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Category: Weekend Treat

  • Younger artistes should learn from my ugly fate – Nollywood actor Emma Edokpayi down with amnesia for 13 months

    Younger artistes should learn from my ugly fate – Nollywood actor Emma Edokpayi down with amnesia for 13 months

    The Father’s House, a Pentecostal church in Akute, Ogun State, is a Mecca of sort for the celebrities that live in that community and its environs. Popular actor, Emma Edokpayi, is one of them. He maintains a front seat in the church and his almost completely grey beard and hair stand him out in the congregation.

    On this particular day, the reporter’s attention was drawn by Edokpayi’s animated responses to the preaching of the pastor, Dr. Richard Udoh. Until he ran into a health crisis a few years ago, things were really looking up for Edokpayi as an established cameraman and an A-list actor. He was easily one of the golden boys of the era when cinema was just becoming a culture in Nigeria.

    Until the ‘Benin boy’ began to experience the other side of life, he never thought that life could be cruel. In August 2004, he suffered a stroke while shooting a documentary on an oil field. He was down and out of circulation for years on account of the ugly incident.

    He said: “I came to realise that the stroke affected me not only physically but mentally. It affected my mind. I lost almost every memory. I was brought back to Lagos and I remained in my house. I could not remember my friends. I could not remember any phone number. People came to see me but I could not recall their faces.

    “I was more or less hiding from people. I was just a different person from what I used to be. Before then, if you gave me a script, I didn’t need to spend hours studying it. All I needed to do was to read a line and I would get the whole picture and get ready. I stopped seeing people. I didn’t want anybody to pity me.

    “At the time I had stroke I had N6 million. I told my wife that by the time we finished this money, I would bounce back. By the time it was six months, the money had been exhausted but I was still not okay.”

    At the height of his predicament, he dwelt in self-pity and he became impatient with people. Stringing sentences together became a problem.

    “In an attempt to correct it, I messed up. I was avoiding people. People felt my wife was hiding me, whereas I was the one that did not want to see people, because when people were talking, I would not be able to talk, my contribution would be nonsense. I could not articulate. I could not piece two sentences together so that at the end, everybody would just keep quiet.”

    Since he resumed from the unsolicited sabbatical, he has participated in a film called Alero, but he recalled that it was a painstaking experience. “They knew that everybody had to relax for me. Most of the lines were patched and towards the end, my brain started grabbing things,” he said.

    Edokpayi may not be very active in the entertainment industry right now, but people like Wale Adenuga, the producer of popular TV series, This Life, still recognise his acting dexterity and gave him a role in it.

    It is not as if he does not want to act in movies. The problem, he said, is that he no longer gets invitation from producers. He said: “I don’t really select movies. It is just that I’m not sought after by producers. Maybe I don’t go out or frequent the environment or maybe they don’t know about me. If you don’t know where to find this man, you may not look for him when you have production.

    “It is a question of producer looking for me and fixing me for a role. I’m living more of a quiet life now. But living a quiet life does not mean that I’m not willing to act. It is a question of me going out again. If I’m beginning to circulate, I will find roles.”

    The two-seater cane chair inside his compound is where he spends his time enjoying fresh air and reading the Bible. And he counts himself lucky that he lives in his own house, because many of his colleagues are not that lucky.

    “Most of the people find themselves in the industry of glamour and the glamour takes away from them the consciousness of what they should do. In the industry, you find glamour. Everybody hails and patronises you. If you are not careful or God-fearing, you may not realise that you are losing out in life. You have to build for tomorrow,” he said as a matter of warning to other artistes.

    Of course, he is well positioned to counsel the younger generation of artistes. He was once like some of the wealthy ones among themcomfortable and rich. At a time that many of today’s A-list artistes were still struggling, Edokpayi could boast of more than four state-of-the-art cars like Mercedes Benz Concorde and SUVs. He recalled that at a time as far back as more than a decade ago, he had started earning between N100,000 and N300,000 per week.

