Netflix, some days ago, debut a documentary on the backstory of what is now globally known as afrobeats, a term coined to describe the Nigerian-cum-African version of hip-hop music. This genre leverages on the infusion of local languages in the lyrics of hip-hop songs. The documentary is by Ayo Sonaiya, lawyer and ex-artiste manager to King Wasiu Ayinde Marshall (K1). Sonaiya has followed this genre for years and he delivers a documentary that will be difficult to beat.

In the documentary series, Sonaiya reveals that Abdulrasheed Bello, better known as JJCSkillz, was at a point made a millionaire by a UK-based group he was part of which did not want his infusion of Yoruba language in their songs. The release of this documentary coincides with JJC’s announcement that his seven-year-old marriage to celebrated actor and movie producer, Funke Akindele, has ended. This announcement saw nasty comments on the social media, with many casting JJC in the garb of a pauper who went into the marriage because of Funke Akindele’s money. Someone even likened him to the woman in the marriage. Funke, to this clown, was the husband because she was richer and more popular.

But, the truth remains that JJC was and is not a nobody. Ask D’banj to write the story of his rise and he will have plenty to say about JJC’s role. The almighty Don Jazzy will be unfair to the truth if he writes his memoirs and leaves out JJC. The documentary on Netflix has enough video evidence of JJC’s roles in the lives of these two men whose influence on the afrobeats genre cannot be overemphasised. He touched their lives in London and even tried to get D’Banj a record deal and, when D’Banj made his first major hit, he put a call through to a record company which once rejected D’Banj because it felt it made no commercial sense to infuse African languages in hip-hop music. He mocked the record owner for his lack of foresight.

His single ‘We Are Africans’, was an afrobeat anthem which endeared him to many Nigerians, though he was living in London when he released it. Before ‘We are Africans’, JJC was the producer for the British hip-hop record company and musical group Big Brovaz. He released his debut album, ‘Atide’, an experimental album with lyrics in English and Nigerian languages in December 2002.

While the marriage lasted, both parties brought their special skills. They created great contests for television and the big screen. They co-produced ‘Industreet’, a television show about the Nigerian music industry. JJC also created a series with which Yoruba language can be taught. It is on YouTube and I have seen the video of a class of white kids using it to learn Yoruba.

When marriages crash, there are usually so many undercurrents that outsiders are not privy to. Yet, people become relationship experts and try to rubbish one party or the other. There are complications they will never be able to grasp.

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Funke, also known as Jenifa, has done well over the years. From her days on the television series titled ‘I need to know’, to the humongous success of the Jenifa series, she has shown the superb stuff she is made of. The success of her ‘Omo Ghetto the Saga’ at the box office is a fitting crown. JJC was there with her on the Omo Ghetto project. Now, she has been announced a member of the prestigious and globally-renowned Academy of Arts. To deny her her crown will be a disservice to man and God.

From my reading of JJC and after seeing that documentary, I cannot but agree with celebrated writer and culture journalist, Molara Wood, that he is a humble legend. A video of his and D’Banj on Twitter attests to this fact.

These guys had great times and those are what I will remember and remember. When they celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary, Funke posted their photos looking cheery. She wrote: “Thank you Lord!! Happy 5th wedding anniversary to us my darling husband @jjcskillz. I love you Bolarinde. Thanks for all you do for us. May we live longer together in good health and wealth. Oluwa a wa pelu wa ati awon Omo wa! Oju o ni Tiwa lagbara Olorun. Amin. May we continue to have reasons to smile and celebrate In Jesus name!! Amen!! #happyweddinganniversary my boo’ @jjcskillz.”

JJC’s response was a series of videos on social media to celebrate the mother of his twins. He had some words too: “Happy anniversary my love @funkejenifaakindele. 5 years down, a lifetime to go. May the almighty God watch over our family, home and business. Forward forever backwards never.”

Underneath a video, which was a compilation of moments from their wedding ceremony in 2016, JJC wrote: “My best decision was to finally settle down with my friend @funkejenifaakindele now my everything. Against all odds we are stronger than ever. I look forward to the rest of our journey. I’m grateful for the years together my love. The only woman I know that can bring me out of my shell? I pray God continues to watch over us. This is just the beginning my queen.”

In an interview, JJC said: “No special secret to our union than love and sacrifices. We are one of the celebrity couples in the country. It is lovely and we hope it inspires more people to believe in love and work to keep God’s union. For those experiencing marital challenges, my advice to them is to love your spouse like your siblings or parents. Two is now one. So, forgive and forget and take it a day at a time.”

