Dear God, things are not alright! (A West African's letter to God. An Ebola plea)

                                                                                                                                
                                                                                                                          No 1, West Africa



 God,

1, Ibukunoluwa Avenue,

Heaven ( possibly very close to America)
                                                   
                                                     Sir,
                                                   
                                                         It is I, one of your many many long lost  children. My name is Dayo but I'm guessing you know that already.

But hold on oh! 

Not the Dayo that  attends that Love of world or something church somewhere in Lagos oh!The one with more light skinned women than a Light Up Nigeria T.v commercial and an even lighter skinned pastor who just split from his wife....................Now I'm just rambling.

That Dayo pays his tithe regularly, gives super offerings and generally makes sure pastor's private jet is fuelled and ready to take the gospel to all men!

This Dayo, not so much.

You might be more familiar with him because our Men Of God i.e your men , this side of the world tell us those things matter to you more than purity of the heart.

All my diamonds watching, now my watches getting jealous! 

Something tells me it's not very true though!

Sir, you see, I've known you for some time now.
My parents know you.
My parents parents knew you and they all told me great things about you.
Chief amongst them been your heart of forgiveness, loving kindness and how only good things come from you.

Even on those Sunday mornings  when I walk into your house with a slight shuffle in my gait, not because  like David I was always overjoyed to enter into your house but because I might have had one too many shots of Jack the night before, you still search deep into my  soul and sieve out the best in me.

Even  when as a whole, the entirety of West Africa has been a cesspit  of corruption, mindless civil wars, despots, crime and fraud, a lesser god would have cut his losses, set  a wildfire upon the land and then act all surprised when the cops come around for questioning.
 But not you sir!

Though,we've had many losses, You've always kept West Africa  away from total collapse. 

For that we thank you.
This Ebola though, we do not understand.

 The fact that our leaders siphon money meant for developing and maintaining public health systems is a given and that we understand.

Infact, Chief Theophilus 'ThisLifeTooSweet' Ajayi, our Federal Senator was in the village the other day to inspect his country villa currently under construction.

You should see the house Baba, it is a magnificent sight alongside the villagers huts and we are so proud of him. 

But how does  that translate to our inability to stop this Ebola scourge that is clearly a plague from the Devil!




We also understand that though quality education is  on the government's list of development goals, it's probably farther down that list than a pair of jeans on an upcoming Nigerian artist's behind!

But then again, how does poor education and irrational thinking aid the spread of this deadly virus? We truly do not know but what we know is that the Devil is a liar!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We have lost thousands Daddy.

Last count was about 4000 across Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.

CNN has even constructed a special Ebola map for us  as if living here with it was not enough reminder, but we thank them.

The Americans, who are technically our brothers since we are all your children, have helped a bit.
They could do more though but even I stopped picking Hakeem, my brother's call, when every casual call to 'check on me' always ended  with a 'quick favour'.

But beyond sending soldiers and increasing airport screening, they could actually consider helping to strengthen the health systems of the key countries.

By the way, since Heaven is so close to America, could you help us, the poor people of West Africa, ask Mr Obama  why every AMERICAN patient treated in AMERICA survives the virus?

Amma just sit by this cup of  hot Lipton and await  the answer.

Finally Lord I don't know if you've come across any of my prayer requests.

Pastor says I can donate to purchase something for the church a.k.a himself and then watch as my request gets to you faster than it  allegedly took Governor's Fayose's thugs to land a backhand on Oga judge's face in Ekiti State.

Let it be on record that I only allegedly supervised the slapping!

Top on the list was an American visa. 

Top on the list is still an American visa.

But you gotta act fast and stop this Ebola, those embassy boys ain't playing no more! 

Yours faithfully,
Dayo,
Your West African son.
 

The curious case of Goodluck Jonathan!

I've never been a shoe man!
I've always seen them as nothing more than an entrapment for our feet with which we step on the soil.
I honestly doubt if I've ever owned two decent pairs at the same time at any point in my life.
Infact, if I had my way, apart from buying Dencia an umbrella to protect her skin from the sun, I'd  probably be waltzing through the streets of Lagos care free and shoeless like a half crazed, beach seeking Cele priest!
It's no surprise we have laws to keep us from having our way most of the time.