    “When the money comes, you want to go high to the top. You go partying and drinking. And because it is a thing of glamour, you want people to see you at your best, even when it is not the best of times for you. You always want to show yourself in the best form and mood so that people would not see you as not living quality life.

    “Most times, even the little money we made, instead of using it to build the future for ourselves, we use the money to live in glamour. Even the business itself is glamour. You drive in the best car, you live in the best house that is not yours and in the end, if you go to the innermost recesses of people who live this kind of life, you will see that they are just doing window showing of themselves.

    “At a time, I was at my peak and suddenly it crumbled. Events will overtake you and you begin to see that you are not the kind of hot kid you used to be. You find that the flow is not there and you had not prepared anything for yourself. You had not built anything that will sustain you. So, you begin to die. I’m not saying clinical death, I mean spiritually.”

    Edokpai said the house he lives in today was built in error, as he never wanted it. But he is full of thanks to a good friend he said “cajoled” him to build it because he never saw himself as one that would live in the backwaters of Lagos. But that is where fate has put him and he is thanking his star for making the right choice of friend.

    “I lived like many of the present crop of artistes. The luck I had was a very wonderful friend named Dayo Ojo. He was working at Mobil at that time. He used to tell me: ‘Emma, go and buy a land. But I was always looking at land as a problem,” he said.

    He said it was even his friend that made money available to buy the land. The land, valued at about N10 million today, was bought for about N550, 000. He said he did not want to have anything to do with the house until the reality of life forced him to live where he would not have lived.

    He said: “When you are blindfolded by glamour and the worldly pleasures that accompany stardom, a life of idolism or idolatory, it takes you away from reality, which is the path to God, the road that leads you to everlasting peace. Before I knew it, he said ‘old boy, come and stay in the house.’ Before I knew it, I bought a 35KV generator. I did suspended borehole. Everything was in the house, but I still didn’t want to come to the house.”

    After his experience, Edokpayi now speaks like a preacher. And he believes that although he can no longer carry the camera the way he used to do, this is the time he is more useful to the society because he can teach drama and language as a graduate of English and Literary Studies.

    In his neighbourhood in Akute, he is known as both an artiste and a pastor. As he was seeing the reporter off, a commercial motorcycle operator stopped and offered to take him to wherever he was going. That, he noted, was a testimony to the benefits he enjoys. But he says he would feel more fulfilled if he is able to help others too.

    Explaining his seemingly deep knowledge of the Bible, he says it did not just start today. He was brought up by strictly religious parents, especially his mother. Fortunately or unfortunately for him, his mind was tilted towards the theatre. He said although he was not leading his class as a student, he was one of the best.

    “My mother would send me to the market to go and buy something. On the way, I would watch Ajasco. Those things attracted me. At the time I told them that I wanted to do drama, they asked me if it was a job, because nobody saw drama as a job then,” he recalled.

    He said he embraced Christianity because his mother was a fervent Christian. He was taught bible stories and he still knows them very well, and that is why it is convenient for him to preach. “Even when I was following women, drinking and walking round the town, I knew all these but did not realise that all they were being controlled by the Spirit of God,” he said.

    Twice he gave his cars out because God instructed him to do so. The first was a Mercedes 230 he gave to a pastor who had just got married. “God told me to give it to the pastor. He was not my friend. God told me to give it to him but I did as if I didn’t hear. I refused to give the car to the man. But my ear was pricking me until I gave the car,” he said.

    The second car, he said, was a Pathfinder. “I drove to church in a Pathfinder and went home in a taxi. Since then, I have been here, no car. They were contributing money to the church and I had no money to give, so I gave that car.”

    Right now, jazzing up Christian drama is uppermost in his mind as he plans to replicate what he is doing in the church outside of it. “I foresee an explosion of this type of production,” he said with confidence.

