Education in Nigeria: We Can Do Better

(Eketi Edima Ette) - A Nigerian man recently had to go to his daughter's school to set things straight. 

The girl had been given an assignment. When asked who cooks for the home, her answer was, "Daddy."

The teacher marked her wrong. In 2018. As far as that teacher was concerned, cooking was a woman's job. 

*******

My mother runs a creche and early learning school. 

Her children love her. It's cute to see them eagerly run into her office to say good morning every day; some even demand to be carried. It warms my heart to see them say goodbye and see you tomorrow. One time, one of those 2+ year old imps even added, "You will miss me o!" 😂

In a recent conversation with Mama, we talked about her school, home schooling and its necessity, in view of the adversarial educational system we have in Nigeria. 

We talked about how their generation had been raised on the colonial educational system, one that was meant to produce clerks, engineers, doctors, interpreters, architects, etc., for the white man's government and companies. 

Church Business: Tax-free Easy Money

(By Ireh Noh Sehn) - Looking for a tax-free, full profit business venture? Start a church! 
*******
No, this is not an attempt to be sarcastic or blasphemous, church business is good business, it is a lucrative business, can I get an amen?

Anything that sells hope and miracles and the possibility of the unattainable is good business. 

The world is a dreary desolate place, we are fighting each other, living off each other and forever trying to edge out each other. It is hard , very hard to survive in the world, we all need some hope, something extraordinary, some miracle , we all need something to hold on to, to believe in , to help us get through every day, and that is what pastorpreneurs tap into and take advantage of. 

Don't get me wrong , there is actually the possibility of some few genuine ones out there who believe in something and whose sole aim is to touch lives and impact the world. Unfortunately my main focus is on so-called men of God who open churches for the money, for the business, for the offerings, tithes and seed sowing. For them it is not about winning souls or worshipping God, it is about making bank.

Dapchi Girls: Nothing Ever Changes in Nigeria

(By Simon Kolawale) - The More Things Change… 

Confirmed: nothing ever changes in Nigeria. The more things change, the more they stay the same. This immortal epigram of Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, the 19th century French critic, journalist and novelist, captures the fortune of the Federal Republic of Drama aka Nigeria. That is why when anything happens these days, I’m like: haven’t I seen this before? I’m seeing repetition all over again. As we say in Nigerian Latin, “Soja go, soja come, barracks remain the same.” I’m no longer as excited or as agitated as I used to be. An Igbo proverb says what a dog saw and is barking ferociously is the same thing a goat saw and barely bleated. It’s a depressing feeling of “I’ve seen it all”.

The kidnap of 105 female students of Government Girls Science Technical College, Dapchi, Yobe state, was Chibok all over again. As it was in April 2014 so it is in February 2018. The president has changed, the service chiefs have changed and the crime scene has changed — but the details are so alike. We were told they were kidnapped, they were not kidnapped; they were rescued by soldiers, they were not rescued by soldiers. Presidential fact-finding team finally confirms abductions. Déjà vu. The missing link is that President Buhari and his inner circle have not blamed political opponents for the kidnapping yet. And, yes, the first lady is yet to cry “Diariz God o”.

Black Panther and Message from Black Women

(Sesali Bowen) - Black Panther Has A Message For Black Men: Trust Black Women 

Finally! Black Panther has hit theaters in all of its glory. In case you haven’t heard, the movie is everything that we hoped it would be, and then some. It’s become something of a nationwide event for Black folks, and my timeline has been flooded with friends decked out in head to toe tribal print, all black outfits, or bold statement tees to go see the film. I seriously haven’t seen this many people dress up for a movie since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 2 was released. What’s clear is that Black people have been anxious to see ourselves in Hollywood on such a major stage, and the proof is in the painted faces and berets. That Black Panther is such an excellent example of Black representation is only overshadowed by how it takes a fresh dive into themes that speak directly to the Black experience.

And Black Panther delivers on this promise in ways I didn’t expect. Anticipating a bold statement against white supremacy, I was surprised to find the movie to be a cautionary calling out of Black elitism and respectability. And while T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), theBlack Panther, is obviously the protagonist of the film, moviegoers looking forward to a narrative that centers Black men and masculinity as the only eligible leaders of Black communities are also in for a rude awakening. Instead, it is a visual lesson in how Black men can and should lean into the power and aptitude of their female peers.

Of Creative Writing & Nigerian Secondary Schools

(By Temidayo Ahanmisi) - So at one of my client schools where I teach Creative Writing, this English teacher throws a mild tantrum. Doesn't see the need for my support work and always tries to belittle me.

The kids needed the intervention the proprietor had asked for as I can see. Grade 11 pupils constantly writing "Am" in place of "I am/I'm", much like their parents, uncles and aunts on WhatsApp and Facebook.