Anyway, little wonder I got drawn to President Jonathan  during his first campaign for office.
The thought of a little shoeless Joe, all shiny black skinned, with his little weeny bowler hat safely harnessed on his head like a flying saucer made from cotton, wool, linen or whatever in God's name those horrid hats are made from, fishing rod in one hand and the latest edition of Ikebe Super in the other was a draw too strong for me and I believe many other Nigerians.
By the way, there's a 25-40 year old man somewhere in Nigeria as we speak sweating bucket loads as he tries his utmost best to lie as he is been quizzed by his 5year old son about Ikebe Super!

Ikebe Who??????????????? Ikebe What??????????????

God be watching you  live and in HD on those new curved Samsung TV's my brother!

Anyhoo, we saw Oga Joe not only as one of us but indeed us.
The humble man from the backwaters who rose to be king.
Otuokpe could be Iyin in Ekiti State or Obiaruku in Delta for all we cared.
For a minute and half or so, we envisioned ourselves, not in our dreary, sweltering, mosquito infested apartments but about to step foot into the Presidential Villa.
The Villa, where we had heard great fables about Chewey, the imported Pakistani mountain goat in the Aso Zoo who usually had coffee alongside his breakfast on cold mornings.

Omo, see life!!!!!!!!

We told ourselves that because we had seen suffering up close and could recognise it in the dark, we would not get carried away by this new found tax payer funded opulence.
That just like Patoranking stuck to his Girlie 'who loved him when he had no dime', we would remember the people on the streets.
We thought that hard work and indeed goodluck had finally brought us or at least a man very much like us into power.
 It's been years of Oga Joe's rules and it seems, just like Portiphar did when he felt he could trust his wife alone at home with a hunky Joseph, we thought wrong!

The people on the street are as poor as they've ever been.
The people on the streets are as hungry as they've ever been.
And whoever told you a hungry man never bothered nobody probably never met Terry G in the early days!

The people are angry not only because they can't afford to feed but because of a growing disconnect between a man they trusted and the close to a 100 million stuck in the mire of 'Squalor Nigeria'.
The poor don't care about mathematical speeches on macro-econimics.
The poor sure as hell don't care  if our GDP is large enough to fit Banky W's head like a cap.

Adamu in Gwoza does not care about newly found oil fields in Bayelsa. He wonders why he has been left to his fate to possibly die a cruel death in the hands of bandits.

Chijioke in Orlu does not care if Hyundai has started coupling plastic cars somewhere in Lagos. It's not like he's ever gonna afford one in his life time anyway.
He wonders why his wife had to die at childbirth alongside many others in his town.

Sarah in her dingy little hair dressing salon powered by a Tiger generator that had definitely seen better days and was now coughing up its last spurts of black poisonous fumes, wonders where the humble man who had promised to make life, even if not for her but at least for her young daughter better, had disappeared to.

Her generator had been working way before Oga Joe's tenure and seemed destined to work long after.

This man was no Patoranking.

A well fed, self praising Timaya more like!

To say the GEJ administration has not attempted some good would be grossly unfair. The policies have just not benefited the poor majority who fought on his side during the heady days of succession or no succession.

Instead, we have a group of newly minted Nigerians, probably less than a thousand of them, feeding fat on our ever increasing GDP.

With an election year fast approaching, it would be wise to remember that this new breed of fancy suit wearing, G-Wagon driving Nigerians would probably spend election Saturday sleeping off a Friday night of drunken debauchery while Adamu, Sarah and Chijioke, despair on face and revenge in mind, populate that voting queue.

P.s: She love me for very long time,
      Long time,
      She love me when me get no dime
           -Patoranking.

Follow the The Flipout Corner @doctorrotcod

Female suicide bombers and their equal opportunity employers!