    Since the stroke he suffered had led to amnesia, he enrolled for a leadership course at Daystar Church in order to regain lost memory. “In the school, everybody knew me. They would see me and say good morning sir. I would sit at the back. I could not write, so I would sit and listen. And immediately I left there, I would not remember anyone.

    “But I kept going to school. I was changing the cognitive intake. My brain was now trying to take in things. I was not talking to anybody. The lecturer would think I was hearing well.”

    The fighter that he is, he drove himself to school while a part of his body was still paralysed. Explaining why he had to do so, he said: “I had a driver but he left suddenly. I entered my car and everybody started shouting. I normally left home at 5 am, because if you came late thrice, you might not graduate. When my driver did not come, I entered my car and drove to Daystar. I also drove back home and the second day, I drove too. That was how I started driving. The amnesia lasted one year and one month”.

    He is still passionate about a project he started with the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC). But he doubts if he would be able to make the dream come true because “the people who were working with me at that time messed a lot of things up”.

  • Jonathan has been ambushed by non-politicians – Mantu

    Jonathan has been ambushed by non-politicians – Mantu

    Senator Nasiru Ibrahim Mantu was Deputy Senate President from 2003 to 2007. He was Director-General, defunct National Republican Convention Presidential Campaign, 1993; National Chairman of the defunct Peoples Democratic Alliance and National Publicity Secretary, defunct United Nigerian Congress Party, UNCP. He was also Chairman, National Assembly Committee on Constitution Review. Senator Mantu, in this interview with Assistant Editor, LINUS OBOGO, went down memory lane on his alleged role in former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s botched third term project and expressed his views on President Goodluck Jonathan, among other issues. Excerpts:

    One of the harshest criticisms today against your party, the PDP, is that it is heading a government that has elevated corruption to an art and as a cardinal principle of governance. Just like insecurity, is it not also a serious challenge to governance?

    My friend, please say it louder. Indeed, let me say that it is corruption that has given birth to the insecurity in the country today. If we had not been corrupt, we would have been able to manage our resources very well, and in turn, provide social security to the nation’s teeming populace. It is this absence of social insecurity that has consequently given rise to the various agitations across the country.

    Corruption, like you rightly stated, has been the foundation of all our problems. If we are able to fight corruption, and I can tell you that even if we are not able to solve all problems immediately, we will no longer have the kind of crisis that we are having today. If we sincerely and judiciously channel all our money that is being cornered by corrupt political officials, we will be able to have good roads, hospitals, schools, electricity and potable water as well as put in place social security for our people and make life worth living.

    Sincerely speaking, anyone who is enjoying good life will not like to die. It is the absence of good life that is pushing the people to the wall to act the way they are acting. Corruption is the basis of everything that is happening to us today. No government has been able to successfully fight corruption to a standstill. It is only in Nigeria that when you are fighting corruption, corruption fights back. In fact, they have just been scratching the surface and paying lip-service to the war on corruption.

    There is no denying the truth that today, every facet of our society is corrupt. From the judiciary to the executive and the legislature, corruption is pervasive. People have lost faith in the judiciary because of corruption. Why will you run to the judiciary when you know that the man whom you are taking to court will engage a SAN who is going to be given certain privileges by the judge simply because he is a SAN? The entire country is engulfed in various dimensions of corruption. It is so endemic in our system and I am of the opinion that we have not really got our act together to fight corruption.

    The All Progressives Congress (APC), an amalgam of four opposition parties, has finally become a reality after the initial confusion that threatened its registration. With your party, the PDP, literally becoming a “Fuji House of Commotion”, how much threat does APC pose ahead of 2015?

    For someone like me who has been around the political terrain for over three decades, I hope and pray that the emergence of the APC or the merger itself becomes a reality after all. I have witnessed three failed mergers in this country, and I pray earnestly that this latest merger does not go the way of others before it.

    Recall that in the First Republic, the opposition came together to wrest power from the NPC which was the ruling party then, but when the time came to choose their candidate for the prime ministerial position, everybody wanted to be the candidate. When they could not agree on a consensus choice, the merger crumbled like a pack of cards.

