OF DEATH AND OTHER ISSUES

I almost died. Four times. And all four times seemed same leaving an indelible indent on my bashed up psyche. Yet, I’m still here living on borrowed time for I may have out spent mine.

@Toinlicious would submit that I may have nine lives as the fabled aphorism of cat with nine lives goes. At least, I still have five more to spend away if the aphorism is anything to go by. But, by and large, I have learnt my lessons. And in a very hard way.

The last time, I had preempted it. Not because I had some prescient or clairvoyant skills acquired from apprenticeship under some baba alawo living in some ramshackle. One wonders how such babas living so poorly could make other humans supposedly rich under their magical promulgation. How bizarre!!! Anyways, some of them may have become modernized using Ipads, Iphones and Bluetooth earpieces. Imagine some baba using the email to send his diabolic deeds to an unknowing recipient in far away Austria. Think innovation!!!

Anyways, back to the point. My preemption of the last time was more or less based on a premonition I had been having for over a month and a half before it finally happened. Its possibility had always stared me in the face but I always shook it off with the relished confidence of a cat with nine lives. Alas, that confidence was drained out of me when my car somersaulted in a daring and starling lone accident on the Ilesha-Ibadan Express road exactly a year ago today.

I was lucky. I came out unscathed but I couldn’t say the same for my official car. It was almost a write off. Save for the neck sprain I experienced to which my NeuroSurgeon friend Kemi, did an xray and even wanted a CT scan, I was fine. I bet she wanted to scare me a bit or she did so out of utter care. We had a little stint if it could be called that till it went awry between us. Not my fault definitely. These things happen.

Not being much of a religious person, I’m not going to offer you any of those fallible excuses that my accident was destined to happen. I would rather subscribe to the justification that I saw it coming and I did absolutely nothing to prevent it. However, it is interesting to note that my thoughts few minutes before my accident was actually on my unreligious state of mind and I was in the process of setting a timeline for a review.

And then BANG!!! It happened and all I could see was the car somersaulting. I could have sworn it was those thoughts that caused my accident. Better still, one could easily rationalize that God indeed wanted to teach me a lesson. Did I learn the lesson? Maybe.

In the midst of all these, one wonders what happens when one really dies. If the “judgment day” is anything to go by, I figured I’d have this kind of conversation with The Maker:

God: So Foye, why didn’t you believe in me?

Me:  *trembling* I actually believe in you, God. I just had some doubts.

God: And those doubts were sufficient enough for you to lose eternity?

Me: *assumes best gait* No, God. But the world you put us in is very crazy. We have our pastors buying and selling private jets, romancing with oil subsidy politicians and oil subsidy business men.

God: *confused look* Did you say oil subsidy? What is that, Foye?

Me: *surprised look*Oil subsidy is that thing that once it is removed causes #OccupyNigeria because the people will have to undergo so much economic anguish and they don’t want to because Jona and cohorts feed fat on their money.

God: Hmmmmmmmmm

Me: *seizes opportunity* For example, Farouk Lawan is an oil subsidy politician and Femi Otedola is an oil subsidy business man. And an example of oil subsidy pastor is………..*God interrupts*

God: But, that’s not an excuse to lose yourself and your salvation.

Me: But God, you won’t blame me entirely o. But then, I have a little blame sha. By the way God, where is Farouk Lawan and Otedola? Have they come this way? Those little crooks *hisses*

God: Those two?? They kept haggling about several million dollars like market women. I put them in that waiting pen *points direction*

Me: Ok, that’s good for them. Awon oloshi.

God: So what do I do with you now ehn? What good did you do in the world?

Me: Em em *mumbles some incoherent words*

On that note, God directed me to go and sin no more. And just then did I wake up from my reverie.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

As the year draws to a close, it’s that time one wants to assess and recalibrate all over again. Even though I do not necessarily believe that it should be done just at the tail end of the year.

Honestly, it’s been a long, exciting and stressful year and I’m thankful for the little things I was able to achieve. The one thing that didn’t work out so well was my relationship status as much as I wanted it to. I would discover that I may have commitment issues. And no, it isn’t that bad.

Shout out to my close friend, Diran, who will be tying the knots soon. I wish him marital bliss. I’m actually going to miss him in bachelorhood.

Merry Xmas and Happy new year in advance.

Foye.

WE SHOULD ALL BE HAPPY……...