My Great-Grandmother Olori (that's Queen of Africa,to my ignorant American readers) Beatrice must be dancing Sekem in her grave right about now.
All 200 and something pounds of her!
In her day,a woman's place was a tiny 8 by 8 square metres of prime real estate where the family's meal originated from.
And after toiling all day to feed a horde of ravenous children; and I mean feed!!!!! Not in this day of Indomie,two eggs and one Chivita; she had to then proceed to the bedroom to fulfil her other obligation to her fully fed husband and master!
And as Martin Luther King once famously said just before the start of the Second World War, a fully fed man odikwa equal to two he-goats!
They're weren't female doctors, lawyers, accountants, biochemists or engineers at the top of their game in Olori Beatrice's day.
And they sure were no female bankers dressed in skirts so mini, guys be coming into the banking halls just to 'crosscheck' if they used a black or blue pen to sign their last cheque about a month ago!

My dear, I think the 'O' in OKafor in my name was spelt as Zero, Okwa!

Regardless of how the foreign media tries to portray Nigeria as a backward nation of girl slaves,the fact remains that Nigeria has one of the highest number of high achieving,well educated women.
Women with good education,values and a sense of self worth, who can stand head to head with with any in the world.
Women who have fought hard to break barriers and put themselves in good stead to compete with anyone.
So when news broke that teenage girls were been used on a suicide bombing orgy around the streets of Kano yesterday, my heart sunk!
Sunk to depths lower than the catfish pond behind my house; no more wasting money at Mama Nkechi's joint. If Adam could cook his own dinner while Eve was frolicking with the devil,who am I not to???
Anyhoo, no suicide bomber is good; man,woman, boy, girl or donkey.
Yep!Donkeys!
Apparently the Palestinians use donkey suicide bombers.
I'll give them an A for twisted minded ingenuity.
You can't be a coffee drinking,newspaper reading dude to come up with that.

Duration and purpose of visit please?

Anyway,if the insurgents in the North-East oppose female upliftment, education and portray them as the infinitely weaker sex but see nothing wrong with using them at the forefront of their war,that's double standards as not seen since the days of paedophile priests!
I just hope and pray that some form of brainwashing and coercion involving the kidnapped girls is not at play here.
Really pray!
The wave of bombings in Kano involving teenage girls opens up a new frontier in this madness.
One that completely takes away the innocence from those we strive to protect.
We love our women in Nigeria and they typically tend not to get as thoroughly frisked or harassed at check points but in this day and age of terrorism,Sunny Nneji was right about something; 'This Ikebe fit put e you for trouble'

P.S: To all the Indomie cooking wives out there who keep 9-5 jobs, take care of the kids and still manage to stay sane,you all are the real heroes!
Pls follow the FlipSide of Life on twitter @doctorrotcod

The man who saw tomorrow;Ayo Fayose and the Rice of the PDP!

For those familiar with the machinations(Somebody get me Konga.com NOW NOW!A bottle of their finest hair gel for Pastor Kris Okotie) of this blog,you probably are used to this by now.
Me disappearing for weeks on end without writing jack squat or writing something as unsatisfactory as a Patience Jonathan W.A.E.C English essay might have been.
Might have been I say.
You never know with these things.
Its just like when stutterers sing fluently.
For all we know,little Miss Patience might have been a little Ikwerre Shakespeare.
Writing ballards and shit!

Tell them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Most times its easy and convenient to blame the absence on work pressure from other sources but truth be told,half the time I just run short on ideas.
No matter how much I cajole the brain to function,it just comes back emptier than Etcetera's music awards gallery.
Etce who??????????????
As my mother would say,na so dem dey ask person!!!!!!!!!!!!
Anyway, writing about the continous cycle of bombs,raids and deaths in Nigeria gets disheartening real quick.
And as myself and other delegates in the 'Garden of Happiness' parliament suggested earlier this week,only if we could get Tiwa Savage to go easy on the make-up.
The girl wears enough make-up to bring peace to the Middle East or at the very least,Borno State!
Any road,the elections in Ekiti state about two weeks back caught my eye.
And if my stunning looks does not give away he fact that I'm an Ekiti man,I wonder what will?
Against all expectation,Ayo Fayose,the once accused phantom poultry farmer,was once again elected governor.
I had the opportunity of watching Mr Fayose storm to the Ekiti State Government house in the early years of democracy till he ran 'fowl' of the law and was deposed.
His method was simple.
While his opponents serenaded the crowd with promises of high sped rail,Wi-fi coverage and flying cars,he simply did the needful.
He identified a need and filled it.
At the time,Ekiti State was suffering a water supply shortage that would have made the Israelite wilderness travails seem like a day in the life of Davido!
He simply hired water tankers and supplied towns and villages with water free to villagers who had been left to trekking to streams for their supplies like a bunch of confused young girls in a Nollywood movie.
By the way, a word for those girls.
If by now you do not know that the village rapist usually chills by the foot path to the stream then you probably don't know shit!
So Mr Fayose went from hamlet to village to town distributing water.
And as absurd as this may sound,somewhere at the back of the mind of the voters they probably felt that if he could distribute water as a candidate,as Governor,they would surely have water flowing into their homes and maybe even one of those Japanese toilets that supposedly splash some water on your behind once you done.
We all know what happened after he got into office don't we?
Its all water under the proverbial bridge now though.
So,when pictures  of the PDP distributing mini-bags of rice to the people surfaced  on the Internet just before this round of elections,it was obvious he was simply trying a tried and tested pattern.
I mean,if something worked for you in the past,why change it?
Except if you're Cabo-Snoop of course.

