Articles

Change

Parenting and the Changing Face of Society

Jilomes

There is this common saying that “the more things change, the more they remain the same.” While I would agree that patterns, like multiples or parallel lines on a cartesian graph may repeat, effectively remaining the same, I wonder if there is truly a reality where things get worse, or the perception is just recency bias at work in our minds. But while my thinking may seem inconclusive, I still find a way to convince myself that with regards to raising children, things are not merely remaining the same.

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Change

Till Death Do Us Part, Or Not

Jilomes

“Make sure you don’t do court marriage. Girls of nowadays are terrible.”

This advice was given to me by an “aunty” in her early forties when I came home in 2018 to present my intended bride to my people. Here was a young guy seeking to start a new life with his bride and being advised to start the marriage on a foundation of distrust. More worrisome is the fact that the adviser was not some aged “misogynistic male defender of the patriarchy”, but a “young woman”, which would make some persons say “if a woman is telling you to distrust women, then, she must have a good reason”.

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Politics

Of National Development and Lying Numbers

Jilomes

Whereas every country likely has some aspects of its existence that is based on a fudged foundation, Nigeria deserves special credit for staying somewhat erect despite having a foundation underpinned by distorted facts, half-truths, and plain lies. While we joust a lot about some persons’ real names, real birth dates, real parentage, real educational history, etc., all these debates pale in consequence when compared to a fundamental question: “How many Nigerians are there in Nigeria?”  

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Politics

When the Rivers Stay Stagnant

Jilomes

How do you have so much potential, yet consistently fail to deliver? You go one step forward, then gladly take two steps backwards while smiling and beating your chest proudly. For a state called the Treasure Base of the Nation, and a capital city formerly known as the Garden City, Rivers State has disappointed on almost every developmental metric relative to the resources and potential available. Yet, just as Nigeria happily towers above its fellow underperforming African countries, Rivers State embraces the wrong peers to feel it is doing well.

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Politics

INEC and the Defenestration of Hope

Jilomes

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick…”

Proverbs 13:12a (NKJV)

There is something about broken dreams that impacts the totality of a person. Sometimes the impact is so strong that it transcends a mere emotional sink to lay hold on a person’s physical being as if the broken dream were a virus. The closest analogy that I can think of as being vile enough would be that of a couple who after waiting for two decades to have a baby, finally pool resources for an IVF trial that works, only to lose their baby in the labour room. The hopelessness that such a couple may feel is akin to how INEC has made many Nigerians feel.

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Politics

In Search of a Benevolent Dictator

Jilomes

“Since they hid their net for me without cause and without cause dug a pit for me, may ruin overtake them by surprise—may the net they hid entangle them, may they fall into the pit, to their ruin”

King David (Psalms 35:7-8 NIV)

I must confess that starting a political discourse with these two verses from the Book of Psalms may not seem normal, but then, what is normal in today’s world? This article could have been prefaced with the famous Golden Rule, but David’s outcry came to mind, and I think it suits perfectly.

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Politics

Lagos and the Burden of Cosmopolitanism

Jilomes

There is something really interesting (in a disappointing way) in engaging with people who somehow choose to elevate parochial thinking hinging on tribal superiority; who gladly broadcast their ignorance in the market square. Every five minutes, there is some debate, sometimes quite vitriolic, that suggests that anyone who lives in Lagos State but cannot legibly trace his or her roots to Oduduwa should be grateful at the magnanimity being enjoyed because benevolent hosts have allowed such a person to drink from Lagos’ cisterns in peace. Each time I hear such views expressed; I wonder if the espousers ever learned about symbiosis in school.

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Randoms

A Love-Hate Relationship with Noise

Jilomes

In secondary school, we were told in Physics class that “noise is unwanted sound”. While we half-heartedly memorised this definition and other physical concepts of sound like loudness, frequency, and quality, we may not have considered the philosophical side of noise. It now appears to me that properly describing noise could present the same quagmire like terrorism, where one’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist. But if that analogy is considered too extreme, we may make do with viewing noise as one’s food being another person’s poison.

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Politics, Randoms

When Chinatown Lacks Chinese

Jilomes

Imagine walking into a place called Chinatown and needing a thick bifocal to see any person of Chinese descent. Except that town were Lilliputian in dimensions, while you were Brobdingnagian, it would be extremely weird, and you would be forgiven for thinking that being all righteous, the Chinese had been raptured. This seemingly implausible situation is currently playing out in Nigeria, where the Naira, the national currency, now competes with petrol in the Scarcity Championships.

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Inspiration

2023: A Defining Moment

Jilomes

“Happy New Year!”

If at 00:01am on January the First, someone had told me it would be three weeks before I get a chance to scribble my first article for the year, I would have said, “all things have become new”. But here I am, finally typing these words after a combination of several factors, ably captained by workplace orders, conspired to keep me on the defensive from the zero hour. So, let me start by saying welcome to a defining year for everyone.

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