    The same scenario played out again in the Second Republic, and what appeared then like a foregone conclusion failed woefully. So, this time around, I am praying for them to succeed so that we can have a formidable opposition party as an alternative to the ruling party. I feel strongly that Nigerians need an alternative party to put the PDP on its toes.

    The emergence of a viable alternative party will nudge the party in power from its slumber. That is the culture all over the world, and Nigeria cannot be an exception. Nigerians will have a well informed choice, if there is a credible and viable opposition party in the country.

    But the only way an opposition party can be successful is to put national interest above personal and narrow interest. But I hope and pray that this time around, the merger arrangement works. Nigerians need an alternative party, especially when they are tired of the PDP.

    Would you also subscribe to an alternative to President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015, as Nigerians are tired of what they consider as his leadership failure, nearly three years in the saddle?

    I want to answer your question by saying that Jonathan’s presidency is divinely ordained. Today, nobody can say with all sense of conviction that he was responsible for bringing President Jonathan to power. Only God can take that glory. Power is from God and not from man. If it was not the will of God, nothing any man or woman would have done to install Jonathan as President.

    Frankly speaking, as I said before, Jonathan is a good man and he has a good heart. But people are taking advantage of his good nature by not carrying out some of the fantastic programmes he has laid down for implementation as he would have had them executed.

    Part of the problem I have identified in the system is the fact that Jonathan is surrounded by ministers and aides who are not politicians. A lot of people are of the wrong notion that it is only when you go and bring those in the Diaspora in the name of technocrat to form your cabinet that your government can succeed. If I were an engineer and I have been practising in Nigeria, does that not qualify me as a technocrat? And if I were a lawyer and I have been practising in Nigeria all through the years, am I not a technocrat? Does the fact that you have been holed up in America or one European country confer on you technocracy? My answer is no. An economist in Nigeria and an economist in Britain are economists. The two are economists.

    These are some of the problems that Jonathan is actually facing because he is surrounded by people who are not politicians and do not know how Nigerians live and survive beyond Abuja. The greatest problem of Jonathan is that he is surrounded by people who are supposed to implement his policies and programmes, but who are not doing that because they are not politicians. I really do not have any problem in bringing experts into the government, but they can be brought in as advisers. You will agree with me that not many of his ministers or advisers went out with him during his campaign for his presidency. So they may not be bothered whether he wins the next election or not because they are not politicians in the real sense of the word. Many of them do not seem to appreciate the fact that they owe the electorate an obligation to deliver on the President’s promises. But if these people were like politicians, they would know what it means by making promises to the people and not fulfilling them. As election is drawing nearer. I think the President must have learnt his lessons, and I am sure he is going to address some of these issues because we still need him.

    Some of your staunch critics who think they have watched keenly your brand of politics tend to pass you off as one they jocularly would refer to as “Any Available Government in Power” or “Any Government in Power”. They cite your alleged role in the adoption of the late General Sani Abacha for the presidency and former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s botched third term, among others. While the label of “AGIP” may be untrue, would you be available for President Jonathan, should he need you as one of his foot soldiers in 2015?

    Let me say that the greatest perpetrators of ignorance in this country today are the media. The media are expected to be better informed than any other segment of the society. It is only in Nigeria that the media will write anything and go scot-free. It does not happen anywhere else except in Nigeria.

    Some media have accused me of going to Ota to lobby Obasanjo to contest election in 1999. It is not true. I was never in the PDP, rather I was in the ANPP where I contested for the Senate and won. So how would I have been part of the lobby group to bring Obasanjo to contest election in 1999? In 1999, we had our own presidential candidate. Therefore, there was no way I would have canvassed for Obasanjo or anyone in the PDP for the presidency.