Grade level 12 pupils who can't manage to string two complete five-word sentences at a stretch. 

Grade 10 pupils who don't know the place of a full stop in a sentence. These pupils would reel off the definitions of parts of speech at your asking, but would argue that the word "She" is the adverb in "She is walking slowly", and that "walking" is either an adjective or a metaphor. Has to be.

This churlish teacher queried my "incursion" into Grammar, Comprehension and Vocabulary. I was there to "just teach ordinary Creative Writing", the experienced teacher of "12 years teaching experienced" would grumble. 

Snake Swallows Cash in Nigeria: Deja Vu

(By Peter Adeosun Keyz) - Snake Swallows ₦36m: 4 Things You Didn’t Know About the Story 

A snake allegedly swallowed money in a government office in Nigeria.

To further demonstrate how rooted corruption has become in Nigeria, another story trended recently. A public official was asked to account for a missing money in her custody. She replied that she couldn’t find the money because a snake had swallowed it. She looked everybody in the eyes and said a mysterious snake swallowed a sum of ₦36m. In words – thirty-six million naira. How brave!

It happened at the national headquarters of the examination body, Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB). They noticed some money was missing and they tried to make an inquiry into what happened. Then this woman came up with this. If you think this is some fiction or fairy tale, a video link has been attached towards the end of this article.

Africans, Traditional Religions, and Colo-mentality

(By Peter Adeosun Keyz) - Yesterday a lady greeted me "As-salamu alaykum" to which I responded "Wa'alaykumu as-salam". We both laughed about it. She's a staunch Christian, a devoted RCCG member and we've been friends for many years now. So we both knew we were just catching fun. 

Then I took the fun further and greeted her "Eríwo yà!" Instead of responding, she exclaimed "God forbid that I should respond to a greeting like that". I told her that if we could exchange pleasantries the Islamic way when she's not a Muslim, why couldn't we exchange pleasantries the Yoruba traditional way? She said she can still cope with Islam. Traditional religion is the one she can never cope with. Why? According to her, Islam is still close while traditional religion being idolatry is far away. 

I shook my head and walked away. I kept thinking about how the two of them successfully made us embrace their traditions and see our own tradition as dirt, a taboo, the forbidden.

Child Molestation: In Defense of a 3-Year-Old Girl

Eketi‏ @eketiette

I'm angry. A Nigerian school hires a SAN to defend a teacher against a 3 y/old's accusation of sexual impropriety. When I read that headline, I felt a heavy ball drop in my stomach. A potpourri of pain, incandescent rage, horror etc. I have been there. I was 3.

How Not to Underestimate a Girl

The Mighty Miss Malone; Credit: barnesandnoble.com

(By Nkechi Bianze) - 

Part 1:
Between 1996-1997, I was in Primary 4.
I did my first term primary 4 in a school at Isolo, Lagos.

I remember getting there to notice that all the three top positions in class had been colonized by three boys, who held on to them like those positions were their birthrights.

There was also another new student in class.

There were some common factors between me and this other new student.
1. We were both girls.
2. We were both from outside Lagos. While I came from Delta State, she came from Anambra State.

I don’t know whether Lagos residents still live in this sort of delusion. But in those days, many Lagos residents actually had the complex that Lagos was the London of Nigeria. Many of them believed that everyone who lives outside Lagos lives in a village, and is not as civilized as them Lagos residents. And even those who lived in Lagos ghettos, swamps and gutter houses also lived in same delusion. 😏

Adichie, Anambra, and the Core of Igbo Society

(By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) - I am from Abba, in Njikoka LGA. My mother is from Umunnachi in Dunukofia LGA. I grew up in Nsukka, in Enugu State, a town that remains deeply important to me, but Abba and Umunnachi were equally important to me. My childhood was filled with visits. To see my grandmother, to spend Christmas and Easter, to visit relatives. I know the stories of my great grandfather and of his father, I know where my great grandmother’s house was built, I know where our ancestral lands are.
          Abum nwa afo Umunnachi, nwa afo Abba, nwa afo Anambra.

          I am proud of Anambra State. And if our sisters and brothers who are not from Anambra will excuse my unreasonable chauvinism, I have always found Igbo as spoken by ndi Anambra to be the most elegant form of Igbo.
          Anambra State has much to be proud of. This is a state that produced that political and cultural colossus Nnamdi Azikiwe. This is a state that produced the mathematics genius Professor James Ezeilo. This is a state that produced Dora Nkem Akunyili, a woman who saved the lives of so many Nigerians by demonstrating dedicated leadership as the Director General of NAFDAC. (May her soul continue to rest in peace)

          This is a state that produced Nigeria’s first professor of Statistics, Professor James Adichie, a man I also happen to call Daddy. This is a state that produced the first woman to be registrar of Nigeria’s premiere university, UNN, Mrs Grace Adichie, a woman I also happen to call Mummy.
          This is a state that has produced great writers. If Chinua Achebe and Flora Nwapa and Chukwuemeka Ike had not written the books they did, when they did, and how they did, I would perhaps not have had the emotional courage to write my own books. Today I honour them and all the other writers who came before me. I stand respectfully in their shadow. I also stand with great pride in the shadow of so many other daughters and sons of Anambra State.