Ok hold on. This isn’t some motivational admonition as one finds in hordes of motivational books making rounds in literary circles. These books, often dubbed as some best seller, are often written by some pastor or economic guru who thinks he has the secrets of providential prosperity to share with the world. Of course, knowledge is power, as is popularly acknowledged.

I have two of such books lying on my little shelf and I never did finish reading them. You will find more philosophy works and literary prose works by the likes of Wole Soyinka, Albert Einstein, Olufemi Taiwo etc on that little shelf of mine. Motivational books are not my thing for they are sometimes garbed in impractical situations and panacea.

For me however, the question of happiness is more of a philosophical introspection rather than a motivational nostrum as is often preached by prescribing ethos of economic prosperity on a platter of gold. This is a common happening in the remains of what we call the modern churches of today. The preacher preaches what the people want to hear and the people say yaay.

If you follow this blog a little avidly, you’d know I have reservations for some of these modern churches. Several pseudo sophisticated air-headed people think me bizarre for my infamous position. #Shior to them.

However, let’s, for a moment, forget this rueful conundrum of religion, churches and motivational books. By the way, this trite trio makes for a good and immediate sell in any society. Look at the number of mushroom churches in your neighborhood. We humans seem designed to function only under religious auspices.

Let’s, for a moment, dwell on more worrisome thoughts that darken our everyday living as inhabitants of this society of ours. 

As a collective people of Nigeria, are we really happy? Forget that clichéd expression of Nigerians being the happiest people on earth.

In the midst of #Aluu4 jungle justice killing, #Mubi killings, a ravaging flood in 14 states, a labyrinth of Boko Haram killings, a not-so presidential president, a larcenous senate and a mendacious house of representatives, are we really happy?

Are we happy with the deteriorating long PMS queues across the country with no real cause? Does it bother us that the Nuhu Ribadu led Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force report will be discredited just like its similar predecessor; the Farouk Lawan led Oil Subsidy Probe report released earlier in the year?

Can one be happy knowing that the Nigerian Fuel subsidy probe may forever remain an intricate maze and that unraveling it is almost a mythical possibility? Are we happy knowing that few people feed fat on the common purse of a sinking nation?

Sauntering along these thoughts, one realizes nothing has changed and may never change. I’m not exactly your naturally happy and chirpy person; have some traits of melancholia strutting around somewhere in me. However, I desire to be a happier and less frustrated Nigerian just like other multitudes of Nigerian citizenry.

I want a better life for myself and my family, I want petrol at a fair price at all times, I want constant electricity, I want good interstate and intrastate roads, I want good and responsible governance, I want to be safe and above all I want to be happy.

At the end of the day, the truth is we may never be as happy as we may always want to be. Life, itself, sort of begets that. However, as a collective people, let’s hope we will be happier in the coming years lest 2015 come and still pass us by.

My name is Foye. I’m a Nigerian and I want a better and happier life in Nigeria. It shouldn’t be so hard.

Foye.

Ps. Apologies to readers and followeres who check in regularly for new blog posts. Past two months has been hectic.

CHRONICLES OF AN ELIGIBLE CYNIC II

I wasn’t banking on making a sequel to this particular blog post. I thought it wasn’t necessary and I wasn’t sure I needed anymore rueful or fledgling lessons in women affairs. Unfortunately for me, I got more lessons whether I wanted it or not. In fact, I got more than I bargained for.

Apart from the flurry of comments that needs be responded to, @Toinlicious would particularly curry the process for making this sequel drop. She actually harassed me. I’m pretty sure she’d cover her face when she reads this. Anyways, you should check out her blog here. She’s quite a burst of energy with her sensational and expressive personae.

One anonymous reader would comment that “The cynic shouldn’t draw a conclusion yet about women. From his submissions, I’ll advice that he dates a Hausa girl after which he (the cynic) could now narrow his opinion about women/relationships down to one singular fact…….”

To this reader I say, I’d be delighted to date a Hausa woman. However, I’m yet to make concrete conclusions about women. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. I’d make an erroneous conclusion as I do not have enough grey hairs to make such assertions. Or rather maybe I’m just being careful not make an intellectual blunder premised on wrong and probably biased notions. My experiences so far are biased. Emotion itself can be biased anyways.

Another reader, @Femmylounge, would comment that “he hopes I find my woman soon and live happily ever after”. I pray you do too for we are all in this world to look or live for something. And the choice of what we look or live for is entirely ours and ours only.