    With regards to the alleged third term bid, I will come to that presently. But of note is, when have I ever been in government in appointive or elective position in this country in my 35 years in politics? I have only been in government for once from 1999 to 2007 in an elective capacity. So, how many governments have I actually participated in to deserve the label, “AGIP”? I am asking you. If I were like my friend who has served so many different military and civilian regimes and is still serving, I would not take offence at the appellation.

    My only presence in government has been the legislature which is elective and not appointive. Now you can understand that I have been in government only with the mandate of my people. Throughout my political career, I have never been appointed into government.

    During the time of the late Sani Abacha, I remember forming my own party, the Peoples Democratic Alliance, PDA. Later we merged and became the Nigeria Centre Party( NCP). After the merger, I was elected as the National Deputy Chairman of the NCP. Three days later, I told them thank you and left the party. The NCP was not formed by Abacha. It was an amalgamation of 23 political parties.

    So if you are following someone’s track record, you should follow him correctly in order to analyse him in correct perspective. That is what I expect of the media. For instance, if you had not come to interview me, you would have viewed me as “AGIP “. If you had not come here to interview me today, you would never have got my own side of the story.

    I have been in politics since the First Republic. This was when Abacha had not dreamed of becoming the head of state. Even when he became the head of state, I was not a member of his regime. I have always followed my path as a politician, seeking elective office. I won an election as a senator during Abacha’s regime. In 1990, I also won an election as senator. I have never been minister or commissioner throughout my political career. I have always done it the hard way, contesting and winning elections so that I can open my mouth as wide as I want and talk on behalf of the people who offer me their mandate. I prefer to toe that path.

    Now, on the issue of me going to Ota, the only time I went to Ota to ask Obasanjo to contest was during his second term bid. Again, this is one area that Nigerians have got it wrong and I blame the media in particular. In case you have forgotten, I was the Chairman of the National Assembly Joint Committee on the Constitution Review. In case you may have also forgotten, I took over that assignment from somebody. I was not the pioneer Chairman, may be people thought I assumed that position because of my perceived relationship with Obasanjo at that time.

    Nigerians are quick to forget that in the entire National Assembly, nobody attacked Obasanjo the way I did. When I was Chairman of the Senate Committee on Information, Obasanjo was my breakfast, my lunch and my dinner because I was always attacking him. My attack on Obasanjo was so fierce that former President Nelson Mandela was in this house to beg me to soften my attack on Obasanjo who was his friend. As if that was not enough, former President Jimmy Carter personally invited me to Hilton for a dinner with him where he pleaded with me to reduce my attack on his friend, Obasanjo.

    When I was attacking him, nobody was clapping for me. No one remembers that. It is only when it comes to the issue of the third term that people are quick to remember. I became close to Obasanjo after I was elected Deputy President of the Senate. My election as Deputy Senate President was based on the fact that the National Assembly wanted somebody who was anti-Obasanjo. They wanted someone who hated Obasanjo with passion. To a very large extent, my perceived hatred for Obasanjo became part of my qualification for the Deputy Senate presidency. Owing to my position as Deputy Senate President, we were meeting with the executive weekly and that was the closest I came in contact with Obasanjo. For the first six months of our closeness during those sessions with the executive, both of us maintained our hostility to each other. But after a while, he came to appreciate the fact that I was criticising him objectively and not out of hate. One day, he called me and said to me that we should reconcile our differences. Nobody initiated it. It was Obasanjo’s own idea. He told me that even if I did not agree with his ideas or policies, it was good that I respected his age and office, and I agreed with him.

    As Deputy Senate President, I was also the Chairman of the National Assembly Joint Committee on the review of the constitution. My duty was to collate the views of Nigerians on the clauses of the constitution we wanted to amend. The Speaker of the House of Representatives was my deputy.

    The clauses we wanted to amend were based on the views expressed by Nigerians regarding them. By this time, people refused to differentiate my relationship with Obasanjo and my role as Chairman of the Constitution Review Committee. There were those who felt that Obasanjo must have appointed me. But Obasanjo had no power over appointment in the Senate or the entire National Assembly.