Adichie, Achebe, and A Country

(By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) - Chinua Achebe at 82: “We Remember Differently” 

I have met Chinua Achebe only three times. The first, at the National Arts Club in Manhattan, I joined the admiring circle around him. A gentle-faced man in a wheelchair.

“Good evening, sir. I’m Chimamanda Adichie,” I said, and he replied, mildly,  “I thought you were running away from me.”

I mumbled, nervous, grateful for the crush of people around us. I had been running away from him. After my first novel was published, I received an email from his son. My dad has just read your novel and liked it very much. He wants you to call him at this number. I read it over and over, breathless with excitement. But I never called. A few years later, my editor sent Achebe a manuscript of my second novel. She did not tell me, because she wanted to shield me from the possibility of disappointment. One afternoon, she called.  “Chimamanda, are you sitting down? I have wonderful news.” She read me the blurb Achebe had just sent her. We do not usually associate wisdom with beginners, but here is a new writer endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers. Adichie knows what is at stake, and what to do about it. She is fearless or she would not have taken on the intimidating horror of Nigeria’s civil war. Adichie came almost fully made. Afterwards, I held on to the phone and wept. I have memorized those words. In my mind, they glimmer still, the validation of a writer whose work had validated me.

To Write in Igbo Or Not to Write in English

(By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) - "I’m not sure my writing in English is a choice. If a Nigerian Igbo like myself is educated exclusively in English, discouraged from speaking Igbo in a school in which Igbo was just one more subject of study (and one that was considered ‘uncool’ by students and did not receive much support from the administration), then perhaps writing in English is not a choice, because the idea of choice assumes other equal alternatives.

Although I took Igbo until the end of secondary school and did quite well, it was not at all the norm. Most of all, it was not enough. I write Igbo fairly well but a lot of my intellectual thinking cannot be expressed sufficiently in Igbo. Of course this would be different if I had been educated in both English and Igbo. Or if my learning of Igbo had an approach that was more wholistic.

The interesting thing, of course, is that if I did write in Igbo (which I sometimes think of doing, but only for impractical, emotional reasons), many Igbo people would not be able to read it. Many educated Igbo people I know can barely read Igbo and they mostly write it atrociously.

I think that what is more important in this discourse is not whether African writers should or should not write in English but how African writers, and Africans in general, are educated in Africa.

Nigerian Christian: "You Are A Scam"

(By Temi Dayo) - My 80+ year old mother on poor advice by her doctor, took a dose of the drug, Salbutamol. A few hours later, my mother began to hallucinate. She thought it was raining heavily and that she saw a cat. She was light-headed and ranted incoherently for the most.
And this is where I will forever raise a fist in worship to my ancestor, my father, F.I. Ahanmisi, who sadly is beyond hearing, beyond earshot of all the affectionate adulations I pour on the memory he has become.

You see, my father was way above the league of others when it came to raising us. My mother, our children, my siblings... All still drink of the benefits of having a father who was too good to be a religious Nigerian. My father considered the superstition which is now transmuted into something called "Pentecostal Christianity" as beneath contempt. Even with the limitations of his environment, he yet held out and stayed above the fray of gross ignorance and general stupidity which passes for Spirituality and Religion in the society he lived in, and which he birthed his children into.

Religion, Politics, and Cycle of Poverty

(By Okenye Kenechi) - Irony of life 

Rich man marries and has four children. Poor man marries and starts mass production of children that he can't afford to train because the only thing that gives poor man joy is the body of his wife. 
The country [Nigeria] has beaten him to the level that sex is his only idea of enjoyment. 

Politicians steal your money, sleep with your wife and girlfriends and sister, make sure you don't go to school, even when you struggle to, he makes sure you don't finish on time let alone getting a job. 

He sends his children to the best schools abroad so they will take over from him when he is done playing with your future. 

He initiates a poverty alleviation program, videos himself cutting tapes during the mounting of an electric pole. He gives you 4000, bags of rice at rallies and arms to fight his opponents.

He paints the roads and puts Street lights when there is no light in your home. You hail him! 

He spends millions on billboards of his fake projects, hires the best PR experts to keep you drooling with hunger and uninformed and keep on doing damages to your common sense. You defend him. 