My final take: Funke is great. JJC is superb. Neither should be made to feel less than what they are. They have gone their separate ways but make no mistakes about it, the fact that they have a set of twins, which they welcomed in 2018, means they will forever have cause to be in each other’s space. And always remember that JJC was not a nobody before marrying Jenifa, and he is not a nobody now that he is no more with the talented actor and movie producer.

Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), also known as Dissociative Identity Disorder, is a mental condition where two or more distinct personalities are believed to control the behaviour of a single individual. The two personalities share one body and choose to take over as each deems fit.

This mental health condition is one of the difficult issues tackled by Ayodele Olofintuade in her novel ‘Lakiriboto Chronicles’, which has a sub-title ‘A brief history of badly behaved women’.

Set mainly in Ibadan, it is, in the main, the story of four women and one man. There are some minor characters here and there who all contribute to make the story tick.

The story kicks off with the death of Alhaja, Moremi’s grandmother. This death provides for Olori Ebi, a man of questionable past, the opportunity to steal all of Alhaja’s properties. Morieba and Moremi are stumbling blocks he must deal with. He thus orchestrates Moremi’s relocation to Lagos, where she becomes a maid to Tola. Though Tola is a relative, her badly-behaved doctor-husband, Wale, makes Moremi and Kudirat, also his wife’s relative, feel like modern-day slaves. To make matters worse, his itchy fingers are always touching inappropriate areas; even his children who he named Jesutomi, Jesuwalaye and Jesulayomi are not free from his satanic touches.

Tola, who suffers from MPD, confronts Wale about his abuse of their daughter. He pretends not to know what she is talking about. Tola eventually gets fed up and with Morieba’s help, she, her children with Kudirat and Moremi, relocate to Ibadan.

Olori Ebi’s plot to steal Alhaja’s properties ascends a new pedestal when he gets a girl to become amorous with her and get it captured on photo and video. With the pictures he tries to blackmail her into letting him have all of Alhaja’s belongings. It is at this stage that Morieba confesses her gay status to Moremi as a way of breaking Olori Ebi’s back.

At a point, the person who helps Olori Ebi to get the photographs and video becomes greedy and wants to extort Morieba; thus paving the way for a high-wired counter-plot, which sees Morieba setting up Olori Ebi and cunningly getting all the vital documents in his hand. It also emerges that Amope, Moremi’s mother, has been a victim of Olori Ebi’s plot to own all. For years she battles drug addiction, which she gets enmeshed in because her stepbrother (Olori Ebi) sees her as a stumbling block that must be removed at all cost.

Significantly, Tola’s abuse as a child by her father, and her mother’s handling of it, tell a lot about parenting. Some mothers are not worth the label at all. Instead of crosschecking her daughter’s words, she simply writes it off and beats the hell out of her. Her attitude throughout portrays her as a good example of a bad mother. She allows the long-held tradition of silence in the Alagbado clan make nonsense of her professed love of God.

A major twist in this book is Tola agreeing to return to Lagos with Wale after he traces her to Ibadan. No one suspects her ulterior motive with the sudden change of mind. She becomes submissive in Lagos. And it is at this point that Wale’s Christian life is further exposed as phony. We find out he likes violent sexual acts. To catch him and punish him, Rita (Tola’s other personality) takes over and pretends to become a convert to his weird sexual ways and through this she kills him so neatly that even the police hold her for manslaughter and not for murder.

In Tola, the second personality is known as Rita and she is the daring one.

The novel shows that we live in a world ruled by fears. It shows that we pretend a lot, that we see many of our afflictions as taboos: things that must not be talked about in the open. So, we suffer in silence. We fear to talk about a child being raped by her father or an uncle. We treat sexual assault, sexuality and mental health conditions with levity.

We fear to talk about the fact that we still own slaves in this twitter age and name them house helps or housemaids, but the treatment we give them shows that they are nothing but slaves – they cannot sit on the couch; they can’t eat on the dining table; they can’t watch television in our presence; and they can easily be identified when we go out with them. Their dressing, their hair, their shoes and all tell them apart.

Olofintuade’s language is seductive. Her narrative skill is good. She tells her story with vigour, with zeal and a presence of mind that leaves out no vital details.

This book also has elements of the Yoruba cosmic. From time to time, we see Esu (Not Satan, mind you) playing a role once in a while.

Olofintuade gives Lakiriboto, a Yoruba word that is used to describe a woman whose vagina walls are closed for penetration, a metaphoric meaning. It is adapted here because the book is about women who refuse to be controlled by societal norms. These women take charge of their sexuality, their finances and fates.

