The Nation Newspaper

Category: Olukorede Yishau

  • Malians, Marlians and slavery

    Malians, Marlians and slavery

    One reigned so many moons ago. The other reigned until a year and some months ago. Their names: Malians and Marlians.

    The first was a group of Islamic converts always passing through a town called Osogun on their way to their many an expedition.

    The second was the madness a multitude was afflicted by. A sizeable number of students, teachers, artisans and more prided themselves as Marlians, fans of music star Naira Marley (a London returnee who preached all sorts of morally-bankrupt ideas). His music was reigning so there was a reason for the cult followership. The death of Mohbad erased whatever was left of the Marlian affliction. Now, no one except Naira Marley himself publicly identifies as a Marlian, a timed idea whose promoters acted as though would outlive them.

    I have only brought these other Marlians to this discourse because they have a name similar to the trouble makers in Biyi Bandele’s historical novel, ‘Yoruba Boy Running’.

    In this posthumously published work, these Malians are usually in their thousands. Osogun, at the time, is under the leadership of a king whose romance with Portuguese liquor is legendary. He is most times too drunk to administer the town, too drunk to walk unaided, too drunk palace eunuchs have to carry him without his feet touching the ground, too drunk he is in no position to tell his left from his right on the day a seer comes visiting to deliver a message of an impending doom, too drunk to be useful even to himself. Long story short: he is useless.

    Ajayi, the one his mother calls Father because of his resemblance to her father, is one of the boys growing up in Osogun at the time this alcoholic is on the throne. Before the seer’s visit, Ajayi’s sleeps have been disturbed by dreams, dreams about Osanyin, an important Yoruba god, but the more Ajayi dreams, the more confused he is about what the god is trying to reveal to him, and his mother and sister aren’t able to help to make sense of the situation. He is, however, convinced that things are about to fall apart, that doom is imminent.

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    The Malians’ prolong presence in Osogun at the time his dreams intensify worries him and makes him wonder if they have anything to do with his feelings. These Malians buy and sell slaves, but they have always avoided taking slaves from Osogun. The town is only a transit point for them. Is this about to change? This question troubles Ajayi and helps drive the plot in ‘Yoruba Boy Running’, Biyi Bandele’s historical novel, which re-imagines the life and times of a great son of Yorubaland, Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther, famed for, among other things, translating the Bible to Yoruba.

    In ‘Yoruba Boy Running’, we see men proclaiming God’s greatness yet beheading fellow men, we see men playing God, we see men eager to sell their conscience to gain the whole world, we see sons of the soil betraying the land of their birth and we see men simply being men, flawed and fallible.

    The book also shows us love, betrayal, disloyalty, fanaticism, greed and how with the right support, what appears insurmountable becomes easy.

    The novel raises posers, one of them about the gods and their inability to stop the slave traders.

    This novel does more than just re-imagining Ajayi’s life as a boy in Osogun and as an adult away from home and back home, it also re-interprets Dandeson’s life. Dandeson was Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther’s son.

    Also, the novel titilates us about the Yoruba and their gods and several parts of their culture and tradition. It serves us so much from the deep well of wisdom of these interesting and forward-looking folks. It also shows us and reminds us of the slave trade angle less talked or written about. We have heard and read more about men who used Christianity to pillage Africa. Bandele’s Ajayi story shows us men screaming “Allahu Akbar” while perpetuating evil.

    This novel, with an opening scene that is lyrical, dramatic and humour-laced, shows us how Ajayi graduates from running for his dear life to running towards a fantastic life as a teacher, linguist, author, preacher, and more.

  • Between then and now

    Between then and now

    It was not a long time ago, not long enough to need any special skill to remember it. It was less than three years ago, the last time I breathed the air of Nigeria, the last time my feet touched the soil of my country, the last time I saw a danfo conductor battle a passenger, the last time I hugged my mother, the last time for many a thing Nigerian!

    Though it isn’t a long time ago, it seems a long time ago because so many things have changed between then and now. Then, Nigeria was under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari. Then, Godwin Emefiele was governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and was taking steps we didn’t know would hurt our country. Then, Onyeka Onwenu was still alive, serenading us with her beautiful voice. Then, Adekunle Aromolaran was still alive and was the Owa Obokun of Ijeshaland. Then, we were not sure who would replace Buhari whose second term was in its prime. Then, Mr Peter Obi, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, Prof Yemi Osibajo and Rabiu Kwakwanso were names being mentioned as potential successor.

    At that time, university lecturers were asking for better remunerations; doctors were asking for more; and things weren’t anywhere near what was promised when Buhari was coming in. At the time, we were getting far less than we wanted. We had always got less than we wanted.

    Between then and now, Buhari has returned to Daura and Tinubu has left Lagos for Aso Rock, where he calls the shot as the President and commander-in-chief of Nigeria’s Armed Forces.

    Between then and now, Ahmed Lawan’s era as Senate President has ended and Godswill Akpabio, the one a bird claims believes any problem money can’t resolve can be resolved by more money, is now Senate President and we have seen many a laxity under his watch.

    Between then and now, Nyesom Wike has transformed from being Rivers State governor to being Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, and the man he fought tooth and nail to instal as governor, Sim Fubara, has not danced to his tune, and he regularly takes to the media to express his disappointment.

    Between then and now, Nasir el-Rufai has stopped being Kaduna State governor but, despite succeeding in getting his man, Uba Sanni, to succeed him, the centre has refused to hold, with all manner of allegations dumped at his door step.

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    Between then and now, fuel subsidy has been yanked off, and Nigerians now have to pay international rates to fuel their cars, fuel their electricity generating sets and power their homes and businesses. A car whose tank used to be filled with N8,000-worth of petrol now needs N50,000 for it to be filled up. It doesn’t matter that the earnings of millions have not increased; as a matter of fact, not a few have suffered financial losses.