Those skinny jean only take you so far bro!

Any change,Fayose seemed to have identified the crippling poverty and hunger facing the people.
Not just in Ekiti but across the length and breadth of this country and chose to pick on it this time around.
Contrary to what they might tell you,a hungry man is very rarely an angry man.
Confused,docile,amenable to easy manipulation and generally willing to sell his birthright more like.

At least Esau's was cooked already.This one's will still buy oil,pepper and Maggi!

Fayose had and still has no plans for Ekiti development but he won  in a landslide.
And that hurts.
For a state once revered for having more professors than all the high school graduates put together in Sokoto State..................................Sorry...............Hold on one second...................Mr Commissioner for Education Sokoto on the line?.............Hello.............Those are 1962 figures you say?..................Ehen?
Seriously though,the opposition needs to know that beyond development and infrastructure,politics of the belly is also vital.
You need to satisfy peoples short term needs to have them believing in your long term goals.
No amount of flower planting can placate a hungry man.
Except their edible flowers though.
There's another election coming up in Osun State and Iyiola Omisore the PDP candidate in between mouthfuls of corn seems to be borrowing a leaf from the Fayose Ekiti playbook

Only in the Third World would this men be contesting for public position.

If Asiwaju Tinubu and the APC do not want to lose their stranglehold on the SouthWest,I can only urge them to in the immortal words of Lax ft Wizkid...........
Ginger oh...................
Ginger................
Ginger oh.................
Ginger.............

P.S: the flipside of life is on the twitter machine @doctorrotcod

Brazil 2014; Sand,Sex and Soccer!

Growing up as a young teenage boy, I had simple dreams; I had two idols in this world and I knew more than anything that I wanted to be like them when I was grown.
I had to be like them!
It was either I grew up to be like iconic soccer star, David Beckham, complete with ridiculous hair style and a skinny model girlfriend or like Brooklyn rapper,Jay-Z.
I already had a big nose and  lips thick enough to seal a burst NNPC oil pipe ,so, obviously Jay wasn't going to be that hard an act to follow.
Some kids in my clique though,...............brothers be tripping!
Some of them had the weirdest aspirations in life .
Some even grew up wanting to be Emirs.
I'm like 'Wow!Get out of here!'
Riding fancifully dressed horses and wearing turbans so tight one could barely give a nod and a wink in them?
That was waaaaaay outta my dream zone.
Needless to say,I've neither painted European soccer leagues red with goals nor had my ass whooped on an elevator while folks like Sanusi Lamido Sanusi seem to have achieved their lifelong dream of mumbling through a turban while addressing people.

We can't hear you at the back!

