Monday 13 October 2014

Our Heroes



Our heroes are not men in capes and tight latex trousers
Or ladies with glorious long hair and lassos of truth
These epitome of heroism were created to teach us virtues

Friday 3 October 2014

Once Upon my Broken Heart

Once upon a time I overheard a conversation between two people. A boy and a girl. Amidst tears and very distraught she asked him, how he felt when he saw Ginny the girl he loved with Dean another boy; she had just seen the boy she loved kiss another girl. He hugged her and all he could say was "it feels like this". His response was really silly to me and I didn’t deem it important then. In light of recent events I dig into my memory to find a cure for the pain I feel and then I remember what that girl asked that boy, but now instead of replaying what he replied I fill in the blanks with my own words.

Monday 29 September 2014

I am a Writer

I am a writer
My pen which is mightier than a sword
Is a tool to me and a weapon of warfare
My heart which pumps blood and words
Is expressed with my writing.
Speaking; was noisy
Writing; is full of peace and purgation.
For when I hold a pen
My veins burst open
And an outflow of ideas,dreams and expectations come forth

Friday 26 September 2014

I'll Still Love you

When in remembrance of yourself
You falter, because your magnetizatio
Draws you in the light of someone else...
I'll still love you...

Still, when your spirit
Drifts like a brakeless car away
From immeasurable pool of connection...
I'll love you...

Wednesday 10 September 2014

Daughters Love Like you Do.

Bimpe sits on the swing outside the house waiting for her daddy. She's eight, the time is 3pm. Dad is supposed to take her to the movies; just the both of them to see that cartoon that came out last week. "Daddy will soon be home the movie starts by 5pm." Bimpe thinks excitedly.
Its 4pm, daddy isn't home yet. “Daddy promised he will be here! If he comes right now we'll leave immediately" Bimpe thinks with hope.
Its 6:30pm, daddy isn't home. Mummy comes outside to persuade her to come in, that daddy isn't going to be on time, they can't go anymore, but she just sits on the swing looking into space like daddy is on his way, until mummy comes to carry her as she begins to sob. Daddy doesn't get back till 10pm with the biggest bowl of ice cream to make her feel better. "I'm sorry sweetheart, work kept me". So Bimpe sleeps with her teddy much closer tonight, sad that daddy disappointed her.

Prestige by Sheels

Looking good is not easy as everyone thinks it is, considering the colours, styles, sizes and the rest. Sheels Clothing Inc., an emerging fashion label is here with “PRESTIGE” to make it look easier. Owner and designer of Sheels Clothing Inc. Aina Fayosola, previously released a creatively designed collection called The Trendy Nigerian. which is still blowing away minds of people with its designs. Sheels Clothing is back with another collection, tagged “PRESTIGE”

A Peaceful Death.

I had just gotten home from a round of drinking and I wasn’t in a mood to see my father and hear his constant nagging. “Julia where have you been?” and I spun around to see the very person I didn’t want to see.
I hated my father and it’s his fault. You can say he did nothing to deserve hate from the child of his loins, and I would say that the seed of his loins didn’t deserve to be raped for eight years by him. On the surface we looked like the ideal family. Lawyer parents, doctor and lawyer sons and just like every ideal family, there was a black sheep which just happened to me.
My loving caring mother tried her best to curb my willful spirit but she keeps forgetting that when I needed her ages ago she shunned me and told me my father couldn’t be sticking his hands into my panties during the day and injuring me with his phallus at night.
Looking at him now in this state of intoxication all I feel is hatred, the years of abuse come hurling back and my mother’s silence and refusal to see what was happening hit me like the force of a battalion and I who was about to go to my room and ignore the old bastard turned around and said “what is it to you? You pedophile.”

SINGING A DEVIOUS LULLABY: EKITI, OSUN ON MY MIND II.