    Between then and now, Dangote Refinery, which was under construction, has been completed, but the feeling that the refinery would help bring down the price of petrol and diesel has remained nothing but a feeling. Maybe time will turn it to reality. On Monday, the price of petrol went up by 11%, the second increase in a fortnight and a day after petrol started being lifted from the Dangote refinery.

    Between then and now, Naira, which was exchanging to a dollar at 360, is now one dollar to over N1,600. Because of this, the prices of cement, food, beverages, cars and all imported goods have more than jumped the rooftop. Books that used to cost between N2,500 and N3,000 now cost as much as N9,000 and N12,000. Then, millions of Nigerians were not buying and now only a few thousands will buy.

    Between then and now, a new minimum wage of N70,000 has been approved, but workers still get the old wage, and from what the crystal balls reveal, only time can tell when this new wage will get paid so that it can offer minor reliefs to workers who struggle to fend for their families.

    Between then and now, “Nigeria we hail thee” has wrestled “arise o compatriots” to the ground, but millions can’t still recite the old-now-new national anthem, which they believe is the least of what should have received the attention of the gentlemen and ladies in the hallowed chambers of the National Assembly.

    Between then and now, our foreign missions have had their ambassadors and high commissioners recalled and civil servants, those guys a governor once described as evil servants, are the ones calling the shots there; they have done this for a substantial period and we are yet to see any sign that their days are numbered.

    As a result of the difference between then and now, hope is the currency millions of Nigerians at home have to spend, hope that Naira, like flour, will rise and humble dollar and Pounds, hope that, some day soon, they will be able to afford their needs, hope that everything good will come, hope that a new era will come, one in which life will be good, in which life will be beautiful and in which life will be superb.

    My final take: Hope is good, because it gives enough motivation to keep going despite the rough tides. But when one waits too long to reap the benefits of hope, one begins to feel fooled and when one feels that way, it is a terribly overwhelming feeling.

  • Of murder and hate

    Of murder and hate

    I know I’m talking much about what the international community ignores in Africa, but let me tell you what they care about: resources and African markets. A strong man like our president who is willing to secure resources like gold, diamond, and lithium for the international community is called an important strategic ally. Our president is the one that secures Somalia’s coastline to ensure international trade is flowing. He secures the uranium, cobalt, gold, and diamond mines in the Congo. He secures petroleum deposits in South Sudan. He is the best proxy for Western interests the international community has in the entire region— A Murder of Hate

    The vehemence with which America and China go after each other’s jugular is equal to the one with which they express their love for Africa. This love ‘one-tin-tin’ has been queried from time to time. Uganda-born-America-based writer and journalist, Yasin Kakande, doubts this love too. He has shown this in his writings.

    In 2013, Kakande published ‘The Ambitious Struggle’, his account of his years in the United Arab Emirates. Two years later, he released ‘Slave States’, a frank assessment of the enslavement, trafficking, sexual starvation and general abuse of workers in the Gulf Arab Region. And in 2020, he blessed the world with ‘Why We Are Coming’, a clarion call on the need for serious and frank political conversation about why so many Africans are migrating to the West.

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    He is also the author of ‘Green Card Baby’, a book about the global migrant crisis, his personal story of how elusive the American Dream can be, detailing his struggle working long shifts as a caregiver and Uber driver to make ends meet while applying for legal status and hoping to bring his wife and children from Uganda to America.

    Some weeks back, Kakande released his inaugural work of fiction, ‘A Murder of Hate’, the first in a crime trilogy. It opens with the discovery of the body of Sheila Musinga, a media studies student at the Essex University in downtown Boston. The deceased’s father is the brother of Ugandan president in whose cabinet he is foreign affairs minister. Her murder in a Sports Utility Vehicle discovered by a nurse on his way to an early morning shift is of interest to the CIA, which recommends Bus, an officer whose mother is Ugandan, to work with a police officer, Lisa, to unravel the mystery surrounding the death of the student whose white mother died at childbirth leaving her to be raised by her stepmother.

    Murder is what they set out to unravel, but they unravel much more, especially Washington’s complicity in military dictatorship in Africa and many more.

    The novel treats the vexed race issues in America in a way that raises posers such as: Are there no White people who are racists? And are there no Black people who are racists? We see how not all White people enjoy the much-talked about White privilege; we are told of poor White folks who toil day and night on farms and factories to meet their needs. Insights are also given about the other side of diversity initiative, especially how it can promote mediocrity and shut out qualified people because of their skin colour. But, it also raises the posers: are there poor white folks whose poverty is due to their skin colour? And are White people who often find doors closed to them solely because of their race?

    The novel also deals with America’s interest in Africa’s resources and shows us that the Big Brother is no Father Christmas. We see the clandestine operations in the Shinkolobwe uranium mine, which was important to America’s interests in that part of Africa. This mine was the source of nearly all the uranium used to create the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. America called it the Manhattan Project, a project which essentially ended the World War II and made America the number one power house. Bus played a major role for America in the Democratic of Congo and Uganda decades after the WWII, signifying an ongoing interest in resources from the ‘heart of darkness’.

    Kakande delves into the controversial role of Western lobbyists in promoting unpopular governments in Africa for loads of dollars. We see how lobbyists are employed to perpetuate deceit and sell falsehood to the people as the gospel truth. Devils are robed in the attires of saints and it takes the people’s continued suffering for the reality to dawn on them about the counterfeit that has been foisted on them as original.

    The author demonstrates that ethics means absolutely nothing to these lobbyists. What matters is for the powers that be in London and Washington to see their clients in good light. What the people in the countries of their clients feel is immaterial. The West is the goal; every other person can jump into the Lagoon is their motto.