    After collating the views of Nigerians, one of the committees headed by Senator Ham Batsa came back with a report to the effect that some Nigerians were of the position that instead of two terms of four years, we should have three terms of four years in the constitution. According to them, Nigeria was on the same economic pedestal with China, India, Singapore and Malaysia. And since these countries have leaders who have stayed so long in office, much longer than Nigeria’s, they have been able to make tremendous progress, while we remained where we were. They felt that we should give more time to our presidents to be long in office in order to fast-track our developmental strides.

    We conceded to them as Nigerians to hold and express their views. There was nothing wrong with that. So we included that aspect under “Tenure Elongation” clause. After collating all the reports from the various sub-committees, I presented a report to the Senate, and it was accepted. From the moment my report was accepted, I had finished my job. The document presented became that of the National Assembly.

    When I had concluded my assignment, many people felt that I was actually behind Obasanjo’s third term ambition. I have said this time and time again and for the umpteenth time, I will love that this be presented factually. Obasanjo did not tell Ibrahim Mantu that he wanted to continue in office. But in the course of my job as the Chairman of the National Assembly Constitution Review Committee, I received a report from one of the sub-committees on tenure elongation which I presented to the National Assembly public hearing. The assignment of my committee was to collate views of Nigerians, whether bitter or sweet. I was just a mere umpire or referee. And as a referee, if you scored or committed a foul, I blew the whistle. But my assignment terminated the first day I collated all the views of Nigerians and submitted same to the National Assembly.

    The issue was that some people did not want Obasanjo to elongate his tenure, and so they started using the press. But in a democracy, no one has the right to deny another from expressing his own views. That is why I still describe the third term issue as a mere storm in a teacup. It was amplified by people who were more interested in going to Aso Rock than Obasanjo. People who were burning with the desire to occupy Aso Rock and at the end, they made us to throw away the baby with the bath water. One of our recommendations was to have two vice-presidents, one from where the president hails and another from the vice-president’s zone. The thinking was that if the president dies, the vice-president from the president’s zone will be sworn in as his replacement to complete his term.

    What was wrong in anybody saying he wanted Obasanjo to continue? Even after saying that, was that enough to have made Obasanjo to continue after his second term? If Obasanjo wanted a third term and he subjected himself to the due process of the constitution, what was wrong with that? As long as anybody subjects himself to the constitution to seek for what he or she wants, as far as I am concerned, I have no axe to grind with that person.

  • The 1 trillion Naira shopping list

    One trillion naira is a lot of money in any currency in the world. Except perhaps in Zimbabwe where it’s said, you will need a trailer load of banknotes to buy a loaf of bread. That must be one very expensive loaf indeed.

    Anyway, for a developing country like Nigeria facing serious challenges and is crying out for development, that kind of money would have come in really useful. Just imagine for a moment what the country could do with 1 trillion naira. Let’s pick just three areas of the economy. It could fix some of our very bad roads, we could invest some of it in education so our students don’t spend more time outside the lecture halls than inside due to incessant strikes by their disgruntled teachers and buy some much needed equipment and life-saving drugs for our hospitals so our people no longer die from treatable ailments. There could even be some ‘change’ left after all that expenditure for some boost to the power sector so our towns and cities can be lit up at night instead of the dense jungle-like darkness all around us daily.

    But like a fool and his money, what does our country do with that mouth-watering sum? We spend it on just a very select and exclusive set of citizens, our lawmakers who must be the most pampered in the world. Indeed, if a former Minister of Education and ex-World Bank Vice-President, (Africa Region), Mrs. Obiageli Ezekwesili, is to be believed, our House of Representative members (360) and Senators (109), are the highest paid in the world. According to her, that huge amount of over 1 trillion was spent on salaries and allowances of these legislators between 2005 and 2012 alone.

