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Nigerian new-age pastors and the bible they read!

Secondary school was a fun period.We were young,fresh faced and almost every thing was new.
Your first beer,first kiss,your first(and maybe last) smoke.
It was a period of giddy excitement and fun.
The downside though was the fact that you had to read.
I mean,they did call it school for a reason!
For those,who for some reason found themselves in the science classes,the giant sized 'Modern Biology' and 'Ababio';that fear inducing Chemistry textbook;was often the first clue that you might,just might have found yourself in the wrong class and you'd promptly exit through the next available open window.
For those of us more plucky and brave,we waded  and battled through it,not because we were necessarily smarter(sure we were................Nigger,ask about me) but because we devised the key to studying...........and hopefully passing.
Damn books had about a thousand pages.Just focus like a dog with a bone on a random 400 pages and hope for the damn best come exam day!
A trip to a new age Nigerian church  makes me feel like these pastors have taken a leaf of our book and 'Ababioed' the bible.
The Bible alongside the Qur'an are probably the greatest books ever written.
It takes you on a journey right from creation to stories of faith,tales of adversity,loss,war,great victory,prosperity and finally rounds up with what will conclude this maddening rat race we find ourselves.
So,when a Jerry-curled,Armani suit wearing lad who may or may not have gotten to 'a level of grace' where nubile young girls who aren't family can sit on his lap makes the act of giving or what we fondly refer to as 'Sowing' in this parts,the star of the book,you have to feel a wee bit sorry for folks like Moses,Ruth,Job,Saul(Paul),Jonathan(not Goodluck) who's life stories and journeys are and will continue to be the back bone,moral thread and truly life defining experiences that shapes the true believers.
I can bet that a trip by Moses to any of the many churches in the Oregun,Ikeja axis of Lagos on a Sunday morning must leave him feeling like a 'waka-pass' in a Nigerian movie.
Nobody talks about sin anymore;and we forget so easily that he climbed a treacherously steep mountain(at least that's what the picture in 'My Book of Bible Stories' used) to get the 10 commandments.
What if the dude had fallen and broken his neck?
Nobody talks about hell anymore.
Nobody tells the sister with the mini-skirt not large enough for a proper nose blowing or the brother with the weave that the club is down the road in case they might have missed their way.
As long as they sow!(Master card and Visa accepted here by the way!)
It must all feel like deja-vu to chaps like Moses.
Remember when he came down from the mountains and met the Israelites dancing Azonto to all sorts of golden idols?

Say whaaaaaaaaatttttttt!

The church today is full of all sorts of golden idols and the sad thing is they are made from the trinkets of the poor.
Shepherds are meant to guide and teach you life lessons but when they focus on a tiny fraction of a perfectly good book,like myself and my good friend and now international model,Sheg Aranmolate did back in the days and ignore the rest,don't be surprised if you get caught napping like we did when we were asked at what temperature a metal gets white hot.

We only stopped at red hot!
P.S:I make no pretensions.I'm a sinner.I sinned yesterday.I'll sin today and I'll probably sin tomorrow but i acknowledge that.
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Sun-tanning Suntai!

The news filtered in just as myself and my good friend Mr You-dont-need-to-know-his-name Phillips were sharing a bottle of Lager in a bar in downtown Lagos.
The long awaited and long prayed for Governor Suntai of Taraba State was back home.
Amid fanfare,hordes of flag waving school children,relieved party members and concerned citizens,the Governor strode down the aircraft,chin raised and proud like a goat who had just stumbled on his owner's yam stable.
Not really though. I(and I speak for meself only) had forgotten there was a man named Governor Suntai. To be honest,I had briefly,with all the troubles one has to face in Lagos daily,forgotten there was a state called Taraba!
In fact,while trying to jog our memories,my dear friend,Mr Philips,even insinuated that it could be the ex-Chinese Mayor,who's presently on trial for corruption who had fled to Nigeria for safe haven.
Mr Philips,good bless his kind soul,did confess that he was not sure what the Chinese gentleman's name was but he could swear by his last ironed shirt(and that's nothing to sniff at mind you,considering he had not had electricity for 2weeks and counting) that it sounded like Mayor Sun Tai.
Anyways,unless 'Mayor Sun Tai' had the nationality slapped off his face by his mother for being corrupt,we can safely assume the gentleman that made his way gingerly down the plane while being supported by his aides,was neither Chinese nor escaping from anything.

Mind you,that's the new Special Assistant to the Governor on State 'Support' Systems behind him.