    The novel also examines the role of Western media in helping lobbyists achieve their goals. It also points attention to Hollywood’s role in telling blatant lies about Africa, playing the cards of unseen hands and ending up portraying a people in a canvas far away from representative. And the book calls attention to how the United States usually turns the deaf ear and the blind eye to anomalies of its allies.

    And there is a glimpse of the role of the scramble of China and America for Africa in the book. In the long run, it’s clear that the scramble isn’t borne out of love, but out of the need to decide the continent’s fate which, ultimately, has never favoured its masses.

    Kakande’s ‘A Murder of Hate’ is a truly remarkable work of crime fiction; it thrills, it tantalises, it refreshes, it hums with harmonious rhymes.

    My final take: Africa has its challenges, crazy and sometimes too bizarre to believe, but behind some of the problems afflicting the continent are unseen hands, the Big Brothers who enable bad leaders in the Third World in order to have unfettered access to their natural resources.

  • A quarter of a century a journalist

    A quarter of a century a journalist

    The window-unit air-conditioning system in the sitting room, which served as the newsroom of The Source magazine on 30, Emina Crescent, off Toyin Street, Ikeja, Lagos, was working at full blast that morning of June 1999.

    Maik Nwosu, who we didn’t know would a few years later make America home and become Professor of English and chair of the Department of English and Literary Arts at the University of Denver, Colorado, sat facing the reporters, staff writers and assistant editors. He was the Executive Editor and calling the shot at what was my first editorial meeting.

    Sitting by Nwosu was the one we called Oga Victor, Victor Ogene, the General Editor, who nothing showed us then would years later leave the newsroom to become a member of the House of Representatives.

    At the meeting, each member of the newsroom defended their story ideas. It soon got to my turn and Nwosu asked me to explain why the ideas I submitted deserved space in the magazine, which was famed for its poetic-prose style of writing. My mouth suddenly became heavy and opening it became an Herculean task. It was a strange setting for me, but months down the line, I would master how to function and standout in the milieu.

    It has been twenty-five years since that humbling first editorial meeting. If I were a Yoruba Nollywood veteran, this would have been a good time to roll out the drums. I could make money selling asoebi to friends and admirers to attend an event to mark twenty-five years of a fruitful career as a journalist. I could also invite Pasuma to serenade these guests. I could do many a thing, a thousand things.

    But, journalists don’t roll that way. We’re not meant to be celebrities, we’re not meant to be seen but heard, we are supposed to be doing some form of public service and our rewards, like teachers, are supposed to be in heaven.

    The conservative nature of our job is actually changing. Many have defied the odds; they’ve become celebrities, they have been seen and heard, they have received their rewards here on earth because heaven can wait.

    For me, it’s been a very eventful quarter of a century. Back then at The Source, interns took the same tests as reporter-researchers. If you failed the tests, the magazine would deploy you to its library. If you passed, you stayed in the newsroom. Ogene was so impressed with my performance that he asked if I had written for a newspaper before. I had only done campus journalism.

    Within months, Ogene, Nwosu and Comfort Obi, the publisher, felt there was something in me and I got employed as an Editorial Assistant, a position I held for just a few months before I became a reporter-researcher.

    In my early years at The Source, I was nominated for the Nigerian Media Merit Awards (NMMA). Two years later, I got two NMMA nominations for aviation reporting and banking and finance reporting. I won the aviation reporting category with a story of how the Nigerian Airways was raped to death under Gen. Sani Abacha while Alhaji Jani Ibrahim was Managing Director. It was a report that almost didn’t come out. Pressure was mounted on my publisher to kill the story, a request she told me she was unwilling to grant. I was glad Madam, as we fondly called her, didn’t kill my story, a story whose success eventually made Adegbenro Adebanjo, then Head of Newsroom at Tell, got me to leave The Source, the magazine where I moved from being a shy reporter who couldn’t talk at the first editorial meeting to a superstar who Ogene as the General Editor used the whole Editorial Suite section to celebrate after the NMMA win.

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    Tell was where I pitched my tent for four years after The Source and in those four years, I got nominated for Journalist of the Year at the NMMA for a report I co-authored with my friend, Adejuwon Soyinka, who the Department of State recently arrested for no discernible reason on arrival in Lagos from the United Kingdom.

    Four years soon ran out and to The Nation I headed and have spent the better part of my career. At The Nation, trips outside of Nigeria started falling on my lap, many of them influenced by Adeola Akinremi, Akinbode Oluwafemi and Seun Akioye. South Africa, Singapore, Tanzania, Ghana, United States, United Kingdom and China are places I have seen in my years in The Nation, some of them more than once.

    At The Nation, I got the bragging right as a multiple award-winning journalist, including winning the NMMA Columnist of the Year named after a profound first-generation Columnist, Alade Odunewu (Allah De).

    Also at The Nation, I published ‘In The Name of Our Father’, a novel I wrote as a 24-year-old working with The Source. At The Nation, this novel was nominated for The Nigeria Prize for Literature. Equally at The Nation, I published ‘Vaults of Secrets’, a collection of short stories.

    This year, Masobe Books released ‘After The End’, my second novel, which I began working on around my 20th anniversary as a reporter.

    Enough of me. Now, I need to zero-in on this industry, which has given me so much than it has taken from me.

    What I have seen between 1999 and now shows that the Nigerian media has come a long way from Henry Townsend’s ‘Iwe Iroyin’.

    For years, the media houses in Nigeria have been struggling, with majority on some form of ventilator, a situation that has been further worsened with Naira’s unenviable crash. For the majority, salaries are either not paid or terribly delayed. There are times journalists go for months without pay. As you read this, hunger virus has plagued many a colleague.