I would almost think I had gotten what I was looking for in Doyin only for me to be proved right again. Same postulate I had submitted in the two previous sequels to this blog was to be upheld again.

And no, I won’t be giving fine details of my experience with Doyin. But I can definitely say I was almost there and if it had happened, it could have been worth it. I was close to what I haven’t experienced in eons. Doyin was the second nicest lady I have ever met and I mean that beyond words could ever augur. She was beautiful, almost selfless, balanced but hardheaded.

The Cynic would notice he always instigates hardheadedness in the women he relates with. He doesn’t know how come but he hopes it’s all a coincidence. Or maybe he’s just attracted to women like that. A friend, Tunde, would submit that the Cynic loves women being difficult. The Cynic, however, would disagree on all frontiers only for @Toinlicious to make a similar submission. Lobatan!!!

Before Doyin, there was Yemisi, the craziest girl ever. Hold on. I’m not one of those men who derive absolute pleasure in name calling women. As a matter of utmost principle, I don’t. And crazy here doesn’t mean raving mad like breaking or spoiling stuffs. The only girl I ever knew that was capable of that was Chika and I wouldn’t still call her mad. Crazy here, however, alludes to a fact that my experience with Yemisi was different. Different in a crazy way.

Having being introduced by a mutual friend who thought I needed companion and thought her fit for me, Yemisi would assume we were dating from the very first day we met. I thought it was merely a prosaic assumption of a girl who hadn’t been with a guy for about a year. Alas, I was mistaken for she stepped up her game and took on the role of a wife and I was the unfortunate eligible cynic.

She would, on different occasions, give me up to ten missed calls at a go without stopping to think I could be busy and couldn’t pick. She would follow it up with a text that reads something like:

“Where are you?

You don’t want to pick my calls abi.

You are with another woman”.

And when I do return her calls as always, she’s on the attack asking for what and where I have been. I was busy with work I’ll simply say and try to reassure her only for the same episode to be reenacted the very next day. Yemisi was the clingy demanding type. Period!!!

As much as the Cynic revels in being showered with attention, he wouldn’t know how to deal with such overbearing attention that nosedived into a disturbance of sorts. The rueful episode that will break the cynic’s camelback would come about three weeks down the line.

My most profound apologies will have to go to my three afenifere’s: Fisayo, Chidinma and most especially Sandra. These three lovely ladies will fall for the Cynic at different times but he couldn’t bring himself to express any emotion for them as they so desired. It would all happen at about the same time that the Cynic fell for and was trying to get over Doyin. Yeah, the same Doyin of the “being nice” fame.

Trying to get over someone is difficult. It took the constellation of my job, M.sc lab work, a little above average clubbing, lone visits to the movies, the most cherished company of @Toinlicious and other feminine afenifere’s that saved the day. You would find that exactly what you were trying to refrain from will help you get through when it matters the most. And no, I didn’t start drinking again.

Getting over someone doesn’t not always mean walking away. I would want to walk away totally but I realized I didn’t want to. Or maybe I just couldn’t. Socrates was right when he said “By all means marry; if you get a good wife you’d be happy. If you find a bad one, you’d become a philosopher”.

I think I’m on the verge of becoming a philosopher but that’s on a lighter note. But then several questions started popping up in my head as always. A close friend, Diran, would always warn me to stop over intellectualizing emotions.

Another close friend, Fola, would say “We don’t fall in love, we meet people that makes us want to be better, to push boundaries and make them as important to us as our own lives. We choose to love and we can all find it. Choosing right and keeping it is the ultimate challenge”.

You are probably right if you are wondering what the genesis of above discourse was. I don’t necessarily and truly believe in love. I hope I find it eventually and prove myself wrong. That’s one day worth waiting for even if one finds in an unexpected package.

Signed

Eligible Cynic.

THE SOCIAL COMPONENT OF ORDER

The word Order presages the very existence of mankind and the concept of creation. It is the backdrop against which the world was created for He could have created everything in one single day, in reverse or without any apparent sequence. As biblical history would have us believe, He decided to do it in seven days creating mankind on the sixth day. For evolutionists, this is an unacceptable and disputable explanation for the inception of the world. However, even the theory of evolution suggests order as well, no doubt. Gradual development from lesser forms of life is nothing but primal order.

Order is of course that immutable feature of human living however fallible it may be sometimes. It is the only order that we fulsomely comprehend and precariously revel in. Order in the last sentence refers to instruction, command or directive. And for the rest of this essay, the word order will refer only to orderliness and sequence to events in our sadly conformist world. Apologists for conformity may disagree. 