My final take: Mental disorder is real. Being well-dressed, being brilliant, being successful and being glorified do not mean that a person is not battling a mental challenge.

What could make a daughter and mother sleep with the same man? Why will a woman believe sex smells like fish and ice cream? Why will a girl’s first sex be for a packet of imported Big Red gum? And why will she choose to have it. She has it with a boy who would chew a piece and blow cinnamon breath on her face? And why will they do it close to his flat, on the landing between floors?

Welcome to the strange world of Tara, a mother, and Antara, her daughter, who is the narrator of Avni Doshi’s Booker Prize-shortlisted novel Burnt Sugar. Antara is an artist who makes art work from tungsten bulbs, batteries, cords, pens, stamps, coins, dead insects and moths fossilised in wax —a profession her mother never supports, just like most things she does.

At the time of Antara’s sex with this boy with pimples on his forehead, the narrator’s relationship with her mother is already soured, and her mother is already out of her father’s house as well as the temple of a ‘deity’ who was her lover.

Antara and her contrarian mother give us a love story, a story about betrayal between a mother and a daughter. Tara is a different kind of mother, not the type who comforts, not the type who encourages, not the type who makes things better. Tara hardly has anything good to say about Antara. The things she says about her are stuff like: “I cannot believe that any child of mine could have such bad handwriting.” She abandons her arranged marriage to join an ashram, embarks on a stint as a beggar to spite her affluent parents, and spends years with a dishevelled, homeless photographer. Antara is always in tow as her mother goes on this journey.

At the beginning of this novel set in Pune, India, Tara has started suffering a health condition, which makes her forget things and acts funny. The doctor delivers the bad news to the daughter: “You’ll never know if the memory is real or imagined. Your mother is no longer reliable.” Her health challenge is unable to cement their relationship. Both struggle with being kind to each other. Tara forgets how to pay the electricity bill and misplaces her car in the car park below her flat, forgets the name of the road she has lived on for two decades and seeks to speak with friends who are long dead. But she never forgets to tell the stories that humiliate her daughter.

Aside from Tara, people also paint Antara in a bad light. When she is a child, an adult tells her: “You’re nobody. Your own mother barely looks at you.” When she is grown, a friend’s husband threatens to put a cigar out on her face. Her own husband, Dilip, tells her, “You aren’t an authority.”

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Tara’s misery gives Antara pleasure because of what she suffered at her hands as a child, and any pain her mother subsequently endures appears to her to be a kind of a rebalancing of the universe, where cause and effect align.

Antara struggles to make her remember the things from the past. She brings up instances of her cruelty and watches her face curve into a frown but she can’t recall what she is talking about and her eyes are distant. Their relationship is so sour that the sympathy her mother elicits in others gives rise to something acrid in her.

Her mother’s condition begins with wandering around the house at night leaving her maid calling Antara to say: “Your mother is looking for plastic liners.’

When Antara’s mother’s first lover dies, it presents the two of them with another opportunity to duel. It starts when her mother says: ‘I realised that it’s no small thing to be the lover of a great man.’ Antara replies that ‘to me it looks small, cheap even, and is definitely nothing to brag about’.

Her mother grabs her by the arms and shakes her before slapping her face and saying: ‘You’re a fat little bitch. Have some sympathy! I became a widow today!’

Antara rushes into her mother, knocks her over on to the floor, sits on her chest, wraps her hands around her throat, squeezes until the veins appear under her eyes and looks down at her face and says: ‘Fat little bitch.’

With time, her mother falls in love with another man named Reza. He soon moves into their flat. One morning, Antara finds him sharing the bed with her mother. Their neighbours soon find out about her mother’s new lover and whisper about it at the club many in the town belong to. Her mother scolds her for telling her secret ‘How could you do this?’ Her lover seems less bothered. Reza, a photographer, is a crazy kind of lover, the type who will dip his hands into her mother’s breasts and squeeze them while the daughter watches.

Her grouse about her mother even makes her refer to her in the past tense though she is still alive. So hurt is she that she wishes India allows assisted suicide like the Netherlands.

Aside Antara’s relationship with her mother, the novel also examines how a girl’s body changes. As Antara grows, she begins to feel someone else is living in her body, taking up temporary residence and making herself at home. She feels this stranger is opening her up from the inside, causing stretch marks and discoloured skin. She also feels bad about hair appearing in greater quantities in places where she does not want it. She is also troubled by the fact that she feels like she is eating for a multitude. She is equally at a loss as to why men look at her in ways she hadn’t noticed before. She wonders if they see the other woman living in her body, too.