    Only a few publishers constantly pay what can truly be described as a take-home package. I can count them on my fingertips. They are that small. The majority do not pay well and, sadly, they struggle to pay these peanuts. Even those who get paid can achieve little or nothing with this pay because the dwindled value of Naira has made their salaries senseless.

    It’s not surprising that the industry regularly loses its best brains. Go to the banks, the oil and gas sector and telecoms, you will see several players who will describe themselves as former journalists. Ask them why they quit and the answer is not going to have any link outside of poor welfare. These guys were good reporters and writers, some of those who made the industry tick but had to jump ship to be able to give their families decent living.

    Now the situation in the industry, which has not seen any major investment in the last few years, has gone gaga. No thanks to a combination of Coronavirus pandemic and the  Naira clash. For the media, sales and advertising are at all time low and getting up on its own without external help is a task I doubt our comatose industry is capable of. Print-runs keep being reduced because circulation and marketing have been affected. We need help.

    Media houses’ balance sheets are in red and this makes it difficult to foot the bills which before now were Herculean tasks.

    Significantly, getting to bring in newsprint and other consumables for their production has been hampered and, sadly, online and e-paper versions are yet to live up to expectations.

    My final take: The Nigerian media should be doing far better than we are doing given the advantages of technology and development. Journalists deserve to be treated like kings and not dregs. Only then will the media take its pride of place in the heart of the people and only then will the society be truly served.

  • Becoming a doctor

    Becoming a doctor

    When Ike Anya was studying to qualify as a medical doctor in 1990s Nigeria, the country was yet to witness its first kidney transplant. Patients, no matter the pain, had only one choice: exorbitant dialysis, which was beyond the reach of the bulk of them. It was not until the year 2000 that patients had the choice of having transplants done in the country. A private hospital in Lagos, St. Nicholas Hospital, owned by the late Moses Majekodunmi, the Minster of Health in the First Republic, beat the nation’s teaching hospitals, including the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, where Anya trained, and the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), where he worked as house officer, to the record of performing the first kidney transplant in Nigeria.

    Nigeria’s first kidney transplant came 46 years after the world first witnessed kidney transplant, which was performed in America by Joseph Murray, who was the recipient’s surgeon, and Hartwell Harrison, the donor’s surgeon, and members of their team.

    Anya, in his memoir, ‘Small by Small: Becoming A Doctor in 1990s Nigeria’, takes us behind the scenes of what it takes to be a doctor in Nigeria. Because he was trained in the 1990s, the book relies on what was obtainable then, but the truth is that though decades have rolled by, so many things remain unchanged; in some cases, things have become worse.

    What renal failure patients had to endure then, with no option of a transplant except if they were rich and could afford to go overseas for it, was well-captured in the memoir. The memoir also gives a glimpse of the edge one teaching hospital had over the other in terms of equipment and how this impacted the training medical students had.

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    In interesting ways, Anya takes us through the nitty-gritty of paediatrics, surgery and more. He shows us how medical students are rotated from one department to the other, how professors show them the ropes and how they are examined, including how even the brilliant ones can fail one course or the other and have to resit.

    In a moving and easy-to-follow language, Anya tells us about cadavers, dead human bodies that medical students, physicians and other scientists make use of while studying anatomy, and identifying disease sites, among others. We see how students often wonder about the history of these cadavers. Who are they? Where do they come from? And more.

    Anya also shows us that even in teaching hospitals, consultants sometimes use unconventional tactics. He uses the example of a day when a consultant was dealing with a difficult patient and ordered medical students out. By the time he asked them back in, the patient was cooperative. It looked like he had received some ‘brain resetting’.

    The book also has its political aspect. It details the effects of the Maradonic style of despotic leader Gen. Ibrahim Babangida on medical students because of the frequent closure of campuses.

    Anya details how Babangida derailed the transition programme, with the banning of politicians, foisting a two-party system on the country, annulling the June 12, 1993, presidential election Bashorun MKO Abiola won, engendering nationwide fuel shortage and stepping aside after cobbling together the Chief Ernest Shonekan-led interim government with Gen. Sani Abacha as Defence Minister.

    Anya also reminds us of the evil Abacha did to medical studies in his quest to stay in power forever. He refreshes our memories of Nigerians thinking Abacha was going to hand over to Abiola after shoving Shonekan aside. Instead, his self-succession team swung into action and medical studies and other aspects of the nation’s life were impacted. Students took to the streets chanting songs such as ‘Abacha is a goat’ and schools were shut. For months.

    Anya takes us back to the moment a frustrated Abiola proclaimed himself President-elect, vowing to defend his mandate and how it was clear the nation was descending into a chaotic abyss. Amid this brouhaha, the prospects of Anya and his colleagues returning to medical school on time weren’t bright.

    Frustrated by the chaos in the land and eager to keep their knowledge of medicine alive, Anya and some of his coursemates chose a Catholic hospital in Nsukka for an ‘internship.’ There, they realised that so many of the things they were taught at the medical school were ignored. The doctor-in-charge, who kept advising them against working for mission hospitals because their wahala was too much, explained away the circumvention of medical conventions, including administering medication without tests being conducted, in these words: “This is not the teaching hospital o.”

    Often, books with medical themes are heavy, but this isn’t and I’m not surprised because of the author’s pedigree as a writer who knows how to tell a story; Anya’s dexterity as a creative non-fiction master is on full throttle. He uses this gift to break down what a wall of Jericho should be and in the end, we read a book about being a doctor as though we are reading a thriller. His use of atmospherics related to the era of his training gives his account lucidity and leaves an enduring smile. His humour, wit and insights shine on nearly all the pages.

    With the use of the present tense, Anya creates currency for his narration. This approach makes it easy to see and appreciate all that comes with training to be a doctor in Nigeria. We also have a sip of the challenges of practising the profession after surviving all the years of grilling, challenges which have seen hundreds of doctors, including Anya, plying their trade in saner climes.