Second tenure, no jobs, no food, the 4000 has finished and the bag of rice wasting in the pit of your toilet. He must recover the billions he spent buying your votes. For he is not qualified to lead but you qualified him. 

Educating Girls on the ABC of Their Safety

TEDxTalks

7 Reasons Men Should Not Be Pastors

Sojourners 

Mother-in-Law Vs Wife: Winner Takes All

(By Jude Idada)

The mother of an old friend of mine lives alone in Okokomaiko.
An Urhobo woman in her late 70's.

Embittered.

And frowns so much that a deep furrow lies permanently between her brows.

Including my friend, she has five sons.

And a wealthy husband who is so debonair and exposed, unlike her, who holds a degree in Classics from the University of Ibadan, but prefers to speak in Pidgin English most of the time and hobnob with the most rural of people.

In the days of yore, when we all lived in Ikeja, we called her Margaret Thatcher.

Strict was her byword.

No nonsense her dictum.

So draconian she was, that she boasted of her control over her husband and her sons far and wide.

Of a Madam, an "Innocent" Husband, and a Maid

(By Jude Idada) - On my power walk this afternoon I stumbled on a scene. 

In front of a lovely looking house close to Spar in Lekki. 

A woman, her house maid, a gate man and a small crowd of onlookers.

The beautiful house maid who was dressed in tight black jeans, a red spaghetti tops and a pair of roman sandals had a travelling bag by her and was holdiing tight to the gate.

She was in tears.

The handsome woman was dressed in a trouser suit and leather shoes.

She was irate.

The shirtless, slender and short gate man was trying to get the house maid to leave the gate.

The woman was hovering around both of them.

"Ashawo! Husband snatcher! Leave my house!"

She said as she clapped her hands together.

"I need my money ma."

"God will punish you! You f...k my husband and you want me to pay you?! Trailer will kill you today today I promise you. My God is not asleep."

The guard and the maid struggled.

The crowd watched.

Of Nigerians and "Anything for the Boys?"

Jude Idada (R)

(By Jude Idada)

Three times I warned them.
Yet they persisted.

Not these ones, but the ones like them.

Dressed in uniforms.

They are supposed to guard the estate in which I live.

But they conducted themselves like motorpark touts.

There was the first time.

I was walking to the elevator and the uniformed guard who usually sits by the elevator said to me...

"Sir, please find me something. Owu dey blow."

I warned him to desist from begging and bringing dishonour to the uniform he wore.

He apologised.

Next day I walk to the elevator.

He greets me with a welcoming smile.

I get into the elevator and as the door is about closing, he blocks it with his hand.

It opens.

This is Lagos: Tales From Daily Bus Ride IV

(By Jude Idada)

The driver kept his hand on the horn of the bus.
The honk was loud, continous and vexatious.

And as though obeying the order of a conductor in an orchestra, the other drivers in the cars and buses around the bus, did the exact thing.

The din was deafening.

The abuses started flying in pidgin and Yoruba as each driver cursed out the other driver.

I watched in silence from the first row of the bus in which I sat.

Wondering how vehicularly quiet the streets of Toronto were in comparison to those of Lagos. So quiet, you could go through a year without hearing the honk of a car.

We were heading to Victoria Garden City in Lekki and the traffic jam at the Jakande Junction - fifth roundabout - was holding us hostage.

I noticed his stare.

This is Lagos: Tales From Daily Bus Ride III

(By Jude Idada)

I stood at the bus-stop for nearly an hour.
Lekki.

Buses and taxis stopped and drove on.

After the conductors had called out.

"Obalende!"

"CMS!"

A few actually called out -

"Oshodi!"

I was heading for Freedom Park on Broad Street.

I had hoped to hear them call out.

"Race course!"

My plan was to get there and walk over to Freedom Park.

But none had called that out.

It was hot.

I was sweating.

Finally another bus slowed down in front of me.

On Marriage and Feminism

(By Temi Dayo) - On Marriage and Feminism: 

You cannot be married to a Nigeriàn and be an honest feminist. Truth is, to be married under any customary provisos in Nigeria, and perhaps in nearly all of Africa, is to become an enabler of Patriarchy by default.

It starts from the point where one party (by custom) waits for the other to propose, and the other by same custom expects to propose. Then it progresses to the observance of native traditional norms - bride price, dowry payment, and perhaps religious matrimonial rites which of course are the supreme establishments and reiteration of profound symbolisms of Misogyny.

Next would come the rituals of living and all observance of the quotidian. Who cements the ultimate identity of the offspring of the marriage? From whom do they derive their last name - the name which differentiates one Susan, that John and this Amarachi from all others of same name?

There you have it. The Nigeriàn feminist, whether male or female can not cross out all of the above boxes of official acquiescence to Patriarchy.