For what it’s worth, order makes us rather human. It’s a social part of our culture that can’t be ignored or eschewed. It’s a culture imparted on us at the very beginning of our lives, the very beginning of eternal time. And no, I’m not referring to the afterlife here. That’s just another expected conformist order to social living; another fallible excuse for our “godly” and mostly pretentious mode of living in our society.

Think about it. The living realities in the present society that we are accustomed to is but premised on a fallible front that everything revolves around religion and religious order. And that’s the bane of our existence. Disagree with me if you wish, I have opined before that if life was lived without the encumbrance called religion, one would live a richer life. But of course the society will never allow that.

Unfortunately, I don’t believe that whatever religion one has a bias towards makes one more moral or virtuous. It may help lay the basis but this is debatable. Even the philosopher, Francis Hutcheson, thinks “morality is entirely relative to the sentiment or mental taste of each particular being” and not on religious pedestal. No doubt, religion could be one’s sentiment but that doesn’t suppose the moral dictates of other sentiments. My conclusion: One can be a perfectly good human without religious precepts. Unfortunately, the meaning of good is subject to each person’s sentiment or bias.

A discounted Order of Reality

Whilst I’m no Claude Monet or Renoir of the Impressionistic art fame, I’ll try to paint you a fair picture. Now, if I hadn’t turned out as a Pharmacist, a doctor or an engineer, maybe I’d have honed those drawing/painting skills I learnt in my nursery class. Those caricatures I used to draw back then could have transformed into a beautiful work of art hanging on some rich man’s wall right now. 

So back to the picture I wanted to paint, rather compose, for you. As a young child growing up, the most important lesson one learns and quickly too, if one is to survive, is order. Deviate from this simple ethos and get burnt. Alas, the world believes the only way to effect effective living in a young but forming mind is through order and order. Order, the dictatorial mandate, often precedes and enforces Order, the sequential but circumstantial conformity to living.

This sequential order continues through adult life as one is made to believe that the only route to happiness in life is through order. From primary school to high school to the university. Graduate, get a job and get married. Have children, raise them as you were raised and the cycle continues. In school, whether primary, high or university, the rule and teaching is the same. Conform or get out. The rather comical “Teacher don’t teach me nonsense” lullaby by Femi Kuti would find its way into one’s vocal cavity as one scribbles this. But Eze does need to go to school.

Are you wondering what I may mean by conformity in this context? It’s exactly the way you were raised and taught in school if you grew up in Nigeria at least. I would remember a particular occurrence back in Pharmacy school at Great Ife. It was the first day of my Second year in Pharmacy school and It was a dispensing laboratory practical class. Having heard rumors about the need to dress formally to the class, I would don on one of my best shirts and pant trousers at the time to go with my newly acquired boot shoes.

I would get to the practical class only to be turned back by Dr. Oladimeji that I wasn’t properly dressed. Dr. Olad, as he was popularly called, would continue that he doubted if I would ever succeed in Pharmacy. He even advised that I should start looking at other options or departments. Why? Because I didn’t have a tie on and my shirt was a little inappropriately tucked in. I made it a point of duty to have a strong A in the dispensing practical exam just to prove him wrong. And I did prove him wrong; I had that A in that course and others at the time. My point: because I didn’t conform doesn’t make me a airhead.

The relevance of the above point goes beyond the circumstance within which it was narrated. It extends into every facet of social ordering. Every phase of one’s life is timed and predetermined by one’s society. This sometimes places undue stress on a member of such society in a bid to conform and form a larger extension of the same society. The implication of this is a world lived on a probable wrong premise of importance of social order.

Life is a choice, they say. But any reasonably thinking person knows better in the small cocoon of life he resides in and the extent to which he understands the world. Those so called choices are clearly limited by societal impositions and expectations. I would write sometimes back that it’s a possibility the precarious world we live in may prefer that we don’t understand it. It may just want us just to pass through it altogether with its endearments, entreaties, evils and evolutions.

Another viewpoint to order and conformity will be its relevance in the concept of work culture. Work, no doubt, is an integral part of living. One may find focus and a life time in it. However, one questions whether man works to live or lives to work? Would one find or lack purpose otherwise or is it just another conformity to social ordering? There’s a huge difference between both.