For those who do not remember,Governor Suntai was the gentleman who crashed his/the state's private jet some months back,while flying it.
All by himself.
Yep!
Move on!
I was glad though.Even though the plane the dear Governor crashed while possibly fulfilling a childhood fantasy of his might be worth much more than the entire year's allocation to education in Taraba,the survival of a man from the clutches of death is always something to celebrate.
And celebrate we did!Myself and Mr Philip.A couple of bottles of cold lager and a few dead catfish can testify to the fact that we toasted to his health and wished him well in his convalescence period in the coming months.
So you can very well imagine the shock on my face when I heard the news of the governor dissolving his cabinet and sacking key staff barely a day after returning.
Infact,if you could extract the shock from my system,condense it into chocolate bars of 'common sense',there would have been enough to go round for the staff of the Benin Airport and maybe,just maybe,someone would have been alive to their responsibilities and seen the boy stow away on an Arik flight to the 'US'.

So many black people in the U.S!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyhoo,we've been on this road before with the former occupants of Aso-Rock and I can tell you with certainty,it ain't pretty.
The script seems eerily similar.A hastily arranged return.No personal statements made except through 'aides'. No visits allowed and a wife keen,as you would expect,to protect her husband's privacy.
I'm no expert at telling you a man's mental state from a few seconds of video,in truth,my friends will tell you that I'm no expert at anything really but the man Suntai did not look fit to do the 'skelewu' let alone run a state.
But then again as our dear Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo of COZA has said,'Who are we to Judge?' It is better we look and observe for now.
Abi,Pastor?
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Shekau my skelewu!(Check out my skelewu!)

The news making the rounds in the past two days points to the possible death of dreaded Boko Haram leader,Abubakar Shekau.
The JTF spokesman said and I quote "Mr Shekau was mortally wounded in the encounter and was sneaked into Amitchide,a border town with Cameroon and it is believed that he MIGHT have died between July 25th and August 3rd".
I ask with all sense of responsibility and humility(from my Apple MacPro and tortoise shell Ray-Ban),HOW CAN SOMEONE MAY HAVE DIED?!
I may be ugly.Yeah,I get that!
I may be broke.Like all the time!
Infact,I may or may not like my boss but I dare say that I may not say it openly.
But can someone as divisive and accountable to Nigerians as Mr Shekau 'May have died?'
Unacceptable!
It is true that intelligence reports at times may be difficult to back up with  evidentiary proof but strong words and decisive language always make up for photos or videos.
The American example readily springs to mind.
When announcing the death of low level Al-Qeada commandants,the words 'may' or 'probably' were often used but when announcing the death of Osama Bin Laden,I doubt if Barry 'Check out my beautiful family' Obama said "You know what folks,Osama was shot today.I know y'all are glad but hold on a second,just hold on,this ain't the time to go yanking your doodle.HE MAY HAVE DIED!"
No my dear fellow citizens of the country of 'He may have died',Obama's words were swift and decisive.
Even without photo or video evidence,we held it as truth.
AnD we haven't seen an Osama video since by the way!Unlike the damn scary video of Shekau that made the rounds on the Internet a couple of days ago which made reference to recent brutal attacks by the sect.Infact,the dude stopped short of congratulating the Super Eagles on winning the Mandela Challenge just a week ago.

Is he dancing Skelewu somewhere as we speak?

All we ask for is finality and a decisive truth.
We have been too hurt to be 'MAYED'!
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Dem don port oh!

Anytime I hear the word deportation the first picture that comes to mind,my mind anyway,is that of our Edo sisters being shipped in their hundreds after being gathered from all corners of Italy and dispatched off like those annoying black beetles we used to find in boiled beans back in the days.

Errrmmmm....I doubt this is Italy?

By the way,those beetles have stopped showing up like a good Dbanj song,they must have peas-ed off someone important!
Apparently,sometime last week,a couple of poor,unprotected Nigerians were picked up on the streets of Lagos in the dead of the night and swiftly 'deported' to a corner of the country more renown for making fake and often times dangerous products than anything else.
Onitsha,that beautiful city east of the Niger where there is more illicit money being made than a Nigerian new-era church!
The story goeth thus,depending on whose account you choose to believe,in the dead of the night while good,law-abiding citizens were sleeping;that would be approximately 90% of the masses and 0.25% of the political class;the Lagos State government through its goons or as the government would  prefer to refer to them,state officials,picked up 72 or was it 14,innocent or wandering vagrants,depending on whose side of the coin appears brighter to you,hurriedly packed them into a waiting truck and ferried them off,at break neck speed,dodging pot-holes,avoiding check points and often times driving against traffic(OK,nobody said that ,I'm just adding my own twist) to their final destination.
Under the bridge at Upper Iweka,Onitsha!
To be honest,I'm surprised no one saw them dump these unfortunate fellows.
The movies coming out of Nollywood these days are so poor,I wouldn't be surprised if non-essential crew members sleep under bridges instead of hotels.
Anyhoo,as always with everything in our dear country,ethnic colourations and connotations have been adduced.
The noise coming out of the East has been louder than Chidi Lloyd's mace landing on his colleague's head.
And with elections coming up in Anambra,the governor,who's only remarkable  achievement is sharing a surname with a Nigerian soccer star,has chosen to make inflammatory and not very well thought out comments.