"Conscience is an open wound only truth can heal it" - Uthman Dan Fodio 1805. I passionately pray that as 2015 draws near we will elevate our politics and debate beyond the banal confines of ethnicity and crash partisanship. I crave a cross ventilation of thought that shall coalesce into a new moral benchmark for leadership and set a new paradigm for the Actors on our socio-political amphitheatre. The jig-saw of conjectures and debate that came on and off the Ekiti and the Osun polls were predominantly banal. Partisanship prevailed over the credential and the character of the candidates. Religion over the passion to govern. And 'stomach infrastructure' over constructive short and long term development. Sad. What must count if we sincerely want this nation to grow is the passion to lead, the desire to serve, the determination to govern indiscriminate of creed and clan, and the commitment to genuine transformation. To those whose motivation and choice of leadership devolves and revolves on the ethnic, sectional, partisan and religious pendulum I bring this reminder, yes, it is an incontrovertible truism that at all level and across the parties governance within the past 15years have been below the 40% mark, therefore we MUST learn to think out of the box and collectively demand responsible and responsive leadership. Yes we MUST torpedo partisan bickering and up the bar beyond the contours of banal politics to the noble pedestal of profound issues, deep debate and patriotism, such is the way to go. God Bless Nigeria.
CONCLUDED.
Prof. Chris Nwaokobia Jnr.
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Fat Barbie

My biggest disgrace is my body. Sadly, I have no choice but to lug it around all day and take it wherever I have to go to. My size 16 body which some people may not call fat and would even go as far as referring me to a bigger girl would say you are just fine, but they don’t see those models in the magazines that I love to read soo much, how none of those models is a waist line not bigger than a size 4 and even the size 6 ones don’t reach the acceptable level talk less of size 16 me. They don’t see the laughing eyes of the trim figured girls, who keep taunting me with their looks of disapproval and pity because of the size of my waist line.
I know I have to remind myself that I’m beautiful and that the body is just a house that should contain a beautiful soul, but my slender alter ego tells me “girl, that really cute boy won’t see your soul first.” My protruding belly won’t stop laughing at me when I try to suck her in before a mirror. She says ‘you fool, you have made me ugly and you better live with it”

SINGING A DEVIOUS LULLABY: EKITI, OSUN ON MY MIND. I.

..Oh what a tangled web we weave. When first we practice to deceive."- Sir Walter Scott (Marmion,1808).
Wait a minute, what does all the hullabaloo about the Ekiti and Osun polls being free, peaceful and fair connote? Does the massive deployment of troops and Security men to monitor elections suggest that we are a violent and an incorrigible electorate? Are we by Jove setting a new precedent in democratic practice where the military abandons their traditional role to become election monitors? To applaud the 'militarization' of the democratic space during elections is to sing democracy to an early slumber, yes we are singing democracy a devious lullaby.

Goodbye Cathy

“Bimbo, she is dead”, the voice on the other end of the phone said to me. I felt the earth beneath my feet move and found myself on my knees, as tears poured down my cheeks, all I could remember was her smile when she kissed her babies goodbye and told me she would see me in the evening. How could she be dead, her life just started, she just gave birth to these beautiful twin girls and they look soo much like her.
If anybody should die not Catherine, she was the kindest person I knew and her heart was too large for her own good. All she ever did was good and nobody really had a mean word to say about her. She was a beautiful girl, had a terrific husband who loved her to all the corners of the earth and no one can fault him for loving her so much, she was like sunlight in darkness, calmness in chaos, peace in rivalry she was the kind of person that just knowing her is a gift. Ultimately she was perfect. All I kept wondering was how the only Angel I knew was dead? It didn’t just seem right and a fresh batch of tears erupted from me and I couldn’t help shouting and screaming, “it isn’t fair, God why?”

Why can’t I hate you?