My final take: Avni Doshi delivers a searing tale about family, about love and its obligations, about memory and its nature. This novel shows Doshi as a talented writer, an artist, master of style and a fantastic storyteller.

In a matter of days, the chaff will be separated from the wheat. Boys will know themselves and men will be visible for all to see. That is what will happen when the political parties hold their primaries and pick presidential candidates. But will the eventual winner of the presidential race be someone who will help make Nigeria great?

The need for someone who can make Nigeria great reminds me of Avni Doshi’s Booker Prize-nominated novel ‘Burnt Sugar’. In it, there is a pharmacy selling electrical products and not far from it is an electrical shop illegally selling medicine. The novel is set in India, but the scene can be replicated in our beloved Nigeria, the home of many a greedy leader, where looting is synonymous with leadership.

The book reminds me of putting a square peg in a round hole, and also reminds me of ‘Lagos Is Killing Me’, a collection of over 60 poems by Michael Taiwo Oloyede. Many of the poems lament our woes as a nation and scream the need to get things right.

The echoes from the book scream power cuts, money-laundering, hunger, deceit and motion without movement. The echoes also bring to mind ethnocentric, scums in power, bloodletting, malaria, cholera, jaundiced politicians, strange manifestos, comatose health sector, miserable public schools and sick health sector.

These words and phrases capture the essence of ‘Lagos Is Killing Me’, and they also give away the poet as telling a brief history of Nigeria in verses.

Oloyede’s disdain for leaders who have misled and are misleading Nigeria comes alive in poems, such as ‘Lagos is killing me’, ‘Moribund restaurant’, ‘Naija Wahala’ and others.

The poem titled ‘Naija Wahala’ seems to suggest that the poet believes the answer to Nigeria’s woes lies in a revolution. He hums at the end of the poem:  “Revolution has envisioned our land; soon, it will infiltrate with a merciless entourage,  to give us a new page in the history of time.

Yes, a cure to the wahala of Nigeria.”

In ‘Moribund Restaurant’, the poet compares Nigeria to a business concern that is no longer viable. He sings its dirge: “In this glistering and moribund restaurant called Naija, hunger dies of lack!

Yesterday’s sour meals of sordid stories are still on today’s menu, the maggot-ridden appetizers of money-laundering cuisine are strung on the white linen thoughts of national prosperity.

Political pests continually finger and break into the lump of our national pudding with their greed-infested fingers.”

The poet lays curses on fake drug peddlers, bad politicians, vagabonds in power, but praises men of integrity in ‘Ibirikembiri, Live and Let Us Live’. His curses are harsh. He wishes them joy infested with strange boils, forehead kissed with cholera, soul attractive to the gallows and economic fever.

There are other poems, which also chronicle the Nigerian disaster. In ‘Sacrament of bullets’, Oloyede focuses on the #EndSARS protest and its aftermath. He pays homage to everyone killed during the protest. His prayer for the killers is that peace will elude them.

In ‘SARS’, he tears apart this monster in whose evil grip dreams have died and ambitions have been buried. He has no good words for its operatives who he sees as bloodthirsty, brigands, allies of traffickers, retailers of body parts, mercenaries of sorrow and fat ransom receivers.

Victims of insurgents are remembered in ‘BODMAS of Grief’ while insurgents themselves are mocked for their quest for heavenly virgins.

‘To Port Harcourt’ captures the grief of Nigerians who commute from Lagos to Port Harcourt. Oloyede laments the evils on this route: Prowling ritualists, corrupt policemen and the extortion at the bypass of Benin-Ore Road.

In ‘Fela’, the poet sings praises of the late Afrobeat maestro. He hails him for his contributions to humanity: His fight against dictatorship, his campaign against religious mongrels, his battles against corruption, his war against the greedy and his quest for a new world order.

The titular poem brings Lagos alive in its sights, sounds, smells and more. We see the almighty traffic gridlock the government seems not to have an answer to. We see dreams dying. We see aspirations collapsing. We see dirty money in the carnivorous city.

We see the accommodating Lagos, which daily welcomes souls of all hues. We see people living in duplexes built on heaps. We see Shylock landlords. We see people paying for power blackouts. We see men in economic diapers. And we see Lagos’ capacity to steal people’s joy and sanity and give them an illusion in its stead. Yet, we see the mega city ever welcoming and welcoming and welcoming more in-takes from far and near.