Peter???Peter???................St Peter?

The Igbos are Nigerians and they are free  like every one else to live in any part of the country they so choose;not like they needed reminding anyways.If I had a he-goat for every luxurious bus that berths at Jibowu park in Lagos every evening with new arrivals,I just might have enough goats to marry a ten year old Egyptian girl and then contest for a Senate seat.
Nobody can deport the Igbo from Lagos.
What will I do without my 'friend' at the viewing center who constantly tells me that 'Arsenal Wenger' is a failure?
They are free to live,do business,procreate and excel in Lagos as they are in Maiduguri.
Well...........................................................................maybe not so much in Maiduguri though!
The Lagos state government has one of the most open-arm policies of all state governments in the country.
With free tuition for students of all ethnicity in it's public schools.
With people of all ethnicity in it's State Civil Service.
With quality roads and public amenities in all corners of the state even in areas that can be conveniently conceived as conurbations that house mainly certain ethnic groups.
For Governor 'Whats his name' Obi to stand on a soap box and try to gain political capital from this,when his state and many in the East have a clear cut policy of paying school fees for only indigenes and employing only such in their civil service smacks greatly of political shenanigans and crinkum crankum(maximum respect Hon. Obahiagbon,respect!).
When hundreds of beggars are picked up and dumped up North,no one bats an eyelid.
When commercial motorcyclists,mainly young jobless boys from Northern Nigeria are being forced back to the grinding penury of home by the Okada ban,not a few of us applauded!
When struggling artisans and beggars were picked up and dumped in Oyo State,a while back,no one listened to Governor Alao Akala's remonstrations.Instead,we dubbed him 'The Bleached One'.

The knuckles bro!That's the first thing they teach in Bleach 101

As a respected social commentator succinctly put it,this is not  a case of ethnic discrimination.It is simply a case of social discrimination.
The poor are clearly not welcome in Lagos.
My advice to you my dear readers would be to always dress up in your Sunday best even if it's just to buy Indomie from the 'Mallam' across your house,make you no go find yourself for ya village the next morning!
In the immortal words of that store of infinite cultural wisdom,human philosophy and etiquette,American gangster rapper,2chainz,'I'll be fresh as hell if the Feds watching'.
P.S:This is for my friend Brume Bekibele as he gets married,God bless you bro!
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The law,paedophilia and ignorantis!

Seems like yesterday when we used to love and blow,i lay the slacks you love to flow..........
Well.................... I'm not sure if that's exactly what P.diddy said in that now iconic song 'I'll be missing you' but nevertheless it's exactly a month and eleven days since I wrote my last piece on this blog and the days have flown by faster than my last month's salary.
Since then,a couple of young kids have been gunned down right in their dormitories in Yobe State.
An aircraft somehow navigated the journey from South Korea and then chose to crash land at the airport in San Fransisco.
OJB Jezrel has had to publicly beg for his life and has perhaps belatedly realised that he probably has less friends than he once imagined!
And the rift caused by the mace-attack in the River's State house of assembly is probably deeper than Nigeria's Big Brother Africa representative,Beverly's woman parts.

I don't see this two sharing a cup of tea for a while!.

