The World As I See It
All through my educational stay in the South West, whenever I introduced myself or I was introduced by another person, people’s reactions tended towards “oil money”. As a Rivers boy from the creeks of the Niger Delta, they assumed I had a trailer of money scented with crude oil. No matter my attempts to correct their mistaken belief, they would not believe that the oil wealth reaches a few, leaving many others in communion with poverty. Continue reading “Oil’s Romance with Poverty”
On Saturday, 1st October 1960, thousands of happy Nigerians gathered at the Race Course Square (Tafawa Balewa Square) Lagos, to witness their young country’s independence ceremony. For many persons who shared greetings and basked in the ambient excitement, the full import of “independence” was not known. The knowledge that “the white man will go, and we will lead ourselves”, was enough reason to celebrate. Today, fifty-five years later, Nigeria is sorely in need of that common drive that fuelled the campaign for independence.
Every day, millions of Nigerians ply the country’s vast road networks. The belief by most, despite some doubters, is that they would get to their respective destinations, and would return to their homes at the end of the day, the state of the roads notwithstanding. For many, their wishes come true, but for some, their journey gives them what they never bargained for.
Two days seem to be the most remembered in the life of a university student—matriculation and convocation. Apart from the few whose parents visit regularly to babysit, for most persons, those two days are the only days their parents and other relatives would ever set their feet on the university campus to see them. Continue reading “At Last We Convoke”
Ibosa—that’s welcome in my native language.
Welcome to Jilomes’ Blog, a repository of the musings of my mind. I’ve wanted to start a personal blog for some time but I kept pushing the idea away. For one, this generation has been credited with being overtly narcissistic and I didn’t want to get counted in the number (ignore that I have an actively updated Facebook account). I guess the excuse about not being narcissistic could be tagged as being hypocritical. Posting pictures regularly to Facebook and keeping everyone (called “Friends”) updated about my life’s events is okay but running a personal blog isn’t. There’s definitely something wrong with that statement, even if I consider that a blog would be a lot more public.
Thoughts about the possibility of my posts coming to haunt me sometime, somewhere in the future had also kept me from starting this blog. But I’ve realized that I don’t have to waste the present worrying about the future. The future would definitely take care of itself, and as long as my writings are guided by principles that do not change, then I shouldn’t have any cause for alarm.
So this is it. This is my blog. I’ll write on anything that catches my fancy; the world as I see it. I expect my first couple of posts to be below par. But in the spirit of continuous improvement; with each post and feedback from readers (hopefully Google’s robots won’t be the only readers), my writing would get better.
I live to excel
I am Jilomes
Jilomes 