The poem titled ‘Sepia’, which talks about a lady who offers her body to men in flashy cars, brings to mind some great literary works such as Toni Kan’s ‘Carnivorous City’, Dami Ajayi’s ‘A Woman’s Body is a Country’, Wole Soyinka’s ‘Brother Jero’, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s ‘Americanah’, Tolu Akinyemi’s ‘Inferno of Silence’, Chinua Achebe’s ‘Anthills of the Savannah’, ‘Emmanuel Iduma’s ‘Stranger’s Pose’, Buchi Emecheta’s ‘Joy of Motherhood’, Helon Habila’s ‘Waiting for an Angel’, Abubakar Adam Ibrahim’s ‘Season of Crimson Blossoms’ and Tomi Adeyemi’s ‘Children of Bone and Blood’.

Oloyede plays on the titles of these works to deliver a poem that mourns the downside of sex for cash.

The poet’s sharp lens pricks the conscience of rapists in ‘Ghoul’ and his wish is that their miserable bodies will be cremated. The killing of George Floyd is treated in ‘I can’t breathe’ where he berates Caucasian Minneapolis cop, Derrick Chauvin, for choking life out of Floyd on May 25, 2020.

Oloyede’s attempt at touching every aspect of human experience makes this collection a potpourri. There is almost something for everyone in this collection, which brings to the fore the burdens of the human race in free-flowering, lyrical verses.

The poet delivers debilitating blows to oppressors while consoling the oppressed. If only poetic blows can kill, the oppressors will be buried alive!

My final take: As the chaff will be separated from the wheat in a matter of days and boys will know themselves and men will be visible for all to see, my wish is that the eventual winner of the presidential race be someone who will help make Nigeria great. We have lagged behind too much and cannot afford a repeat of the mistakes that made the poet cried in ‘Lagos is killing me’. May a greedy soul not emerge our next president.

For years, Charles Oputa, better known as Charlie Boy, serenaded us with a self-titled television show whose motto was “anything can happen”. Over the years, this has become Nigeria’s motto. In Africa’s most populous nation, anything and everything can happen, and has been happening and, from the look of things, will continue to happen.

I will not be surprised if tomorrow a goat picks up the nomination and expression of interest forms to become our President, I will not be taken aback if a donkey decides to run for the senate, it will not freak me if a dog decides to seek the mandate to be governor. It will not baffle me that a dog will pay N100 million for the ruling party’s expression of interest and nomination forms and no eyebrow is raised by those in authorities. People who have been politicians all their adult lives are coughing out N100 million at the speed of light. Here anything and everything can happen.

My attitude is not unconnected to the fact that here in our dear nation, cows no longer moo, cats have stopped meowing, sheep find it hard to bleat, bulls see bellowing as herculean, ducks quack no more, donkeys have long abandoned braying, horses no longer neigh, geese have forgotten how to cackle, chickens can’t cluck again and peacocks no longer fancy screaming. I must add that the fact that lecturers have been on strike for months and students are directionless at this electioneering period is also another of the reasons I am hardly shocked again in our nation.

But in spite of my lack of shock about the things that happen in our nation, I am still disappointed with a number of things. At the moment, I am disappointed in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, Godwin Emefiele, the man under whose watch the naira has wobbled against the dollar and now exchanges at close to N600/$1 from around N150/$1 when he came into office.

Some months ago, kites were flown about the possibility of Emefiele running for the office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, a position he is eminently qualified for. He denied it. Not long after this denial, the front pages of some newspapers were bought by a faceless group drumming support for him. They listed the miracles he has performed as CBN governor and justified why he should lead us in 2023. They were clever with the disguise of the source of the message and who funded its dissemination. But we could all see the voice of Esau and the hands of Jacob in the whole charade. Emefiele again told us he was busy panel-beating our badly-accidented economy. Few believed him. He has the right to, but not when he is running the CBN. He should have given up the governorship of the CBN to test his popularity, which I am still using torch light to search because power supply remains epileptic. I am also still searching to see what good has come out of his leadership of the apex bank, which will make us prefer him as our next President.

But this really is not the issue, the issue is that it is wrong for him to sit tight on the CBN chair and be partisan. It is also wrong that President Muhammadu Buhari didn’t fire him the moment all doubts about his intention were erased.

On May 6, the Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria and two other organisations were reported to have purchased for Emefiele forms to run for the presidency on the ticket of the APC. The following day, Emefiele chose to insult us by claiming that he was awaiting “God’s Divine intervention” which he hoped to receive “in the next few days”. It would appear that God’s intervention included a court order to say that he was not affected by the Section of the Electoral Act. He approached the Federal High Court in Abuja, which declined his request to restrain the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, from preventing him from pursuing his presidential ambition.