But what has probably caught my attention,like Senator Yerima at a primary school for little girls and brought my rusty fingers to the computer has to be this #Childnotbride campaign.
It showed the power of information and the Internet in our time.
The influence this medium can wield was brought to the fore once again.
In less than 24hours,#Childnotbride was trending worldwide.
We had once again exposed our dirty linen to the world,just like we did with the poor Aluu boys.
The Internet was abuzz with Nigerian tweets.
Errant youngsters left their porn gazing and Internet fraud for a wee second.
Mischievous adolescent runs-girls were busy tweeting 'Give a girl a pen and not a penis' from their Samsung  S4's,when they had obviously left their own pens on campus and were chasing after various penises round Lagos.
Bored housewives took a minute from Internet shopping sites and turning their husband's debit cards into a true piece of plastic and lent their voices to the cause.
Even OJB from his hospital bed(when that guy dey go the India sef!).
The jury is still out on the true intentions of the Nigerian Senate but to give the impression that child marriage was legalised is not only mischievous but frankly misleading.
 My distinguished senators do not waste time on matters that will not benefit them materially and impoverish the country more.
But has the law in a manner cordoned it?Maybe.
Can a certain scruffy,goateed Senator from a state that starts with a Z pick a pretty flat chested damsel half his grand-daughter's age from the primary school in his province and make her a wife without having done wrong in the eyes of the Nigerian State?You bet your sweet ass he can!
Have the pot-bellied thieves and perverts in the Senate hijacked an innocent discussion on the appropriate age and mental capacity at which one can renounce citizenship of a country?Sure!
But for a large chunk of us to jump on a band wagon like half starved Syrian children making for the Turkish border( dont bother racking your brains,Linda Ikekji has not blogged about it yet.When she does,you'll understand) beggars belief.

Syria??????Ngwano..............Linda,P-square get show for there?

I detest child marriages as much as anyone else or maybe more.
I work in a field where I come up close and personal with young girls going through the horrors of vesico-vaginal fistula and all the other perils of child marriage.

Happy and innocent........as it should be.

I have been in the trenches campaigning against it,right on the ground,in the most affected areas even before most of this new breed Internet warriors bought their first blackberries and sent their first tweets.
Let's fight a good fight for these girls,let us not insult them with a 24hr Internet blast.
The Aluu4 boys can testify!
 P.S:This one if for you Cousin William as you welcome a new life to our family.
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Oya Limpopo!

About 6 months ago when my cousin,an equally under-employed young man with way too much time on his skinny hands,and I came across KC's song 'Limpopo',he swore to me in between fits of raucous(not too sure what that means but it sounds like something a jobless guy would do) laughter  that the Nigerian music industry had finally reached its Nollywood moment.
It just could not possibly get any worse!
His verdict was,anyone one who bought the CD would be using it as a make shift rear-view mirror(just ask the bus drivers in Lagos) not too long after purchase.
I,on the other hand,due to numerous life experiences,I'm always a lot slower in over-rating the Nigerian youth.
I believed the song had three essential elements of a Nigerian hit.
First,an absolutely jamming beat!It might seem like what any half-wit with a barely charged Acer laptop and an even less charged brain m ight be able to come up with but to the Nigerian music scene,that's pure gold wearing a pair of Nike sneakers and jumping into your pocket!
Secondly,3 or 4 lines,and if you are an aspiring high school drop out and thinking of taking the next logical step into the Nigerian music industry,never more than 5 dear,of absolutely senseless and meaningless lyrics repeated over and over again.
Daddy Showkey had that revelation in a dream almost 20 years ago and it has been passed on to generations on end after him.

Thirdly,a one-word title.Which must and I dear say this is the most important,mean absolutely nothing.
Just ask Kukere,Tongolo,Nogede and Alanta before him.
Fast forward to 6 months and the song is an absolute monster.
Club,radio and video.
My faith in the rabid ability of the Nigerian youth to soak up all sorts of nonsense around it like a cheap Chinese sponge was eventually not misplaced.
Anyways,I've just completed a two weeks break from work,the real one and this one,and I feel completely refreshed though some parts of my brain is still dulled from watching too much of the Nigerian music channel Sound City.
It was tedious 8 out of 10 times.I really could not tell Sean Tizzle,Ketchup,Rayce or Davido and a host of others apart.
It seems they all just sleep at the front gate of the same producer and tell each other "You know what?when the guy drops the beat in the morning,we'll all just drop our lyrics on the same beat and hope for the best!"
It wasn't all that bad to be honest.There are some good young Nigerian musicians doing good music.
The boy Black Magic springs to mind with 'Repete' and 'Confam'.
Shank with 'Ghetto'(not a new song but vastly under-rated).
Mode Nine's 'Let it go' is hot.True rap music.
By the way,somebody help Mode Nine with an endorsement deal;Glo,Mtn even Loya Milk,any one please!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dude's been dropping good rap music for the past 10 odd years but his records sell less than the chap who hawks 'I love Boko Haram' T-shirts down my street.
Then the videos!!!It's like porn on daytime T.v.
There are more half naked girls on those videos than a Swaziland wife choosing ritual.

Maybe I exaggerate a little!

My representation of the music industry might be a tad unfair but it's what I saw in 2 weeks and if you don't agree with me,go get yourself a blog and write what you think.
At least before President Jo shuts the Internet down!
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