He says that Jesus told him that four people will give 50k each. He begs for these three people to obey god. He sings and prays and sings some more. My father turns to me and says he is tired of this wahala. So he gives 50k, in the hopes that we'd move on. Nope.

He continues to beg the remaining three people. He tells them that they may not have the money at this time, but that it would come. They just need to pledge. He tells them that by giving this money, God would give them every single thing they ever asked of him in this life.

Becoming A Pastor in Nigeria

(By Adesegun Damazio) - PASTOR.

The cheapest and most easily attainable title on the African continent. So rudimentary has it become that you only need to do so little in order to attain so much, albeit without having any valuable influence on your followers.

To become a pastor in these parts, all you need is a bible, fancy suits, studio pictures in which your appearance must have been doctored to make you look immaculate, a well-dressed or good-looking wife, consistent outdoor advertising/marketing materials (flyers, pamphlets, billboards) and most importantly, you need to be brilliant at word play, not because you intend to say anything new but because you need to say old things in more fanciful ways.

You just need to look up a verse in the bible and think of how best to exaggerate its meaning in order to appeal to your audience. And yes, as a pastor in these parts, you must preach nothing but prosperity. Anything short of that and you might lose lucrative audience. Pay attention to that word, lucrative.

Without word play, there will be no mouthwatering offertory, donations, tithes, seed-sowing and the whole nine yards. Most times, you mightn't even need a wealthy congregation, just preach prosperity and the poorest members of the audience would gullibly donate their life savings to the "house of God".

In these parts, the pastoral journey has become more theatrical and less spiritual.