    My final take: Medicine is important, so important that Nigeria as a nation must find a way to always properly train and retain its doctors and provide the right atmosphere for them to function. Our teaching hospitals must have everything they need to be the citadels of life-saving knowledge; there should be zero tolerance for shoddiness and secondary and primary health institutions need not be death centres. As Caesar deserves his cut, so does medical practice.

  • Big bumbums everywhere

    Big bumbums everywhere

    Damilare Kuku had no idea MedContour Services Ltd founder, Anuoluwapo Adepoju, would become a convict and later die when she decided to write a book built around Brazilian Butt Lift (BBL), a craze which brought Adepoju both fame and infamy.

    Kuku’s debut novel, ‘Only Big Bumbum Matters Tomorrow’, came out about the time Adepoju was convicted and she died as the book began to catch the fancy of readers around the world.

    In May, the Federal High Court sitting in Lagos State convicted Adepoju for obstructing FCPC’s investigation into the death of Nneka Onwuzuligbo, who died of complications arising from buying a big bumbum from the MedContour Services Ltd founder in 2020.

    This big bumbum is achieved by taking fat from parts of the body, purifying it and injecting it into the buttocks to create a more contoured look. It is not as easy as that. Complications can arise as did in Onwuzuligbo’s instance.

    The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCPC) instituted the case against Adepoju. The agency was convinced the plastic surgeon messed up while ‘selling’ the deceased her dream ‘yansh’.

    Babatunde Irukera, who was the agency’s Director-General when the case was instituted, wrote on X: “Today is a day of pride for me that I prosecuted Anu Adepoju and her medical practice. Though I’ve left, the case has ended in a conviction strengthening the accountability framework for all in society, professionals or otherwise. This is how society should work and grow.

    “Dr. Anu Adepoju and her medical practice convicted in all 5 counts charged by FCPC. The wheel of justice may grind slowly, but we must see it through. What we need is enforcement with audacity and the will to prosecute competently and diligently. Good day for consumers of professional services.”

    Justice Mohammed Liman found Adepoju guilty and gave her the option of paying N100,000 instead of the jail term. She paid, but death eventually came in circumstances shrouded in mystery.

    Before the case was instituted against her, many of her victims (sorry, customers) complained about her failed big bumbum services.

    Kuku’s book has helped to shed light on this craze in a way that is warm and not judgmental. It provides insights on possible reasons for the novel follows Temi, a girl schooling and living on the university campus in Ílé-Ife. She is displeased with her buttocks and decides to change the situation after seeing an interesting advert of a firm in Lagos offering to ‘sell’ her her dream ‘yansh’.

    Temi faces the dilemma of not just raising the millions for the procedure, but how to tell her close-knit family members who are clearly conservative and will query her sanity for nurturing such a thought. The gathering of the family members as a result of Temi’s Professor-father’s death and courage from an extraordinary source, provides her the opportunity to detonate the bomb leading them to forget that they ought to be grieving the death of Professor Tito Toyebi!

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    This novel from the author of the phenomenally-successful ‘Nearly All The Men in Lagos Are Mad’, though built around Brazilian Butt Lift (BBL), is about much more; it tackles issues that make our world go right and wrong, issues that make us cry and make us laugh, issues we can’t avoid.

    One of such issues is how deceitful friends can sometimes be as shown by Boboola, Temi’s friend who reneges on an agreement she reached with Temi.

    Temi’s big-yansh-quest announcement is a tool the author uses to get the other women in the book to reflect on their own lives and following these reflections, scandals and secrets leap off their cupboards, regrets cloud their faces and remorse dons modest apparels.

    Self-esteem is a sub-theme and the novel sheds light on how it makes us take decisions we either end up being proud of or regretting.

    This novel also examines the complexity of being a woman in Nigeria, and its inter-generational ramifications; what emerges is a vivid and well-realised portrait. Ladun’s pains, which she keeps away from her big bumbum-seeking sister and grieving mother, help to make the picture whole. Big Mummy’s and Jummai’s experiences also give crucial insights into what it takes to be a woman in a patriarchal society like Nigeria. We also see how their bodies and their looks affect their journeys and make them warped. While one person is sad that she has no big bumbum, another is sad that her near perfect physical features are the source of too much masculine attention.

    Religion is subtly tackled, especially through Big Mummy, the one who orders fasts as if she is ordering an uber and who says eating meat is akin to “eating your husband’s penis”.

    But of the themes in Kuku’s debut, the big bumbum quest towers above all. This is not surprising because almost everywhere you turn, you’re likely to see a butt that looks to have been human-moulded. The trend reflects international influences, including media portrayals of ideal body shapes. The increasing accessibility of cosmetic surgery clinics is also a factor increasing the population of bought bumbums, which is achieved with the harvesting of fat from areas such as the abdomen, thighs, or flanks.

    Nigerian celebrities and influencers often showcase their enhanced physiques on social media, contributing to the procedure’s desirability among the public.

    My final take: BBL offers individuals a chance to achieve their desired body shape. This growing interest in such procedures highlights the clash between global beauty standards and local cultural values in shaping individual choices and aspirations in Nigeria. Sadly, many have suffered irreparable damages, including death, while trying to conform to a broader societal emphasis on physical appearance.

  • Trump’s main man’s incredible story

    Trump’s main man’s incredible story

    Once Donald Trump conquered his Republican rivals, who either left the race and declared support for his third quest for U.S presidency, or simply abandoned their ambition, he went about the task of choosing a running mate. He wanted someone young, someone who could add value to his ticket. He eventually settled for JD Vance, a 40-year-old lawyer and Ohio senator who once took him to the cleaners in interviews while promoting his 2016 memoir, ‎’Hillbilly Elegy’, now a Netflix movie. Trump’s choice of JD has brought more attention to the book as well as the movie.