As one puts pen to rest, the words of Olufemi Taiwo from his book “Africa Must Be Modern” pervades one’s consciousness. He writes “Our identity is not defined by what we are but by what we are not”. I haven’t heard any more modern and sagely truth in a while.

Foye.

LONELY ROAD, LONGING TRADITIONS

I have been convinced severally and without doubt that I was my father’s incarnate. This conviction gets stronger by the day. The more I look at him, the more I seem to realize our innate similarities besides the outright physical semblance. A good chip off the old block, you may say. At least, I no longer need to doubt my paternity but of course that’s on a lighter note. It was never in contention.

As I sipped my early morning cup of tea right across the dining table from him – a ritual we both engaged in every morning on my way to work since I moved back home – I couldn’t but steal a short glance at him. He must have noticed for he smiled back. By the way, that early morning tea and breakfast is the best thing that happened to yours truly since he moved back home from the eastern hinterland some eight months back.

In the middle of our cultivated alliance of a breakfast silence, many words were spoken and many were understood. That’s his style. My Dad could say a million words just by merely looking at you. I had once decided not to take a new and better paying job because of “that look”. His “look” really did help me make up my mind against taking the job at the time. I never regretted that decision.

Fathers, they say, are the son’s first hero and the daughter’s first love. Mine is my first role model. The one thing that I had wished he was since I was a younger, I intend to become. And no, it’s nothing negative or profane. He’d be proud if he were to know of it. I hope to be a profound intellectual and academic. He wasn’t an academic by work but a big intellectual who retired from working with the State Government. The three biggest lessons from him were independence, family and security.

However, this is no boring rendition of who or what my father is. I only had to revel, for a brief moment, in the gratification that I was my father’s son. Traditionally, that makes “him” the primary legacy I look on to. “Him” here does not in any way refer to material inheritance. He’s not a rich man to start with. Rather it refers to his non material legacies which might be quite an expansive and expensive shoe to step into. Longing traditions, however lofty, can be troubling and unassailable.

In the midst of this simple realization and on that lonely road to intellectualism and knowledge acquisition, one discovers that nothing has changed in the deplorable educational system that betides our national landscape. I have once written about this putrid mess of a system called education in Nigeria in a blog titled “Of a Nigerian educational Milieu” on these pages. There, I argued the importance of an all round education of the mind, body and soul. I argued the need to discourage half baked education in our youths just to aid their getting a “lofty” job after graduation. At the time, I thought it belittles the whole essence of education. I still think so. I also thought the educational process and model in our universities were faulty.

I was to prove myself further right upon commencing a Masters Degree program in UNILAG College of Medicine, now unfortunately MAULAG. We’ll come to the appropriateness or not of the change in name of the great academic edifice. What’s in a name after all? Does a name make an institution or the institution makes a name?

Truth is the arguments for and against the re-naming of UNILAG holds water whichever way one decides to look at it. And for anyone with a sense of Nigeria’s mostly unrecorded history, the immortalization of UNILAG for MKO Abiola is not too much. Agreed!!! But what does the relevance of such a change portend to the international integrity and traditional culture of an academic institution of more than 50 years repute?

The question is whose memory is bigger? That of MKO Abiola or that of UNILAG? For me, they are two different histories whose paths are not same and should not shadow one another. The concept of monumentality and immortalization in this context is, of course, very debatable. However, let’s leave the ensuing dispute for the appropriateness or not of the re-naming to the appropriate quarters to deal with. I still await a reviling rejoinder from the academics in the UNILAG community. If I don’t get one, I’d be surprised.

Let’s dwell on more far reaching issues. To say that “the traditional university system that our fathers attended and were exposed to in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s is different and nonpareil from the sham of university education in the present day” will be a cliché. It’s as bad as MSc students have to write exams with wooden slabs placed on their laps in a whole UNILAG (MEDILAG). The quality of education and exam itself is a sorry pass. Exams are set to encourage students to cram and pass their examinations. To make appropriate allusion, this is an academic medically oriented MSc where utmost understanding should be key. What more, these are the same students who are to become PhD holders in a near future and train newer set of students. The most appalling of all is the dearth of adequate laboratory facilities to engage the students in the requisite medical, scientific and research skills needed.

Truth is these problems and much more persist in all departments and faculties of the more than sixty universities spanning across Nigeria. One fears for Nigeria; One fears for her lofty ambition and tradition; One fears for her development; One fears for her survival. At the end of the day, it’s not the number that graduates that matters but the quality of those numbers.