The first time I met you I felt wariness because society, etiquette and common sense dictate that when you meet a stranger you treat them with caution and be suspicious of their every word and actions but I decided to ignore the forces that control human thinking and under two days you had spun a web over me and I was all yours. I became soo hooked on you, my addiction to you was worse than your addiction to weed. You were all I wanted for now and forever, but in this cocoon of love I felt for you I could see cracks, cracks created by the wind blown from the words of friends; words as strong as hurricanes and typhoons warning me of who you were and what you were capable of were ignored by my stubbornness, stubbornness that held fast to the notion that they didn’t know you and that I knew you better than they could ever imagine, but once again I kept forgetting that you never really talked about yourself and I couldn’t write a one page essay of who you really are. I could only see the purity of the love I believed you felt towards me, a purity that was tainted by the looming presence of a girlfriend you never felt important to mention.

Angel from Mars

Everyone's got a guardian angel,
No one knows the name of theirs,
No one sees theirs, no one chats with theirs,
All I know is that everyone's got a guardian angel.
I know angels are not human,
I never saw one, cos I believe they exist in thin air,
I know angels are guardians,
I never saw one, cos I believe they exist in thin air.

My Brother is a Terrorist.

The sounds of the bombs and guns echo through my house shaking the walls and making the windows rattle in their sill, although the massacre is happening villages away fear still envelopes me better than my blanket. I can hear the collective sighs of everyone in my house, they keep wondering when our village would be hit. Adamu my brother is missing but to me he isn’t. I know exactly where Adamu is, so does my entire family, my cowardly father who I used to associate with wisdom thinks he is the better son because he is fighting for our rights as Muslims, the madness that runs in their veins has seemed to elude me and now I’m the outcast.

Papa Don't Preach.

Papa I'm sorry
You told me I was too young
But you forgot youthful exuberance
I have always wanted to tell you
You were once my age and although now you are older and wiser
You ought to know better
You tried to stifle me but
You ought to know such won't work
You call me your ticking bomb
If you only know how correct you are
This is to you in advance
I have been patient
Time is running out
I love you daddy but I have to fly
Happy Fathers' day.
@nkemoyaghire.

Your Mistakes

Don't mistake my smiles for naivety,
they are my means of finding joy in this dark world.
Don't mistake my big eyes for innocence,
they are there to read through your facade.
Don't mistake my glasses for smartness, they are result of my effervescent love for garri.

The Silly Pursuit.

"What is this obsession that has descended on black people? Why do some of us think we have to be white? What is the excuse you have for bleaching that dark, beautiful, tough skin? This isn't the 1940's! There are no toilets marked "colored only" "whites only", there are not separate entrances to cinemas and stadiums, there isn't the "Blacks sit at the back of the bus rule" there is no social uproar if both races not only date but get married, there is no separate sitting area for Black and White people in a cafe, there are no issues when a black man plays a sport!

How I Met Your Father


It was a dark and stormy night when it happened. I had planned to go and visit my sister before the rain started, now I was parked under a tree waiting out the rain, five minutes into my sleep, I heard a tap on my window. It was a man, warily I wound down my window, he told me he needed some shelter if I would let him come inside my car, throwing caution to the wind and embracing the naïve Samaritan in me I let a complete stranger into my car. I tried to start a conversation with him but it was obvious he wasn’t interested.
The last thing I remembered is this stranger bashing my head against my steering wheel. I woke up tied to a chair and my lips sealed. I was in a dark and dank room it looked like a basement; the fear that enveloped me is synonymous to that of a person beside a suicide bomber. Minutes after struggling to get free of the knots that held me bound, I heard the stranger’s voice and he said “struggling is pointless”.

The Trendy Nigerian.

This semester I started a class on African Literature and because of the broad nature of the idea Africa and the field of study literature, we discuss a lot of things that are African and Literature. African Literature cannot be exactly defined but the closest definition is“Literature that is African”, one of the hundred definitions of literature is that it is a mirror of the society. So it should come as no surprise that in a class where the basic discussions centre around things that reflect or mirror the African society, the idea of our native clothes came up and how the way Africans or Nigerians in particular always tend to buy English clothes and do not regale themselves in the beautiful fabrics of the African culture, as strange and bizarre as it sounds we have some people who don’t own a stitch of traditional wear. Our society and government has allowed for us to proudly wear the clothes that our colonial masters left behind for us to wear, to work in the white collar world you need to own a minimum of two suits, which I bet you is not agreeable with our weather and despite our pride in being an independent state we are acting exactly the way the our English maters expect us to, even though most of them are dead. We have dropped the “barbaric” nature of dress and picked the sophisticated English way of dressing.