    JD introduces us to his people, the hill people who respect their dead, a people socially isolated, a people passing isolation from generation to generation, a people whose lives are built around churches where emotional rhetoric rather than social support thrive, a people afraid to relocate for better opportunities, a people with traits that make succeeding in a changing world almost impossible, a people marrying less and divorcing more, a people experiencing less happiness because of declining economic opportunities, a people badly in need of help. In short, JD unveils the white working class with ties to Appalachia who have lost not just economic power, but stable homes.

    JD’s story is about someone with a grim future, someone almost unable to complete high school, someone in the throes of succumbing to the anger and resentment of the people around him, someone rescued from squandering his talent by loving people, someone who understands what it means to be spiritually and materially poor, someone of Scots-Irish descent but far away from white privileges, and someone whose life typifies living the American Dream.

    We see how he grows up around people living in trailer parks, subsidised houses, small farmhouses and mountain homestead.

    JD’s story is about the axis of misery where divorce is rampant, where violence reigns, where Appalachian poverty is incubated, where dysfunctional families live, where drug abuse is rampant and resilience can make a whale of difference. We meet his loving sister, his heroin-consuming mother Bev Vance, and his amazing maternal grandparents. His grandmother, we see in the movie, takes him away at some point from the house of his mother’s then husband where JD is being badly influenced. The movie also shows us Usha, his supportive girlfriend-turned-wife, and the encouraging role she has played in his life.

    Read Also: Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump in six different polling averages

    We see life in Middletown, Ohio, a small city where dozens regularly die of heroin overdose, where JD is seen as the abandoned son of a father hardly known and a mother no kid wishes for. We are taken through JD’s family history that brims with poverty and manual labour jobs. We are shown the family’s migration to Middletown, an enclave nestled between Dayton and Cincinnati, from Breathitt County, Kentucky after World War II, and we experience how their Appalachian heritage values loyalty and patriotism amid hardship and verbal abuse.

    We see his grandparents struggle with alcoholism, and his mother battle drug addiction and turbulent relationships. We see his grandfather’s violent ways and how his grandmother sets fire to his grandfather in exhaustion. We also see their reconciliation despite challenges.

    We see his grandmother’s tough love and guidance’s crucial role in his trajectory. Under his grandmother’s strict yet caring influence, Vance flourished. He eventually completes his undergraduate studies at The Ohio State University and earns a law degree from Yale Law School.

    In the book, Vance explores the role of family and community in shaping their destinies. He critiques Hillbilly culture for perpetuating social breakdown and economic instability in Appalachia. Drawing from personal experiences, such as his time working as a cashier, Vance recalls seeing welfare recipients with cell phones, a luxury he couldn’t afford.

    Vance’s resentment towards those seemingly benefiting from irresponsible behavior amid his struggle forms a foundation for understanding Appalachia’s political shift from Democratic roots to a strong Republican affiliation. He shares anecdotes that underscore his frustrations, including coworkers displaying a lack of commitment, such as a man quitting over work hours and another regularly skipping work despite having a pregnant girlfriend.

    In the movie, we see how on the eve of a career-defining interview, he is called that his mother is down again, no thanks to heroin overdose. He rushes home because his darling sister can’t handle it alone. She refuses to stay in a rehabilitation centre and he takes her to a motel because his sister can’t deal with her, but while he dashes across the street to buy her food, she hides in the toilet trying to inject herself with more heroin. His return saves the day and he is, hours later, able to leave her to begin the long drive to meet up with the interview. He gets the job which starts him out on a beautiful life journey, a journey that sees this son of Donald Bowman becoming a senator and has landed him the slot of a running mate to a major candidate despite being a junior senator.

    My final take: Being from a place where things have either gone south or are on the way to going south doesn’t mean one can’t make remarkable strides. All that is required is to make necessary moves and, most likely, the ordinary can take on the form of extraordinary. That is the long and short of the JD story.

  • Kamala Harris: Shyamala’s daughter

    Kamala Harris: Shyamala’s daughter

    For more than four decades, Dan Morain has covered policy, politics, and justice-related issues in California, the state where there are many guns in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. Twenty-seven years of those decades were at the Los Angeles Times and eight at The Sacramento Bee, where he was editorial page editor. His path crossed with major political figures in those decades. One extremely stand out figure he met is 59-year-old Kamala Harris, the first woman to become Vice President of the United States of America, the daughter of two immigrants in segregated California, the one who is the first Black woman to become the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, and the one who could be America’s first female President, a feat that will mean beating a record the almighty Hillary Clinton smelled but couldn’t taste.

    Morain has a book on Harris. It is called ‘Kamala’s Way: An American Life’. It tells us about her values, her priorities, her problem-solving capacity, her missteps, her risk-taking skills, and more.

    It tells us things Kamala’s 2019 autobiography, ‘The Truths We Hold’, shies away from. Morain’s knowledge of Kamala from the start of her public life fills up relevant areas. The book unveils Harris in her near-entirety. It shows almost nothing about her is conventional. We see her in action off-camera.

    The Kamala Harris on the pages of this book is the eldest daughter of Shyamala Gopalan Harris, a single mother, a disciplinarian, a breast cancer researcher originally from India who had her at 26 and exerted so much influence on her. Her mother came to America at the age of nineteen for better education. Her parents were together until Kamala turned five. From then on, her economist father, Donald Jasper Harris, originally from Jamaica became a scarce figure. She believes her parents’ marriage would have survived had they been more emotionally matured. Donald was Shyamala’s first boyfriend and husband. The divorce led to a contentious custody battle, which Shyamala eventually won but Donald got the right to see them for alternating weekends for sixty days in summer and he used the opportunity to take them to Jamaica to meet his family.