It would come to my attention recently that two #yahoo boys from my days in Great Ife were recently arrested and facing possible jail term for armed robbery in the same Ile Ife. And no, they were not friends. One did graduate from Great Ife while the other was chucked out of the system. You may wish to google #Asafa Teslim and #Iyiola Bolaji. I’m guessing they resorted to armed robbery when 419 scams seem not to bring in the goodies anymore. One wonders if there’s any line between sanity and moral imperatives for these guys.  

What educational tradition are we thus building? One premised on decadent morals or one premised on adequate learning, culture and values. I admonish us all to take a look at our university system and weep not for ourselves but for our children who may still have to attend these same universities. Our traditions may never be the same.

I leave us to our thoughts now.

May the souls of the #DANA 153 rest in peace.                                                                              

Foye.

 

ECONOMY OF EMOTIONS II: CHRONICLES OF A CYNIC

Having opined in the first sequel to this blog that “Most emotions towards the other human being tends to change over a short or long course of time”, the Cynic in me was going to confirm this all over with Chika, my only ever Igbo ex-girlfriend. Ok hold on. Let’s go to the beginning of the story like all good stories do.

As a growing boy, Mum like all good mothers would say to me and my brothers “Beware of girls, they would hinder your success”. Mum would threaten further “If you like impregnate a girl, I’ll disown you and the baby together” as if She didn’t crave to have a grandchild. Of course, her fears were appropriate and well timed. She wanted a good and perfect life for her wards if there ever is anything like that.

I would hold on to these notions until my belief about a whole lot of things were going to be questioned in my early undergrad days. At this point, all my former beliefs were to be quashed and retracted. However, long held notions are hard to disengage from.

I would continue in this fallible path till I decided to date Funke in my final undergrad year in Great Ife. She would give me my very first and ever heart break.  Funke’s simple reason had been that she wanted to get married and I wasn’t ready. Of course I wasn’t ready; I was just in my final year in school. We remain good friends and she’s still yet to be married.

However, before I finally graduated, there was Ope; the nicest lady I’ve ever known. There was Kofo who wouldn’t date me because I wasn’t rich or #tush enough. #Yeye girl. After practically giving her my old rickety Honda to drive around campus. Ah, what a past!!! We remain friends.

Fast forward a couple of years and two career relocations.  Enter 2011 when I decided yet again to have a stable relationship after some personal psychological dissuasion.

I had always excused my being single under a pretext that I wasn’t ready to get serious with any female folk. Or that I wanted to concentrate on my career and other fallible excuses that we male folks tend to give when we are scared of long term commitments. The career excuse is true however and it seemed sublime and cogent at the time. It remains so.

I also wasn’t so sure I was capable of loving someone. I wasn’t sure I believed in love. My perspectives and world view had inevitably changed yet I reckoned I had to get married and have kids someday. Not because everyone seems to be getting married or because the society suggests so at a particular stage one gets to. I’m no apologist for nuptial engagements especially those premised on caving to societal and familial mandates. However, it could be more complicated than that in some cases.

Ok, back to the story.

In the middle of my unsavory cynicism, I would decide to go into a serious relationship. This time with Chika.

Feisty, opinionated, beautiful and with a mind of her own, Chika got me convinced to date her. Of course I did the asking like all noble relationships in a cultural clime like ours is expected to begin. Not to forget, Chika is the most emotionally intelligent woman I have ever met. All this put together cowed my cynicism and caution was thrown to the gutters.

Four months down the line, I knew it had been a mistake. I guess she realized it too for we had both come together for different reasons. She, for her copious expectations unbeknownst to me and I, for my desire to have a stable relationship for a change. Here were two people who were professing undying affection for each other. Here were two people who switched from affection to indifference in a matter of months. Alas, maybe the affection was never truly there. However, there seems to be a thin line between the two divides of emotion with a tilt to either side of the scale as fickle as a Galileo’s feather.

The question I had asked in the first sequel to this blog resounded again in my mind. “Why have emotions you couldn’t guarantee will persist interminably and unchangingly?”. And yet again, I couldn’t answer. Or maybe I’m just getting it all wrong.

However, the Chronicles of a Cynic wouldn’t end there. Chika and I would remain good friends. The Cynic in me wasn’t done yet, he needed more lessons.

Meet Tolani, a banker, who happens to be unsure of what she wants. Attractive, expressive and with good home training, she seemed stuck in an emotional limbo with an ex who departed to go plan his marriage with another lady. Lesson learnt: She throws the proverbial friendship carrot at you >>> You are on a long thing.

