Showing posts with label Lucia Edafioka. Show all posts

Sunday, April 02, 2017

Nigerian Catholic Church and N20,000 Blessing

(By Lucia Edafioka – Sabinews) - Catholic Church, when did all this nonsense start?

I attend a small military catholic church close to Yaba. Last Sunday I bowed my head out of church before church closed, I felt ashamed. As a Catholic I was raised to sit my butt down no matter what, until the priest gives the final blessing.

Missing ‘the mass is ended let us go in peace’ is akin to not attending church at all but I left way before that. I left after offertory. We had not even done communion. Catholics understand this.

We started at about 7am, the mass was scheduled to close by 9am, but it was 9am and we were still sitting, clapping hands over ‘chief ABC’s, Ten Thousand Naira’. This was the unveiling of the harvest theme for the year. I understand that the church has to raise funds but why are we staying 3-4 hours in church because of funds? Did they extend time for mass because of praise worship or because of the sermon? No. It’s always because of some other frivolities.

That is still not why I left though; I left because of the announcers and the priest. I couldn’t even believe what my ears heard.

‘N20,000! From N20,000 and above, come out here. If you know the lord has blessed you, come and give back to him, Chief this, Daddy that, come out, the lord knows your income. Are you going to give to God what has cost you nothing?’

(Lucia Edafioka – Sabinews) - Lagos men and operation “show your penis”

I am tired of seeing penises in Lagos.

It seems everywhere you look there’s a penis hanging out passing or shaking off the last drops of urine.

What is this nonsense?

I do not understand how we came to be like this in a country where “do not urinate here” signs are more ubiquitous than our coat of arms.

Ok , we were all living in our villages before urban towns sprang up and people began to build houses without bathrooms and toilets. But there was always an outhouse for this purpose, so how did the along the road thing start?

How did it become okay that when people, mostly men, are pressed to urinate they just stop anywhere, bring out their shriveled penis and start urinating?

(By Lucia Edafioka – Sabinews) - Something is missing from Lagos’ logo

I was playing on the internet last week when I stumbled upon the logo for Lagos.

I have never really paid attention to it before until then. I zoomed in. Palm trees, fishermen, yellow colour and some cowrie like things, green grass, and the motto is Justice and Progress. Yes, that is Lagos, more of progress, though, I don’t know about Justice (side-eyeing Delta state with Finger of God motto).

I kept zooming in on the logo and wondering; something is missing I thought; why isn’t there somebody preaching with a megaphone on the logo? Isn’t that like a permanent feature of Lagos?

Have you ever gone a whole day in Lagos without seeing somebody preaching with a megaphone? They start in the morning around 6am and what they are saying is mostly incomprehensible, still they scream upandan. Sometimes the person will just be walking along the road ringing a bell, just ringing a bell not saying any words.

How about buses? You are more likely to see more preachers at a bus stop than buses. And there are like over one million churches and mosques in Lagos.

(By Lucia Edafioka – Sabinews) - Dear teacher, Nigeria does not have 3 tribes

One of my ‘smallies’ was studying for her exams, so in the usual Nigerian school way, she was cramming and reading in a sing song way. ‘We have two religions in Nigeria, we have 3 tribes in Nigeria.’

Three tribes caught my ear, I turned to her, ‘We have 3 tribes in Nigeria? Let me see your book.’ Lo and behold, it was ‘we have three tribes in Nigeria’ in the book. So I asked her, ‘what tribe are you?’ She said, ‘Urhobo.’ ‘Are you in Nigeria?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘So why are you not among the tribes in your notebook?’ ‘I dunno, my Aunty said…’ she continued sing-songing. She is 5.

I was born in Delta state and there alone we have the Urhobos, Itsekiris, Ijaw, Isoko, and Anioma. In DSC, (Delta Steel Company), housing where I grew up, I knew people that were Idoma, Tiv, Fulani, Ishan, Bini, Yorubas, Igbos, Ogoni, Kalabiri, Efik, Ibibio, Igala, etc.

I thought everyone knew we had more than 3 tribes in Nigeria. Imagine my surprise when I went to the East for my University education and people asked what tribe I was. ‘Urhobo, from Delta state,’ and I got ‘what is Urhobo?’