 
So,on the dreams actualization scale,mine appears to have been relegated to the back row,like all the black people at a T.B Joshua church service.
What's up with that by the way?
Stumbled upon an episode the other day on the telly and I could have sworn I was watching a church service holding in Latvia or some far flung Eastern European country.
Not until I saw four black apparently confessing witches running up from way back in the auditorium did I know that I was infact home.
And when I say way back in the auditorium, I mean waaaaaaaaaaaaay back.
I could barely make out Jim Iyke's long head far back on row 246.
I hear he's a top member now by the way.
Me thinks that with the black folks seated so far back,it would be wise to have a small taxi service for those on the spot deliverances.
Maybe those funny golf carts,what say you Oga Josh!
Anyhoo, it's fair to conclude that I'm neither a soccer nor rap star and the closest I've come to a star is the cold bottle I indulge myself with 3 working nights a week,every alternate Saturday and alternate Sundays at Mama Nkechi's  'Garden of Happiness'.
It's always a place to unwind and let loose.
Although,in the last few weeks we've had to keep one eye on our beers and the other on the road just in case a nutter with a few loose screws and an explosive laden vehicle happened to chance on our drinking hole.
Yesterday though was a hoot and a half!
All we wanted to talk about was the upcoming World Cup in Brazil.
For the next month,the biggest sporting party in the world would be held in its party capital!
For one month,soccer,samba and sand would morph into one incredible orgy of excitement!

And we wonder why he can't play no more..................

 
The best soccer teams in the world vying for the ultimate crown.
Heavyweights like Brazil,Argentina,Spain and Germany would be there battling for soccer victory in glorious sunshine.
Africa has sent its mandatory quota of five countries and we hope that unlike the black man who for some reason unknown to me always gets eaten first by the shark in horror movies,Africa's reps would respect themselves and at least survive the first round!
Unlike other World Cups though,Brazil promises to offer much more to visitors than just soccer.
It's a country as large and diverse as the boiling pot of 'Noah's Ark' pepper soup I could see from the corner of my eye at the end of Mama Nkechi's restaurant!
Glorious beaches,colourful carnivals and beautiful women.
Little wonder the first thing the Nigerian Football Supporters' Club asked for after securing their visas was 62 million condoms.
62 million!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You'd be hard pressed to find a merrier bunch of pervs!

As my friend Jude said, even if they planned to take a boat to Djibouti, you know that part of the African map that looks like a horn,line up and then sleep with all the women diagonally up to Rabat,Morocco, at the very end of the African map, I doubt if they would finish 62 million rubbers!
If Emeka was there;by the way, Emeka is that annoying guy in every group of friends who seems to stay up all night studying up on ways to suck the life out of every party,Emeka would have bored us to death with facts on how Brazil had transformed itself from a drowning 3rd world slum to an emerging world economic power in about 25years.
We'd probably have shut him up with a flaming bowl of pepper soup but still gone home and wondered where Nigeria got it all wrong.
I for one plan to enjoy every single moment of this tournament.
From boring pluck out your eyes matches involving counties like Honduras to exciting swashbuckling games involving giants like Nigeria, I hope to savour it all.
And if this is your first World Cup either due to age, lack of interest or like my mechanic Rauf who honest to God had no idea of such a competition said 'Oga,we no dey get that one for B.C.O.S for Oshogbo oh'
Just sit down,relax , watch with innocent wonder and don't bother trying to predict the winner.
The same sense of wonder I had when on my first visit to the Garden of Happiness, Mama Nkechi calmly told me she called her pepper soup 'Noah's Ark' because it contained 'all the animals'.
I'm still trying to figure out which animals exactly!
P.S:Super Eagles to win it!    
      T.B Joshua don seen it!
Follow The Flipside of Life on twitter @doctorrotcod

Nigeria:#Doro Boko, thieves of girls and other stories!

I've never really had a love for dreams.
Even as a kid,my dreams were always vivid and scary.
So it came as no surprise to me when just the other day I woke up screaming and totally soaked in sweat and gasping for breath due to what I had just witnessed in dreamland.
It started pretty mildly enough,with me in my living room watching the video to Don Jazzy's new hit single Dorobucci.
Don Jazzy took the first verse,all 120kg of fat in him trying to dance while at the same time trying to look cool.
It went pretty well but you would not believe for all the oil fields in the Niger-Delta who took the next verse!
It was my Commander-in-Chief,all decked up,complete with bowler hat looking like a Sudanese school teacher 30 years out of vogue.
'Doro Boko,(ehn ehn)
Doro Mad, (ehn ehn)
Doro Crazy, (ehn ehn)
Doro Terror, (ehn ehn)
Doro carry any girl wey Doro see oh oh,
Doro bomb anybody wey Doro jam ehn ehn,
Doro Haram,
e be like say we no fit catch am,
Doro mad pass militants wey don dey mad before'