Meet Kemi, a Neurosurgeon. Strong willed, deliberate and task oriented, Kemi would intrigue the cynic to a point he almost fell for her. They would court, if it ever could be called that, till she probed for his religious state of mind. She was never to pick up his calls after that conversation. She must have thought he was the devil himself. A burgeoning relationship came crashing like a pack of dominoes. Lesson learnt:  Never divulge all your views, true or pseudo, in one sitting.

Meet Shola, a pretty working class damsel. She would throw the green light subtly at the Cynic and he wouldn’t see it. He was pretty much preoccupied with his career and life at the time. The Cynic actually regrets not seeing that green light. He would want to retrace his steps but it would be too late.

So goes the Chronicles of a Cynic who doesn’t understand women in the least. He tries but he always falters. He thinks, with slight indifference, that women are not meant to be understood. He hopes he is wrong. In all, however, he believes women are wonderful creations.

Foye.

Ps. The characters above are mostly fictional and do not represent any particular person.

HOW NOT TO BE A NATION!!!

                          When disorder becomes art, the world remains its spectators……..

As unassuming as she seemed, she’s an iconoclast. Hers was a radical stand point quite unusual for someone who lives in the diaspora. Several people had suggested the same petrifying message with different words and with different understanding of the implication of their avowed words. Hers wasn’t so different. However, she pushed her agenda with such a pulsating and vehement tone that seems to suggest a well thought out panacea for a seeming conundrum.

Her rendition and expression were as startling as her words as she doled out reasons for her views. She believed Nigeria was better off disintegrated. We were never a country in the first place. We were just a geographic expression of people with no similar culture or value bounded together by a knackered conjecture of the imperial colonialists. Nigeria was just another dissection off the Wild Wild Africa that needed to be conquered to the personal advancement of White Man and the rueful detriment of the black man’s existence.

To put it mildly, she wanted to be a South Nigerian!!! A South Nigeria consisting of the present South West and South East. She believes the Yoruba’s would rather go with the Igbo’s than associate with the North in the event of an outbreak of a looming war. History would suggest contrary to this however. What with the present spate of Boko Haram bombings that seems to threaten our already endangered unity as a country and nation, the disintegration could be faster approaching than may be agreeable.

I was shocked by her pronouncement.  So was my friend, who introduced us, as we all continued to exhume over the state of the Nigerian affairs in faraway South Africa. We had just finished a midday tour of the Nelson Mandela Apartheid Museum in down town Johannesburg. What other objectionable discourse could find its way into gathering of three upwardly mobile Nigerian youths?

 It had all started with a rightly directed or misdirected anger, depending on who’s reading, to the White Man. Truth is apartheid still lies in South Africa with a cold and uneasy cloud hovering around like a hazy harmattan. It seems like every one has learnt not to talk about an existent and unavoidable problem. The segregation is as apparent to a tourist as a gold fish. The Gold Fish, James Hardley Chase retorted, has no hiding place. Even at the conference I was later to attend in Durban, the segregation of the white and blacks was apparent. However, this blog is not centered on segregation in South Africa.

The uncomforting truth is that Nigeria is on a precipice. Let us continue in the fallible path and we’d surely become disintegrated just as another security alert from the US suggested yet again.

As I had opined in an older blog, “Thoughts on reclaiming the Nigerian Dream”, I do not believe nor subscribe to the fact that Nigeria would be better off disintegrated. You can examine my views by searching for that particular blog in older posts. However, these days, my fears seem to be getting more to me. Would Nigeria ever make it out of the vortex it seems enmeshed in, I questioned vacillatingly. Time and time again, how does one continue to believe in the entity called Nigeria with the train of bad leadership and poor vision trailing our not so nascent democracy since inception?

If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you would notice that my tone of writing today suggests a mind tirelessly trying not to be tired of the Nigerian matter. It gets bothersome when nothing happens after so much is said.

#OccupyNigeria has come and gone and we have all reverted back to the status quo. Not one of the so called palliatives that GEJ suggested has manifested. GEJ would later say “that they are not realizable anymore”. Not one accountability measure was put in place. The only noticeable action by the Government is the recent arrest of Dr. Fashina and others while in a non-violent procession. Dr. Fashina and others were mindful enough to remember to commemorate the 40^th day of the death of various victims of the #OccupyNigeria protest.

