Tag: Development

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

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

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, Inspiration

The Big Man in Us

Jilomes

Do you know any person who used to complain about an alcoholic father, but is now an alcoholic? Or, maybe it’s someone who complained about a terrible boss, but is now competing for that title? Maybe you know a woman who always complained about her mother-in-law, but is now doing to her daughter-in-law the very things she used to whine about. I have seen a quote that says “we become what we hate”. However, I disagree. Maybe it’s not that we become what we hate, but that what we hate might be the default “normal” for humans, and we ought to actively seek to be different rather than merely complain.

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Change

When Healthcare Is Not Healthy

Jilomes

Imagine being chased by a pissed-off grizzly bear and you run into a small cabin and shut the doors. You see a cute polar bear chilling in the cabin, and you feel all is well, but as exhaustion sends you sleeping, the polar bear pounces on you and tears you apart with the agility of a hunter; nothing else seeming amiss except for your warm blood splattered across its cute face. Now, that’s a really horrible nightmare to preface this article.

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Change, Politics

A Litany of Bad Choices

Jilomes

If you had to choose between eating your cake and having it, what would you choose, and how would you make this choice? Would your choice be logical, emotional, a blend of the two, or a clean random pick? Whichever you choose, you would be aware that every choice has a consequence one way or the other. However, looking at the national development angle in Nigeria, it looks like we make weird choices and later wonder why things took a wrong turn. Whereas there are several factors behind our woes in Nigeria, one common denominator for our dysfunctional state is a litany of imprudent choices.

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Change

Continental Builders Called the African Youth

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, Politics

Nigeria’s War Against Holistic Planning

Jilomes

The iconic painter, Pablo Picasso, is acclaimed to have said that “Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” If there is any validity to Picasso’s claim that a properly implemented plan is the only route to success, what then do we say to individuals and institutions that act like planning is anathema to success. Maybe such persons know something the rest of the world is ignorant of, or maybe the ignorance, wilful or accidental, is in the other direction.

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Politics, Randoms

Ultra-Modern Deceptions

Jilomes

In Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Dispossessed”, a discussion between Shevek and Bedap provides a backdrop to today’s article.

“Who do you think is lying to us?” Shevek demanded.
Placid, Bedap met his gaze. “Who, brother? Who but ourselves?”

A look at Bedap’s response betrays a truism about human behaviour. More times than not, we lie to ourselves, deceiving ourselves or gleefully accepting the lies others tell us. In a case of blissful self-delusion, we seem to find it easier to face false constructs instead of reality.  Continue reading “Ultra-Modern Deceptions” →