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.