His lawyer, Mike Ozekhome (SAN), told the court in Abuja that he can run for the post of the President without vacating his position as the CBN governor. He added that Section 84 (12) of the Electoral Act as amended, 2022 does not affect Emefiele because he is a public servant and not a political appointee. The court instead summonsed INEC and AGF to appear before it on May 12 to show cause on why Emefiele’s request should not be granted.

His tweets on the matter are puerile: “I am humbled by the growing interest of those asking that I run for the Office of President in the 2023 general elections: I have not come to that decision.

“I note and salute the sacrifices of those farmers and patriots going as far as raising personal funds and offering me Presidential Nomination Forms: I thank them most profusely.

“However, should I answer their calls and decide to seek presidential nomination, I will use my own hard earned savings from over 35 years of banking leadership to buy my own Nomination Forms, without proxies in an open and transparent manner in full compliance with the laws and Constitution of The Federal Republic of Nigeria.

“And should I not run for elected office, I will continue to serve and sacrifice for the good people of Nigeria under the able leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari. This is a serious decision that requires God’s Divine intervention: in the next few days The Almighty will so direct.”

In my opinion, Section 9 of the CBN Act is unambiguous about the fact that Emefiele cannot just choose to run for elective office while he is the governor of the apex bank. The Act makes it mandatory for him to seek the approval of the CBN Board or resign to pursue his ambition. Section 11(3) of the CBN Act requires him to give “at least three months’ notice in writing to the President of his intention to do so.” He obviously has not done either.

Section 9 of the CBN Act, 2007 reads: “The Governor and the Deputy Governors shall devote the whole of their time to the service of the bank and while holding office shall not engage in any full or part-time employment or vocation whether remunerated or not except such personal or charitable causes as may be determined by the Board and which do not conflict with or detract from their full-time duties…”

Like the Ondo State Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, I find it difficult to imagine that Emefiele is brazen in actualising his ambition. With Emefiele enmeshed in the presidency drama, the CBN is almost leaderless. We all know that during electioneering periods, politicians are more concerned about winning and less concerned about governance. Emefiele is now a politician, despite his attempt at making us believe otherwise.

My final take: Emefiele should run, not for the presidency, but run out of the apex bank. His tenure as CBN governor has not shown me that we can trust him with a bigger responsibility and even if we want to trust him, there is a moral-cum-legal burden on him which he has little time to address.

Let us call her Aliyah. She is on the bed, her body hot like oven, her breathe short, her eyes struggling to open, her mouth bitter and repelling food. She, like many, is down with malaria, one of the world’s deadliest diseases.

Nigeria records many malaria casualties, daily, yearly. The malaria crisis is worsened by merchants of fake drugs. In the early 2000s, statistics showed that over 40 percent of anti-malaria medicines in circulation in the country were counterfeited. It dropped in 2005 to 15.7 percent. But three years later, it rose to an unprecedented 64 percent. It has not quite reduced significantly.

For instance, Lonart, a popular anti-malaria drug, once lost 40 per cent of its market because of counterfeiting. At one point, the company launched a DS Mobile Authentication Service (MAS), through which consumers can detect counterfeited Lonart.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) World Malaria 2020 report showed that Nigeria tops the malaria case chart in Africa at 27 per cent, followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (12 per cent), Uganda (5 per cent), Mozambique (4 per cent) and Niger (3 per cent). These five countries accounted for about 51 per cent of all cases globally.

The report also identified six significant challenges hindering Nigeria from reaching a zero malaria status, such as drug resistance and treatment failure, poverty, insecticide resistance, lack of sensitive field tests that can detect low levels of parasitemia, global warming, and climate change, as well as sustainable funds.

The severity of the malaria malaise was behind the United States President’s Malaria Initiative (US-PMI). Being a health challenge, the war against malaria and other diseases requires well-equipped hospitals as well as well-groomed and motivated professionals. Sadly, we all know the state of many of our health institutions, including the teaching hospitals. These institutions need support. In billions of naira. Even dollars.

For a sector already suffering the effect of years of abandonment, the COVID-19 pandemic was a major blow. The pressure it exerted on it was the type the sector was less prepared for. And things fell apart, leaving the centre struggling to hold.

Aside from the health sector, our education sector also needs help. Lecturers have been on strike for months, leaving students idle and ready tool for ignoble deeds. The last thing we heard from the government was that it was tired and unsure of how to end the strike that has made a mess of our education.