My Beautiful Hobby.

As I sit in the dark, a blanket of shame covers me, I wonder to myself how I could have been so stupid. But the urge had been too strong. The need to be evil and vile, the feeling of good after doing evil was something I couldn't forfeit. You see the things people consider to be addictive are completely trivial to me such things like weed, alcohol, the highest point of an orgasm or the inexplicable joy when the football team you support wins a match.
But to me the feeling of being inebriated with alcohol or high on marijuana cannot compare to the rush of blood or thrill I get from firing a shot or inflicting that wound soo deeply, that the person won't see the next 5 minutes.

The 3"inches rule.

When I heard the new rule implemented by my school which had to do with dress code I was astounded, what more could this people add to the already existing rules? Well my socks got knocked off me when I heard the additions.  Girls aren't allowed to wear skirts that were not 3"inches below the knee and boys had to stop wearing their Michael Jackson style of trousers, shave their beards and do some other silly things. More shocking was when the rule was supposed to commence; which was the next day. In the usual fashion of Redeemer's University, some religious fanatic woke up and felt that we deserved some more punishment for being students in this school and ta-da there was a new law. We the students were expected to follow the rule immediately.  The first question I asked is who informs the public about a new law and expects them to start abiding by it immediately? Even GEJ as thoughtless as he is wouldn't do that. A group of people called the Task Force were put in place to make sure we conform.

Think Good Thoughts

Repo games is probably my best T.V game show. For those who don’t know Repo games, it is a game show where people who haven’t completed their payments on their cars get a chance to answer three questions right out of five questions, if you fail your car gets repossessed. Sadly it doesn’t happen in Nigeria.  All the times I have watched it, people who lose have the same reactions; regret, anger, sometimes tears, some even beg,  a stripper once tried to give a show for her parents’ car to be returned.
But I found an exception; an Asian woman. It was clear she wasn’t going to win, she couldn’t even speak proper English, her enthusiasm died slowly as the game progressed and she realized she wasn’t going to have her car again.  When the team of Repo games was leaving she said “thank you Repo games, "you have my car, I don’t have to pay insurance and I don’t need to buy gas” and she invited the host to come to her restaurant. Not with sarcasm but with a clear mind. In her current state of lack of an automobile she looked for the bright side and decided to stand on that.
Segun-Ijiwande
So I had the opportunity to interview Segun Ijiwande popularly known as Shegzy Kool, he is a designer and the CEO of Shegzy Kool Aesthetic; ShegzyKool Aesthetic  houses a classic range of fresh and innovative designs that include Corporate Suits, Jeans, Native Wears, Linen Suits and Clothing, Funky Blazers, Customized T-Shirts and a myriad of other styles. He talks about himself and his designing. The interview was made possible by his PR Ocheme Emmanuel.
What inspired the name Shegzy kool?

The Typical Lagos Conductor.

For the Jolly Just Come (JJC) to the beautiful city of Lagos who plan to commute on a daily basis with public transport commonly called Danfo or Molue, there are some basic things to know, one of such things is how to relate with your bus conductor. A bus conductor is the person who assists the bus driver in monetary contracts with the passengers and announcing of routes plied by the driver. The typical Lagos bus conductor is a young guy probably between the ages of 17 - 35. His uniform is

To My Coy Mistresses

Of all the attributes of a woman, one of the most difficult to understand, and there are a lot of things I don't understand about us female folk, is our coyness. Oh God! Do we have to be soo damn coy? I sometimes feel sad for the guys that suffer from the coyness but it's part of the total package called The Woman.
What is coyness? Coyness can be said to mean the act of pretending or acting shy to get peoples' interest. In lay man terms it simply means "shakara". There are two types of coyness,

Fresh Soup

He gets home. She is tired but managed to prepare dinner; a dish of Egusi and Pounded yam. He looks really hungry. She asks “will you eat now or after your bath?” He replies with a question and a sneer on his face “Is the soup fresh?” *Pause. "Is the soup fresh?"