‘Why don’t you understand Igbo? Delta state people are Igbos na.’

(Lucia Edafioka – Sabinews) - Dear hypocrite, must you watch Big Brother Naija?

So Big Brother Nigeria, the controversial reality show spun off from Big Brother Africa which first started sometime in 2002 has been on for over a month. Lovers of the reality show can be seen tweeting away.

The first controversy the show created this season came from the Federal Government. Remember when the FG was probing why the show was taking place in South Africa? Like, of all the problems we have in this country that was their headache. Anyway, the dust settled and the show continued.

The next controversy is now coming from citizens. People are asking that the show should be banned, not aired on television. Some say it has no moral lessons, others say instead of youths to focus on improving the country they are wasting their time etc etc and I am just amazed. When mentioning the problems of this country, after our bad government, lack of electricity and bad roads, one should not forget to add hypocrisy, it is a huge problem.

First, anytime I hear that Nigerian youths are wasting their time, or are lazy or any silly criticism I get angry. People who were youths in the 1960s ruined this country, they ruined it, looted it dry and are now always fast to point fingers at ‘Children of these days’ who actually are striving, working hard to survive in the useless country they left for us.

(Lucia Edafioka – Sabinews) - By Some Yoruba people can be very ignorant sha

One of my friends convinced me to go see “The Wedding Party” last week. It was a comedy through and through. I totally enjoyed the movie.

As is expected with Cinemas and movies like “The wedding party,” the hall was packed full, and as Nigerian as we can be, people gave loud commentary, clapped their hands, and laughed out loud during the movie.

There is a part in the movie where the parents of the bride who are Yoruba presented Efik dancers to the parents of the groom who are Igbo. The mother of the groom, rolled her eyes and told them “we are Igbos,” the mother of the bride looked at her husband, thoroughly confused, “Efik, Igbo, are they not all the same?” her husband nodded in agreement, “they are all the same.”

People at the cinema added their consent too, “all na the same joor,” someone behind me said, and I joined the mother of the groom to roll my eyes.

Some Yoruba people are so ignorant! I told my friend the next day. He looked at me as if I had grown an extra head, then said “we are the most educated group in the whole country.” Yes, Yes, no arguments here, but when it comes to Nigeria and how the country works SOME Yoruba people can be very ignorant about the most basic “Nigerian-facts.”

(By Lucia Edafioka - Sabinews) - Lagos is full of tribalism o

Tribalism is to Nigeria what Racism is to America.

Majority of Nigerians are oblivious as to how tribalism works, especially the ones who have never left their regions; think of the Yoruba man who has never left Western Nigeria, or the Igbo who has never left the East.

They don’t really care about tribalism and their only insight into tribalism would be the hate/distrust people have for each other which they hide under statements like, “Yoruba people are like this…”

But for members of ‘minority’ tribes in Nigeria, tribalism is something you “eat” every day, especially when your state or local government area is too small to contain you, and you drift to the other people’s side because we are one Nigeria. You’ll experience it in little ways, from school, market, church, on the road etc.

People will treat you different because you are not one of them.
In Lagos, the most obvious form of this nonsense is in markets. I was haggling with a woman over bananas once when another girl joined us. She was in a hurry so I allowed her buy first. The woman insisted on N200, even though I didn’t think the bunch was worth N200.

(By Lucia Edafioka - Sabinews) - For Lagos, monkey dey work, baboon dey chop

In Lagos, everybody is trying to hammer. Any way possible, we all want to make more money.

What this has done to me is that my bargaining skills have now gone over the top, yes my mother will be proud of me.

The group of people I am always haggling with are okada riders. I already have an idea what my destination should cost me and I will not add shi-shi to it.

One day, at the height of the fuel scarcity or what I thought was the height (since Uncle Kachikwu has told us to be prepared for another 2 months) I entered an okada.

The usual fare is N100 but when I got to my destination the okada man started begging me to add ‘small’ to it, that it is not just fuel matter.

What else?

My curiosity wouldn’t let me leave it. So I decided to talk to one of them.

Here’s what I found out.

NollyCulture