By now, it should be clear to us all that if we leave the critical sectors of our lives to the government, we will not achieve much. Two sectors that are thriving—Nollywood and the music sectors—are private sector-driven. It is for this reason that I advocate the involvement of the private sector in developmental issues. Call it Social Responsibility!

One company that has over the years shown it is socially responsible is the Nigeria LNG Limited, the sponsor of the Nigeria Prize for Literature and the Nigeria Prize for Science. This company, which will clock 33 later this month, is not just supporting literature and science, it is involved in fighting malaria, in improving the state of our tertiary health institutions, and in providing critical infrastructure, such as the Bonny-Bodo Road. Records show that it has committed more than $200 million to corporate social responsibility projects in the Niger Delta.

Working with the US-PMI, the firm is working on using Bonny Island, its base, to stamp out malaria in Nigeria. The deadly disease costs the country huge loss in manhours and mortality rate. The anti-malaria movement involves the distribution of treated mosquito net on Bonny Island. The Bonny Island Malaria Elimination Project (BNYMEP) is a five-year project, which started in 2021. United States Ambassador to Nigeria, Mary Beth Leonard, expressed America’s commitment to it at the launching in March last year.

NLNG Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Dr. Philips Mshelbila said the US-PMI donated 273,450 treated nets worth millions of naira to support the initiative.

The NLNG and its partners, he said, worked behind the scenes to provide free treatments for pregnant women and children under the age of five, and build the capacity of service delivery staff and community volunteers on a roadmap to achieving shared goals.

Its interventions in our universities are multi-million dollars in cost. In January, it signed a deal with six Nigerian teaching hospitals nationwide in its multi-billion-naira Hospital Support Programme (NLNG HSP). The hospitals were part of the first phase of the NLNG HSP. The beneficiaries are Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital (UATH), the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital (AKTH), the University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH), the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital (UCTH), and the Niger Delta University Teaching Hospital (NDUTH). The cost is some $500,000 per hospital, with a total cost outlay of $6 million.

Through its University Support Programme (NLNG USP), which was in operation between 2012 and 2015, it sponsored the construction and equipment of six engineering laboratories in six federal universities. The beneficiaries are the University of Ibadan, the University of Port Harcourt, the University of Maiduguri, the University of Ilorin, the Ahmadu Bello University and the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

By the time work is concluded on the Bonny-Bodo Road it is building, it would have helped to realise a dream that had been on the drawing board since the 70s. The road, which is 40-kilometre long, has three bridges – a 1000 metre bridge across the Opobo creek, a 640 metre bridge against the Nanabie Creek and a 550 metre bridge against the Afa Creek. It is a tripartite arrangement involving the Federal Government, represented by the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing, and Julius Berger Nigeria Plc, to construct this road, which will connect several communities in Rivers State. It will open up opportunities for rapid socio-economic development of the area and impact lives on Bonny Island, as well other Niger Delta communities like Ogoni, Okrika, Eleme and Andoni. Nigeria LNG is contributing N60 billion to the project.

Lest I forget, the NLNG is both our pride and cash-cow. Nigeria makes the kind of money it gets from the NLNG from only a few other sources. When President Muhammadu Buhari came in, the Federal Government initiated a bailout package for states owing their workers. The bulk of the money which made up the N400 billion package came from the company. As at the time Buhari became president, the company had made over $25 billion from a $2.6 billion investment, paid over $5.5 billion as Companies Income Tax, Tertiary Education Tax, WHT, VAT and PAYE. Regulators’ levies and other fees had cost it over N51 billion.

Former Coordinating Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala described the company as a beacon of hope for a better Nigeria. She described it as the most successful Nigerian company with 49 per cent government ownership, which she described as a distinguishing feature among companies in the public and private sectors.

My final take: Nigeria is too much to be left for the government at all levels. Well-to-do companies, such as the NLNG, sure have to help out, and help out very well. NLNG is playing its part in the area of literature, science and infrastructure. More need to toe its path and toe it well. Tokenism will not help to end the era of malaria keeping down the Aliyahs of this nation.

By Olukorede Yishau

It will be hard for a Nigerian reader not to take special note of a scene in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s novel, ‘Gravel Heart’.

The scene involves the main narrator, Salim, and a character named Alex. In it,  Nigerian politicians are described as having a huge appetite for stolen wealth as well as being the worst in the world when it comes to pilfering public money. They are accused of voting constituency allowance and others for themselves. Alex, who is Nigerian, caps it all by declaring: “Nobody in the world is as corrupt as us.”

Gurnah is the most recent winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature—one of the few black persons to have won the award.  Before winning the prize, his audience was infinitesimal globally. Now, his story has changed and rights have been sold and are being sold for his amazing works hitherto ignored. His moment has finally come.