A Bleak Future

I was talking to the boy I love the most and we had this argument on what the future will be like especially that of this generation and the argument was based on whether or not the future will be good. He spoke vehemently for the great future we are going to have and I couldn’t help laughing, trust me I picked the true side, which we can all see and it is the fact, that this generation if care is not taken will be worse than its predecessors.
Forgive me for not trying to see the good in people and the World, and all that blah blah nonsense, but if we look at the different actions of the young people of this time we can see a pattern heading to a deteriorating state. Let me give a beautiful example, I met this dude, we exchange numbers and get talking, the topic of the best state in Nigeria comes up; I say Lagos and he says Port Harcourt. Now this guy lives in Lagos, then guy why do you think Port Harcourt is better than Lagos, cos Lagos is wayyyy better that PH.

New year Resolutions

Happy New Year! It is that time of the year once again when we all make our promises to ourselves and write it all down and all that hullabaloo that comes with the New Year. When I was much younger and I saw people on T.V reeling out their New Year resolutions I always felt envious of these people cos they have a plan of how they want their year to be, but as I grew older envy changed to pity.
I don't get why you people would make a resolution like, I plan to quit drinking and in your subconscious you are already counting the number of drinks you are going to have that afternoon and the next and the next, till the end of that very same year or I plan to earn more money this year and no plan is in your head to get a new job or even a promotion.

Read a book!!!

"Nkem, na you oh" said my friend Ada when she saw me reading a novel not in our list of novels to read. It is usually astounding when people say that and more astounding it is when spoken by English students. All my life the idea I have always had about English students is people who love to read, they read voraciously like they don't have enough time to read all the books available, but not the ones I know. Sometimes when in a gathering with my classmates and I want to ask someone a question about a book I just read or I'm reading. I freeze and shake my head cos I could bet my very last Naira, not one of them would even know what the back of the book looks like or who the author is. One day a member of my class saw me reading Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Adichie and asked me if it was "Half of a Yellow Sun and other stories" cos she could not phantom how a person could read a book that large containing only one story.
Then it is more embarrassing when a lecturer comes to class and asks who has read this book and all around its just blank faces. My first question "why don't they like books?" Is it psychological or just pathological laziness? When you pick any book to read you are not just travelling far far away into the world of the book, you are learning new things, strangely getting more experiences and the best part; it is way cheaper than going to the movies and much more interesting. My mother says, "If an author writes a book on a thirty year experience, a person that read it in one week would have learnt what it took another person thirty years"
Soji
Now this strange phenomena of people not liking to read is not only in the persona of English students but in the every 10 people 8 don't read. It is only a foolish, shallow person that says I don't like reading. Then how the fuck do you learn!!!! Half of the things you are taught in school is not enough for you to go ahead in life, books tell you about the experiences you never want to really have, they open and broaden the mind-set of an individual. Then some people would wonder why the promotion that is due didn't come through or when the company was downsizing they were cut off, maybe if you read more you would have grown more intelligible.
Now note the reading am talking about is not your notes that are given in class (read those to pass exams not life trails) and not books like Harlequin or Silhouette, I have read those they, lack content and are full of teachings on how to have sex, read books that will teach you satire, lifestyles of the Red-Indians, the history of Herbert Macaulay, and things people think are irrelevant, just read such things and when you speak, people will look at you in awe and wonder what school you went to. They wouldn't know you studied in a book.
The year is coming to an end why don't you pick a book any book and just read. Please join in the movement against the vast amount of stupidity in the world. Just read.
@nkemoyaghire