My Physiology teacher back in the day ,God rest his soul, always believed that your dreams were a fair reflection of your environment and your present thoughts and preoccupation.
In a crazy country, you definitely would dream crazy dreams.
Its been a month or so to remember or to forget,depending on how you view disasters.
My Psychology teacher used to say....................you know what,he was never the  sharpest tool in the box, so I'm just gonna skip what he said and save you some megabytes.
But my emotions in the last month have ranged from surprise to fright for the nation at the level of terror pervading the land to fright for the level of intelligence of our leaders and their cronies to just a pure 'get me outta here' feeling.
Well.................................to be honest though the 'get me outta here' moment really had nothing to do with the events in the nation.
I think that was the weekend my car broke down, dead centre of the Third Mainland bridge with not a soul in sight apart from two Mermaids crying about how the hot new Merman from River Benue used and dumped both of them!
Benue people though!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Anyway, I've not had to follow so much drama in a short space of time since I stopped watching 'Keeping up with the Kardashians'.
How their male partners do not realise that their careers and lives always go down the drain after stepping foot on that show is way beyond me, my beef for them and my barely five figure salary.
Anyhoo, two bombings, a kidnapping, a presidential media chat for the ages and a very First Lady like outpouring of grief later, we somehow are still here.
Still going about our daily lives.
Still not too exhausted to start our generators in the evenings to follow the madness on the news.
Still alive.
Tensed and scared.
But somehow still alive.
Musa Yaro  up north wakes up every morning and prepares to go to the office,farm or grazing fields and  wonders if he would make it back home in one piece while Gbenga Okonkwo down south glances in alarm at every very dark skinned fellow with an accent slightly different from his who dares to sneeze with his arms outstretched;wondering if this was the day terror came South!
But strangely we seem to have gotten used to the killings and bombings
The daily murders been committed by the infamous 'unknown gunmen'  up North have become little more than happenings in a remote part of our land.
We know it's there but we refuse to truly acknowledge it.
In fact,very much like the famous 'Expo' of days gone by,you know its tucked somewhere in your inner thigh but you don't dare glance at it until you totally have to!
But the kidnappings?
That shook us!
276,220,210,even 2,whatever the number.
The fact that young innocent girls could be boarded up into trucks like feverishly excited University of Benin girls been taken taken for an Igbinedion(Lucky or Gabriel,take your pick) after party and carried away in the dead of the night was too much to bear.

Even Nollywood agrees!

Even if it happened in the Northernmost border of Nigeria.
Even if it happened at the bottom of Lake Chad or just across the border from the Palace of the Oba of Mali,the fact that it happened within our borders and our government said nothing for three weeks appears to have stunned and shook us in equal measure.
Nigeria,a nation of 'It-is-wellers' and passive-aggressives,poured its people out unto the streets to speak out in one voice to #BringOurGirlsBack.
World leaders have taken turns to express disgust at the act and also express support for the Nigerian government in its quest to get these girls back.
Nigerian celebs have also taken to twitter,more in an effort to gain publicity than anything else but we thank them all the same.

A placard with an hash tag would have done just fine bro.Just fine!

CNN has made casting Nigeria as a whole in bad light as its next God sent mission.
In a week when Nigeria was supposed to get all the world's media attention from hosting the World Economic Forum,CNN chose to portray us as a nation of terror and for that we also thank them.
We know that the next plane crash,earthquake or landslide somewhere would get them scampering off like my Etisalat data plan;here today,gone tomorrow!
Anyway,Something tells me we'll get those girls back.
Every one of them.
Not a hair out of place.
Not a scar on the face.

Oga Bola,na only you write this thing?You for ask person na!

Why am I so confident?
Because there is indeed God and good always prevails over evil and secondly.....................................the Americans just sent Jack Bauer!
#Doro Bauer!

P.S:@drsid, I serioously doubt that your 'knack' line.With that pot belly?????????Nigger please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Follow the flipside of life @doctorrotcod

A missing plane,an immigration test,Nigeria's magical mathematics and other stories!