The probe of the oil sector is a shambolic demonstration of monumental fraud. At least through all this happenstance, Nuhu Ribadu finds a job. No need to argue his motivation for taking the job, time will tell. It always does.

Boko Haram keeps blowing up the Northern polity with incessant bomb blasts. They held up the northern city of Kano to ransom for several days having gotten more systematic, organized and dazzling. However, the State Security Service and the Police seem or pretend to be catching up with their ring leaders and sponsors. Did they just suddenly wake up from their slumber with the advent of the new IG of Police? Do they just know the sponsors and ring leaders? Or that’s what we are made to believe.

Truth is, it’s absolutely perplexing that no matter how much we try, we never get anything right in Nigeria. Wole Soyinka posits that “I’m afraid that in the case of Nigeria, once you find a solution, you very often have triggered off new complications”. One can only hope that the eventual resolution of the Boko Haram menace would not follow this fallible trend as Wole Soyinka suggested. One hopes we all keep sleeping and waking up each day to a still united Nigeria. That itself sounds like a pipe dream.

Foye.

MUSINGS OF AN OVER CRITICAL MIND III

Rene Descartes of the Meditations of the First Philosophy renown reflects my present state of mind. The French man, Philosopher, Physicist and Physiologist must definitely have been a surreal genius, no doubt. His insightful question “Is there anything of which I can be certain?” reverberates resoundingly in my head.

Descartes continues that “The absolute ground of all knowledge has been located, not in God, not in Nature, not in the wisdom of the Ancients, but in the sheer existence of myself”.  He trumped general thinking with this question and with his argument and position on the relevance of the self in the acceptance of beliefs, opinions and anecdotes. He, however, retrieved his old beliefs in his subsequent works of Meditation where he returned to older arguments of the senses, nature and society in accepting norms. However, the portal had been opened and the path set forth.

What does one know for certain in this entrapment of time and space? Does one really have any notion that’s entirely and fully one’s without any trappings of societal inundations and aberrations? Are my opinions really mine or are they resting on a quicksand of anecdotes derived from a conformist montage? How does the world work? How does the real world work? Is there one?

The responses to these seemingly capricious questions will probably remain hazy and colored for a long time and clichéd answers like “you’ll find meaning in time or it doesn’t matter” may surface and suffice for some people. However, this doesn’t satiate my colossal craving for real meaning in the real world. Call me weird but I’m mostly misanthropic of the world.

The world as we know it remains a mélange of malignancy, mendacity and malevolence that transcends beyond the perception of any one human. What the world is capable of is almost incomprehensible to its inhabitants. The current world is embroiled in a bitter war of subjugation at its own expense and to its utmost detriment. The old world order is giving way to a new world order on the brink of alienation from itself. A new world order is being born amidst a cacophony of popular uprising, looming bombs, untold revolutions, conspiracies, government apparatchiks and nations on a precipice.

However, the new world order may just be another cover up, another make believe or at best a continuation of a vicious cycle. What do I know for certain? Maybe a prescient prediction by Nostradamus would have been helpful. Of what certainty would that still be? I seem unable to believe anything anymore.

Unfortunately, I believe in the death I see around me. I believe in the scores of human beings being blown up, charred and mangled by incessant bomb blasts. I believe in the potency of Boko Haram’s scourge. It’s closer home now. I believe in the jeopardy the various #Occupy protests sweeping the world may portend to world order. History would have us believe that such #Occupy protests of enormous dimension and potential had taken place in 1968 in Europe and USA. Of course, the dynamics are different but the propensity of buildup of the present day #Occupy protests to such extent should not be overruled.

Of what then can one be certain of in the midst of all these conflicts, confrontations and conflagrations? Is it my life which supposedly isn’t mine at the end of the day? Is it our collective existence as Nigerians that is being threatened by intra-terrorist group, Boko Haram? Is it my country on the brink of a plummet into anarchy, chaos and untold hardship with the recent removal of fuel subsidy? Is it a world which is supposedly ran and controlled by few powerful men and families as the “Rothschild Myth” would have one think? Or is it a world in which powerful Government conspiracies fuel war in other nations in a bid to attain supremacy or check world balance? What do I know? Nothing I dare say!!!

Once again, the mind of the over critical was harangued by the incessant fickleness of our world. As he puts down pen, he hopes to find more meaning and certainty however befuddled the world may be. He hopes we all do.

Compliments.

Foye.