    But, till date, Donald remains just a footnote to Kamala and he hardly features in her discussion about growing up. She is her mother’s daughter. And despite losing her mother in 2009, Shyamala remains in her daughter’s life, and Kamala is said to always share nuggets from the deceased while the one who is alive is dead to her world.

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    In her official biography during her time as California’s Attorney-General, she simply described herself as “the daughter of Dr. Shyamala Gopalan, a Tamilian breast cancer specialist who travelled to the United States from Chennai, India, to pursue her graduate studies at UC Berkeley”.

    Morain holds our hands and leads us along as Kamala handles child molestation cases and homicides for the Alameda County District Attorney’s office. He lets us in when, as a 29-year-old, she begins a romantic relationship with Willie Brown, one-time Speaker of the California Assembly and the state’s most powerful man who proudly called himself the “Ayatollah of the Assembly”. The author doesn’t hide Brown’s married status at the time, just like he also tells us the life-changing nature of the relationship for Kamala.

    Morain regales us with her tough battle to the US Senate, her day-one support for Barack Obama’s presidential journey, her friendship with one of Joe Biden’s children, her heavy blow on Biden in her quest for U.S. topmost job, their settlement of the matter and the behind-the-scenes deals on the way to the Vice President spot.

    This books shows us Kamala is a foodie, who loves cooking and seeking out fancy restaurant to dine out. We also learn that as much as she has loyal supporters from her first political outing, she also has people who used to be super close who she now keeps at bay.

    Morain feesds us on little details such as Kamala passing the California Bar exam at her second try and her middle name, Devi, which means mother goddess in Hindu, a name her mother chose to preserve her Hindu heritage. A culture that worships goddesses, Shyamala believed, produces strong women.

    The book also tells of another little detail, especially about her time at Howard University, that historically-black college. Those who knew her there said they saw nothing that showed that she would be extra-successful in life, they didn’t see her becoming attorney-general or senator, and being vice president was certainly beyond their projection for this woman with Jamaican-cum-Indian roots who grew up in a state with many guns in many a wrong hand.

    In the book, we see Kamala’s father’s radical bent and his rejection of popular economic theories and his tilt towards Marxism, a development which threatened his academic career at Stanford.

    Besides her father and her mother, Morain also introduces us to Kamala’s sister, Maya, who is like her closest confidante on her political journey. We also meet others, including Kagan, someone who lived with the Harris family while running away from the turbulence of her own family.

    We are not deprived of details about Kamala’s life with her husband, Douglas Craig Emhoff, also a lawyer, who she married in 2014 at about age 40, nine years after the end of her affair with Brown who was thirty years older.

    For anyone wishing to have more insights into the life of Kamala Harris, Morain’s book, written in easy-to-access language, is a sure bet. It shows Kamala neither as a saint nor as a sinner. It simply dishes out the facts and leaves each reader to decide where to put her.

    My final take: These are interesting times in American politics, especially with the fact that since President Lyndon B. Johnson in March of 1968, a sitting president, drops out of the reelection campaign and hands the baton to his vice president, who isn’t just a woman, but a woman with a number of firsts to her name. Is she about to add another first or will she not become America’s first female president as Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump believes? We will know on November 5.

  • The White House

    The White House

    The White House, unarguably the most popular house the world over, is in the news and will always be. The reason isn’t because President Joe Biden is no longer in the race to keep Donald Trump far away from this all-important house; it’s because it’s not an ordinary house, it’s the house, the one from where decisions that engender peace and war have been taken and are still being taken; it’s the house where fates are sealed and destinies overturned; it’s the house with phases and faces, the house that shows you what it wants you to see. This house is like Esu odara. Its cap has red on one side and black on the other, and the side you are facing determines what you see and what you get. 

    If you are in its good books, goodness and mercy shall follow you all the days of your lives, and if you are in its bad books, woes betide you.

    From this house, plots have been hatched against African leaders, European leaders and Asian leaders. From this house, decisions that led to the death of foreign leaders have been taken, and decisions that crippled economies have been stamped. Ask Iraq. Ask Libya. Think of the fact that what becomes Al-Qaeda today is not without American connection. Osama Bin-Laden, that it eventually killed during the Barack Obama era, was once an ally.

    And from this house, economies have been breathed life into; foreign politicians have received support that shot them into political relevance back home.

    This house has existed for centuries. It has undergone transformation, but its spirit of America first remains. It has housed president upon president; four of them were assassinated in power starting with Abraham Lincoln. James A. Garfield was assassinated after Lincoln, and followed by William McKinley, who was bankrolled by billionaires Andrew Carnegie, John D Rockefeller and JP Morgan to ensure their grip on the American economy remained tight. John F. Kennedy was the last to be executed and tighter security measures were taken after the incident and, for decades, no American president has fallen to assassin’s bullets.

    Biden currently calls the shots at the White House, a position he grabbed from Trump about four years ago. Now Trump wants the keys to the White House back and he has overwhelming support.

     At the CNN debate Biden had with Trump, his best wasn’t good enough and trust Trump to take advantage of the president’s poor performance to tell Americans he is the one for the job. The poor performance eventually helped to get Biden out of the race.

    On July 13, United States Vice President Kamala Harris, who Biden has endorsed as his replacement, reached out to voters. Her message: With the United States Supreme Court granting Donald Trump wide-reaching immunity for his actions as president, he has been emboldened to weaponise the Department of Justice against his political enemies. Harris added that the “Donald Trump running for office right now is not the same one that we ran against in 2020”. This candidate Trump, she says, is more unhinged, more dangerous and has nothing to lose.

    Read Also: Abuja peaceful protest turns violent as people scramble for safety

    Harris argues that if Trump wins four more years in the White House, not even the courts will hold him back. “It’s what he wanted. It’s why he hand-picked three justices for the Court who helped deliver this decision,” Harris says.