His ‘Gravel Heart’ spans decades.The tales in it take us through Zanzibar of the 1970s, London of the 1980s and thereafter and then Zanzibar of the internet era.

It is in Zanzibar that Salim feels that his father does not want him. But it is in London, where he struggles through almost everything that he makes some sense of the drama of his family history. And latter-day Zanzibar is where he is eventually able to make a better sense of the whole drama of his life.

Those words seem to summarise Gravel Heart. However, there is much more to summarising this stunning coming-of-age tale that can be titled ‘Another Lonely Londoner’ but this lonely Londoner is a victim of his family history that he struggles to fully comprehend.

At a noticeably early age, Salim feels all is not well with his family. He feels there is something wrong with the way his father relates with him.

One day his father leaves the house and at first his mother delivers a basket of food to him until she cedes this responsibility to Salim, a task he resents at first.

The father he delivers food to looks to him like a man out of his mind. He says little and when he engages him in what seems like extended conversation, he finds it difficult to understand the quotations he seems to have pulled out of from the pages of books long read.

No one is willing to give him the details of why his father chooses to live like a destitute. His mother hardly satisfies his curiosity because of her vague responses to his enquiries. Then one day he notices a bulge in his mother’s tummy. Time reveals she is pregnant, and time also shows she is carrying a girl-child. He knows his father is not responsible and with time, he finds out his sister’s father is a powerful married man whose sister later becomes his uncle’s wife. The arrival of his sister strains the relationship between him and his mother. He resents his sister’s father and starts destroying the baby’s toys but somehow, he finds that he still loves his sister.

One day he discovers a hole in the room he and his uncle, Amir, shared long after the uncle left for studies overseas. He believes he was using it to watch intimate moments between his parents. This hole gives him the edge to discover his uncle’s plot to have him attend university in London. When he gets to London, his uncle convinces him to study a business-related course because he believes it will guarantee his future. He struggles through the course and about two years into it,  discovers he is wasting his time.

His uncle compels him to study hard and pass his exams but he fails woefully. That mars their relationship, and he offers to chart his own path and study literature instead. Thus a new, tough life begins for him.

Meanwhile, through his uncle’s wife he finds out some details about his family history which explains a few things that were not clear to him while in Zanzibar. He finds out, for instance, that his uncle had once been arrested and jailed at the behest of the man who is now his sister’s father. It took his mother’s intervention to get him released. He will find out more to make sense of the shame and exploitation that characterised his family history and how passion and politics reshape his family.

When Salim starts living on his own, he struggles through it all. Having a relationship becomes an arduous task for him, but with time he finds a way around it. Life, however, shows him its other side when the family of the Indian-cum-English lady he falls in love with forces her to end the relationship because he is a Nigger.

All through his struggles in London, his family history keeps tormenting him. He writes letters to his mother, some delivered, others just for him to vent and never passed on to his mother.

In his conversations with his mother, he finds out something is ailing her, but his mother keeps saying the medical checks are inconclusive. Fear mounts and he keeps living in fear and fear eventually catches up with him and leaves him a Hobbesian choice.

This novel is a relatable story about exile, migration, loneliness, racism, family history and its baggage. It also touches on prejudices as shown in a Nigerian character’s views about other races. It also tells of love and its many complications and how a man can love so much and when he feels betrayed, he practically stops living and everyone thinks he has lost his mind. Its treatment of how people in exile always plan to return home but always keep postponing it is the reality of many abroad.

The novelist’s use of letters to tell a chunk of this story evokes emotions and Salim’s near unending mourning of the past helps drive the narration and captures the reader’s body, soul, and spirit.

His writing is glittery, elegant and deeply rewarding. It evokes power in graceful prose that screams class.

Narrated in first person by Salim and his father, this novel is a good model for what a coming-of-age novel should be: emotional, moving, and euphoric.

Traces of Septuagenarian Gurnah’s life can be seen in the novel. Like Salim, he was born in the Sultanate of Zanzibar and moved to the United Kingdom. But, unlike Salim, who’s move was to have an education,  Gurnah moved in the 1960s as a refugee during the revolution in his home country. He holds British citizenship and is an academic and novelist of note.

My final take: Nigeria needs to rise above being seen as the home of politicians with a huge appetite for stolen wealth as well as being the worst in the world when it comes to pilfering public money. Voting constituency allowance and others that do not impact the lives of the people must also stop. We must shame the Alex of this world who are excited to declare that nobody in the world is as corrupt as Nigerians.