Category Archives: issues

issues

A TRIBUTE TO MY OUTGOING PRESIDENT: YOU SIR, HAVE MY RESPECT.

Goodluck PencilReally, you didn’t have much of a choice because the handwriting was clear that Nigerians needed a change. Not because you didn’t do well, but because the propaganda against you was seethed in the red hot belly of strong alliance that formed from the moment the unexpected knocked on your doors.

Despite the failures of your government, both perceived and real, your nobility breaks through the preponderance of narrow narratives of politics and persuasions that border on the preposterous. I believe you were given to our country as that lonely wall upon which our differences, vexations, animosities, and bile will be nailed to, just to unite us on the common activity of breathing out our devils.

Personally, I do not prefer your leadership style. To this, I have learnt that we are all made different and crafted for a given time, a given setting, and given people. For this, I can see through the heat and mist of my desire, beyond the trifling conveniences of my ignorant learning, to the higher calling of personal graces with which some are endowed.
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issues, Spiritual

DUST OFF THAT BAG

dooney-and-bourke-hobo-bag-black-516956 A few days ago, I was slouching on the bed early in the morning and subjecting my thoughts to The Father when I suddenly noticed a hand bag belonging to my wife neatly tucked in the shoe rack. This is the first time I was paying attention to the location of bag. It is a black, mid-sized, Dooney and Burke hand bag (women will understand the fashion value), and I remember that my wife spent a little bit to acquire this a few years ago. She carried it everywhere and it was probably one of the most precious functional day-to-day fashion asset for her at some point. Today, it is displaced and finds itself among the shoes gathering dust.

Right there, The Father shifted my attention to the bag and as common with Him, taught me within a flashing second what the bag represented in my life. How did such a prized bag, still in a great condition, end up in the wrong place and become unattractive and unnoticed? Something else took its place. Obviously another possession was acquired and all of a sudden this one lost it place and fell out of favour, even though it retains it actual value for which it was initially acquired. What is even more interesting is that the bag has no tears or marks of depreciation.
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Health, issues

EBOLA: CLOSER HOME THAN YOU THINK?

The Short Nosed Fruit Bat

The Short Nosed Fruit Bat

Sometimes, when an outbreak of this kind happens we tend to stand off and wonder how the crazies bridged this zoonosis. We never imagine that its origin might be as close home as the Liberian scenes seen through our TVs. However, given that the available best evidence is that Ebola is a “naturally occuring” (endemic) illness among tropical fruit-eating Bats, we might want to be more worried and become even more proactive in dealing with the probability of a standalone outbreak in Nigeria…Yes! Even from Lagos.

For those who have lived in or frequented Lagos Island, particularly the circumference covering Obalende, Race Course, Marina, and Tinubu Square, you should have noted the huge population of the Lagos Fruit Bats. They droop off the high metal railings at Race Course, as well as the huge Almond trees at CMS besides the Lagos State Library building. As a teenager living on the Island, it was usual practice for me to observe the dusk flight of these Bats. At about 5pm everyday, the lower skies of the area is blanketed by thousands of flying animals, echolocating food aggregates.

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