Jilomes

Unveiling the Jilomes Brand

December 16, 2020 Jilomes

When I created “Jilomes” as my nickname sometime around 2004, I included the tagline “Live to Excel”, unaware that this fell under the purview of creating a personal brand. Without throwing off the humility cloak, I am confident that people who have had interactions with me would attest to my commitment to excellence. Unconsciously, I nurtured a personal brand around delivering excellence in many aspects of my life, and now, I take another step by unveiling a logo that captures how I see myself.

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Change, Politics

INEC and a Chance for Real Elections

December 10, 2020 Jilomes

Debbi Stabenow, an American politician, is quoted to have stated that “Democracy is about voting and it’s about a majority vote. And it’s time that we started exercising the Democratic process.” If we accept that democracy is a governance system that is truly reflective of the will of the citizenry, then we must begin to wonder why it seems that many elections in Nigeria reflect the will of a certain subset of society rather than the majority of the populace. Today, we discuss a potential approach for the electoral umpire to remedy this malady. However, we would begin with a discussion of some reasons driving low participation of Nigerians in the democratic process.

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Change, Politics

#EndSARS: A Nation in Need of Healing

October 25, 2020October 25, 2020 Jilomes

“It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone”
Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy

On 1 October 2020, Nigeria marked 60 years of independence from British colonial rule. Unknown to merry makers and observers, barely a week later, a sequence of events would lead to young Nigerians demanding independence from a faux democratic elite symbolised by the infamous police unit, the Special Anti- Robbery Squad (SARS). Within two weeks, events have evolved from peaceful protests led by an educated base to unmatched rioting and looting led by the uneducated thugs we love to fear.

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Change, Politics

Nigeria at 60: A Thousand Words in a Graph

October 2, 2020October 25, 2020 Jilomes

On 1 October 1960, the landmass internationally known as Nigeria was granted independence by its erstwhile “colonial masters”, setting the stage for a journey that has now spanned sixty years. There are already a tonne of viewpoints and articles evaluating the sexagenarian with in-depth analysis, but I have chosen a different route. Instead of making a judgement call, I would present data and let you decide how Nigeria fared over six decades. After all, they say “a [graph] is worth a thousand words”.

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Energy

Electricity, Gas & Kerosene: Which is Cheaper?

September 20, 2020November 25, 2021 Jilomes

Have you ever wondered whether to boil water using an electric kettle or to use cooking gas? Or maybe you currently use kerosene and wonder what the hype is about gas. My wife and I routinely debated our home’s energy cost with regards to different energy sources, so I decided to do an empiric comparison. Maybe someone else could use this to settle their own debates.

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Randoms

LOOTing to Stay Safe

September 13, 2020October 25, 2020 Jilomes

Assuming you came expecting some grand pontification on the egregious tradition of looting public funds, let me extend an apology for the unexpected deception. This is an article about staying safe at work. Now that I have been forgiven, I hope you would learn a thing or two from the following paragraphs.

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Change

Continental Builders Called the African Youth

August 16, 2020October 25, 2020 Jilomes

When I was contacted by an advocacy group, The Reformers, to join an online panel session on International Youth Day 2020 (12 August), I wondered why anyone would want to hear me talk about “The Role of African Youths in Building the Africa We Want”. Accepting their request laid the foundation for today’s article, which draws from my research and thoughts about the issues, blended with insights from other panellists and participants.

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Change

“Not for Sale”: The Dysfunctional Normal

July 20, 2020 Jilomes

We begin this article with two quotes that should set the stage, and may even be adequate as a concise summary for the day.

“Man [Nigeria] is not suffering by external forces as much as his [its] own dysfunctional mind and self inflicted negative stimulus.”
Aditya Ajmera

“When a big vision meets a dysfunctional system, the dysfunctional system wins every time. Fix the system and success will flourish!”
Daren Martin

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Inspiration

On Becoming A Father

June 21, 2020 Jilomes

As secondary school students, we were taught about “metamorphosis”— the full lifecycle of insects such as butterflies that sees them transform from eggs to larva, pupa, and then adults. Although the term “metamorphosis” was not used in describing the human journey from birth to adulthood, the circle of life is surely a journey of staged transformations. However, unlike the butterfly that largely has no say in its metamorphosis, humans make choices that influence the outcome of each transformation; for example, a man can decide whether to be a mere sperm contributor or a father.

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