    Hours after Harris message to voters, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who lived in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, shot at Trump who fell to the ground, and Secret Service agents had to surround him. Trump said a bullet pierced the upper part of his right ear. The shooter was killed by the Secret Service.

    Trump’s four years in the White House was not all bad news. He is credited with overhauling the U.S. judiciary, especially with the appointment of three Supreme Court justices and the fast-tracking of the appointment of more than 200 federal judges. He is also respected in some quarters for pushing through massive tax cuts for corporations, expanding the economy faster than it was under Barack Obama, and crashing unemployment to a record low— before the economic gains were washed away by the Coronavirus. He also normalised relations between Israel and four once-antagonistic Arab neighbours, and he condensed U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. But like a commentator noted, all these were “dwarfed by what Trump got wrong”. Whether or not he is able to repeat the feats is a different kettle of fish.

    Though endorsed by Biden, it’s not  official that Harris is the Democratic Party candidate. It looks certain she will get it. Time will tell if she will be able to achieve what Hillary Clinton couldn’t achieve and get the keys to the White House.

    My final take: Whoever wins this race for the White House, believe me, isn’t going to change the tradition of the house, the tradition that ensures its international politics, better known as diplomacy, is not just about saving the world, but also about making it have access to overseas economies, fossil fuels, mineral resources and the blue economy.

    The next occupant of the White House will still maintain the tradition that uses treaties and deals to ensure America has easy markets for its goods abroad and will also see to it that the World Bank and such America-promoted financial institutions champion what is in America’s interest.

  • The White House

    The White House

    The White House, unarguably the most popular house the world over, is in the news and will always be. The reason isn’t because President Joe Biden is no longer in the race to keep Donald Trump far away from this all-important house; it’s because it’s not an ordinary house, it’s the house, the one from where decisions that engender peace and war have been taken and are still being taken; it’s the house where fates are sealed and destinies overturned; it’s the house with phases and faces, the house that shows you what it wants you to see. This house is like Esu odara. Its cap has red on one side and black on the other, and the side you are facing determines what you see and what you get. 

    If you are in its good books, goodness and mercy shall follow you all the days of your lives, and if you are in its bad books, woes betide you.

    From this house, plots have been hatched against African leaders, European leaders and Asian leaders. From this house, decisions that led to the death of foreign leaders have been taken, and decisions that crippled economies have been stamped. Ask Iraq. Ask Libya. Think of the fact that what becomes Al-Qaeda today is not without American connection. Osama Bin-Laden, that it eventually killed during the Barack Obama era, was once an ally.

    And from this house, economies have been breathed life into; foreign politicians have received support that shot them into political relevance back home.

    Read Also: NEMSA to Reps: stop states from technical enforcement

    This house has existed for centuries. It has undergone transformation, but its spirit of America first remains. It has housed president upon president; four of them were assassinated in power starting with Abraham Lincoln. James A. Garfield was assassinated after Lincoln, and followed by William McKinley, who was bankrolled by billionaires Andrew Carnegie, John D Rockefeller and JP Morgan to ensure their grip on the American economy remained tight. John F. Kennedy was the last to be executed and tighter security measures were taken after the incident and, for decades, no American president has fallen to assassin’s bullets.

    Biden currently calls the shots at the White House, a position he grabbed from Trump about four years ago. Now Trump wants the keys to the White House back and he has overwhelming support.

     At the CNN debate Biden had with Trump, his best wasn’t good enough and trust Trump to take advantage of the president’s poor performance to tell Americans he is the one for the job. The poor performance eventually helped to get Biden out of the race.

    On July 13, United States Vice President Kamala Harris, who Biden has endorsed as his replacement,

    reached out to voters. Her message: With the United States Supreme Court granting Donald Trump wide-reaching immunity for his actions as president, he has been emboldened to weaponise the Department of Justice against his political enemies. Harris added that the “Donald Trump running for office right now is not the same one that we ran against in 2020”. This candidate Trump, she says, is more unhinged, more dangerous and has nothing to lose.

    Harris argues that if Trump wins four more years in the White House, not even the courts will hold him back. “It’s what he wanted. It’s why he hand-picked three justices for the Court who helped deliver this decision,” Harris says.

    Hours after Harris message to voters, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who lived in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, shot at Trump who fell to the ground, and Secret Service agents had to surround him. Trump said a bullet pierced the upper part of his right ear. The shooter was killed by the Secret Service.

    Trump’s four years in the White House was not all bad news. He is credited with overhauling the U.S. judiciary, especially with the appointment of three Supreme Court justices and the fast-tracking of the appointment of more than 200 federal judges. He is also respected in some quarters for pushing through massive tax cuts for corporations, expanding the economy faster than it was under Barack Obama, and crashing unemployment to a record low— before the economic gains were washed away by the Coronavirus. He also normalised relations between Israel and four once-antagonistic Arab neighbours, and he condensed U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. But like a commentator noted, all these were “dwarfed by what Trump got wrong”. Whether or not he is able to repeat the feats is a different kettle of fish.

    Though endorsed by Biden, it’s not  official that Harris is the Democratic Party candidate. It looks certain she will get it. Time will tell if she will be able to achieve what Hillary Clinton couldn’t achieve and get the keys to the White House.

    My final take: Whoever wins this race for the White House, believe me, isn’t going to change the tradition of the house, the tradition that ensures its international politics, better known as diplomacy, is not just about saving the world, but also about making it have access to overseas economies, fossil fuels, mineral resources and the blue economy.

    The next occupant of the White House will still maintain the tradition that uses treaties and deals to ensure America has easy markets for its goods abroad and will also see to it that the World Bank and such America-promoted financial institutions champion what is in America’s interest.