It's been a while I tell you!
A real long time.
Maybe not as long as we have had to wait for Knaan to release another hit song since 'Waving flag' but long enough!
Don't you dare laugh Skuki,don't you dare!

I'm not one to hate on young men hustling.So,I'm just gonna put this picture here and see if you folks remember them.

A lot of water has passed under the proverbial bridge and if you're one of those who prefer animal idioms,like my cousins Ram-sey and Lion-el(oh!!!!!I see!),a lot of goats have indeed escaped from the pen since I last wrote.
Talking about goats,my pet goat,Ukambo,just delivered the most amazingly adorable kids you're ever likely to see across the length and breadth of this beautiful country of ours.
Excluding Borno,Yobe and Adamawa of course!
I doubt if anyone would willingly risk life and limb by going to those states just to prove they can find better looking baby goats than mine.
Anyway,all sorts have have happened in the past month or so and like a Mr Biggs pizza,none of them good.
First,we woke up to the Nigerian Immigration Service trying to make more money off already raving poor young Nigerians in the name of a recruitment drive.
I happened to drive by the stadium on said morning and for the life of me thought there was either a soccer game on or rapture had taken place and for some strange reason the National Stadium Lagos was the...................erm.......erm..... transit station or something.

Changed my mind.Too many black men.Cannot be rapture!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And like it wasn't bad enough to fleece them,they had to kill a couple probably just for laughs.
It was like back in the day when you weren't satisfied till you heard that slurping sound at the end of a Ribena pack!
The NIS guzzled those poor young Nigerians to their deaths with  poor planning and then offered their family members paltry jobs at the end.
Like somewhere in the minister's village jobs could somehow replace life.
Even the once famous Okija priest at the height of his powers would have found that hard to do!
Sad.
Very sad indeed!
Maybe not as sad or maybe just as sad as what family members of the victims of the crashed/hijacked/missing/used for ritual sacrifice Malaysian Airline MH370 plane must be going through right now.
It sort of opens your eyes to how vast the Earth really is.
And how small and insignificant man is against the sheer force and will of nature and fate.
By the way,that's exactly what I told the first girl I ever laid my 'A' game on.
Needless to say,I've never tried that 'nature' pick-up line since.
Not much of a winner I tell you.
Not much of a winner!
Anyway,various countries and superpowers have tripped over themselves trying to help with the search.
All sorts of fancy search planes,ships and futuristic gizmo have been unleashed.
Even China,with all it's obviously 'Made in China' equipment have indeed been on the forefront of the search,squinty eyes and all!
Picking up pings and locating plane debris where none existed.
China reminds me of that kid back in Uni whose Dad had just stuck his knife in the National cake.
From fellowship to beer parlour to club,everybody must know say levels don change.
But as my father would say,it's all in the effort!
And for that,Chinaman,we salute you.
We now know though,that whichever way the saga of the missing plane ends,we only hope and pray that the families get closure.
And maybe more importantly,Nollywood does not make a movie out of it!
And that my friends is the truth.

Oga Chico Ejiro,who am I to say you should not eat!!!!!!!

What is a lie though,a raging lie if I might add,is the current attempt to bamboozle Nigerians with talk of  increased 'GDP' and how we apparently are now the largest economy in Africa and trying to equate this mathematical magic with an improved standard of living for the average Nigerian.
The day   I go to the club and pop champagne with a wallet full of 'GDP' without 'Tiger',that's 'Mr Tiger' to you by the way,not make me do the frog jump across the Lekki-Ikoyi bridge with a dozen Moet on my head,that would be the day ,my friends,that would be the day.
And I'm sure that my gate man Haruna and his seven children have far less important needs like food,clean water,decent education keeping them up at night than mine.
GDP does not put food on the table.
In other climes it might.
But Nigeria,Africa's giant is not other climes,so it doesn't.
Nigerians do not know the effect of an ever increasing Gross Domestic Product on their lives and trying to sell that would be a lie.
Gross Domestic Poverty,that we know.
And just like King Solomon 'knew' all the fine chicks in Israel back in the day,that we know very well!!

P.S:Shout out to Tiger.You never made me frog jump now did you.But you did threaten!You sure did threaten!

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