Category: Randoms

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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Randoms

Wicked Doctors Leaving Nigeria in Droves

Jilomes

There was a time when Nigerians were so proud of their country that they would hurry back home to build their careers, preferring the simplicity of their homeland to the ill-gotten wealth of yonder. But what do we have today? A young Nigerian is admitted to an ultra-subsidised university, merely suffers a little sprinkling of strike actions, gets awarded a MBBS degree, begins the stipulated medical internship and immediately starts plotting to leave the land that trained him. How much more wicked can we be?

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Randoms

To Japa or Not to Japa

Jilomes

Life is a potpourri of numerous choices we make, of which some decisions are key because of their overreaching impact on how our lives shape up from that point. In today’s Nigeria, especially among people who fit certain criteria, one such decision is whether to leave Naija (“to japa”) or stay back within its territory. As social media continues to be regaled with a nouveau popular meme announcing a glassy welcome to a new dispensation, we may draw some wisdom from an adaptation of author Julie Kagawa’s writing that “there are no good choices …only those you can live with, and those you can work to change”.

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Randoms

Ajaokuta, Also Known as Nigeria

Jilomes

It’s been a while since I wrote any article. I have been thoroughly submerged by work, yet it is work that has birthed this article. I recently had a short stay in Ajaokuta to undertake certain assignments for my employer within the Ajaokuta Steel Company Limited. Of course, I cannot tell why I was inside the famous plant, but having been there, the parallels between that infamous place and Nigeria were enough to inspire this article with hope that some may learn a thing or two from the corroding potentials that seem only good for grasses, snakes, and apes.

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Change, Randoms

A Game of Russian Roulette called Parenting

Jilomes

If you have any links to Nigeria, you may have heard of the latest travesty involving some kids aged 10-13 (or 15?), or even watched a certain related video, which I have heard features esoteric sex styles that might give porn actors a run for their expertise. You may have also seen a video of a mother providing cover while her under-12 daughter steals a mall-goer’s handbag. If any of these make you lose hope in the next generation, remember that about a century ago, a bunch of Russians would place a single bullet in a revolver, roll the chamber, pull the trigger, and hope to live.

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Randoms

The Unseen Burden of History

Jilomes

It was Laura Linney who described history as “a resource”, but many times, we gloss over history as some unplugged cousin that we have been forced to babysit, whereas we should be mining it for information. Sitting through a Zoom lecture, I just had an epiphany that hit me hard enough to get my laptop and start tapping in rhythm to the fresh insight coasting through my neurones.

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Randoms

Another Year Called 2022

Jilomes

“The life of mortals is like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field … teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom”

~ King David of Israel & Moses the Hebrew Activist (Psalm 103:15, Psalm 90:12)

Just over two decades ago, the enlightened world worried about the approach of the millennial year amid fears that computer systems that were beginning to wield a vital role in society would malfunction. At the same time, the ultra-religious world worried about an apocalypse of universal proportions that would mark the end of life as we know it. Twenty-two years later, the cycle of life goes on as the earth makes another human-referenced revolution around its star.

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Randoms

Of Scams that Seek the Unemployed

Jilomes

I once read a tweet that angrily demanded that the worst spaces in hell be reserved for those who fart in airplanes at high altitudes. If someone could be so disgusted about a natural phenomenon, imagine the anger when you see people prey on persons seeking jobs to earn a living. In a country with high unemployment levels, many persons are desperately seeking employment opportunities. Sadly, many fall prey to crooks whose job is to scam the jobless. The scammed are even the fortunate ones; some applicants are robbed, beaten, raped, or even killed.

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Randoms

Nigeria is Better than America

Jilomes

Prologue: There is a message purportedly written by a Nigerian living in the US, that is being shared across WhatsApp groups. The following is a response to the points raised by the purported author.
It is adapted from a reply I posted when the message was forwarded to one group where I belong.
Note: My responses are italicised, and preceded by “Response”. The original message (by the American resident) has not been changed in any way.

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