    Now I’m not an economist and I was not very good in Maths back in my school days. But even with my limited calculation abilities, I can tell that there’s something seriously wrong in this sort of situation. How can a developing country struggling with serious socio-political and economic problems with one of the lowest per capital income in the world ($1,500), with a poverty index of 112 million people (out of a population of about 170 million) spend so much money on just 469 people? What special work are they doing that we should spend so much of our hard-earned resources on them to the detriment of the remaining millions of others.

    I know a lot of things don’t just make sense in this country but this is one of those senseless things we are doing in this country that is seriously holding us back as a people. As Ezekwesili noted, most of the nation’s income from oil, taxes and other sources are spent on recurrent expenditure- a whopping 82 per cent of its budgetary appropriations- leaving a mere 18 per cent for capital projects. Now, you see why nothing works in this country and like an intoxicated masquerade, the nation keeps moving round in circles with occasional steps backwards for variety’s sake. In sane countries, capital projects take the lion share of budgetary allocations as such money is sorely needed for infrastructural development and to service other areas of the economy. But here, we spend most of our money on the over pampered lot at the National Assembly whom many Nigerians don’t even understand what they do in the first place.

    We don’t even get value for money for all the investments in them. How many laws for instance have been passed in the past five years that have impacted positively on the lot of the long suffering masses of this country? If they are not debating on how they can increase their already bloated allowances and salaries, they focus on such depressing issues as child marriages.

    Obviously, we are all hungry for change in our country and a better deal for our people who have suffered so much at the hands of those at the helm of affairs. But all that desire for change will be meaningless if areas that drain our resources are not plugged. So, something needs to be done about these lawmakers and their pay.

    The military in 1999 bequeathed to the nation a very costly presidential system that is draining the nation of already scarce resources. We simply cannot afford to continue running such an expensive system. Perhaps, the time has come for the country to adopt a more cost efficient system of lawmaking that will not milk the country dry.

    Ezekwesili advocated this much when she advised that the job of local, state and National Assembly members should be a part-time activity rather than a full time job.

    Maybe this will arrest the abnormal situation whereby the more money the nation earns, the poorer the people become with the poverty index rising in geometric proportions from 17.1 million Nigerians living below poverty level in 1980 to a frightening 112.47 million people today.

  • A tenant’s dilemma (2)

    Shortly after Vero left school, we got married. In fact, she took part in the mandatory NYSC programme as a married woman. By the time the service year ended, Vero was already pregnant with our first baby. Unfortunately, the baby, a boy died when he was three months old. It was a terrible time for us. I felt so devastated by the loss as I had so looked forward to seeing my son grow up into a strong healthy boy.

    I blamed my wife for what happened. I had left for work on the fateful day, leaving a fine, healthy baby behind only to see his corpse on my return.

    According to the house girl, she had been left with the baby all alone at home as Vero had gone out with her friend. Some time in the afternoon, my son had developed a fever. On calling my wife to inform her about the boy’s condition, Vero had told her to give him some baby syrup.

    A few hours later, my son was dead. For the first time since our marriage, I felt like hitting my wife. But I was restrained by my younger brother, Joe who lived with us.

    “Brother, calm down. Beating her won’t bring Junior back,” he cautioned as I made to beat Vero up for her actions. I believed it was her carelessness that caused our son’s death. How could a woman nursing a baby leave home in the morning and not return till late in the evening, leaving her baby in the care of an ignorant maid?

    My son’s untimely death caused a rift between Vero and I. We later made up though and before long, she conceived again.

    This time, she had a girl whom we named Oluchi. I didn’t want anything to happen to this baby so I brought my mother from the village to help take care of her.

    By then, two of my younger ones and a cousin of Vero were living with us. My apartment grew too small for all of us so I got a bigger three bedroom flat in a nice neighbourhood.

    We settled down in our new place and for a while, things went well for us. When the baby was six months old, my mother returned to the village as my father was beginning to complain about her long absence from home.

    “Others who went for omugwo at their daughters’ homes at the same time as your mother have long since returned. Or does she want to become a city dweller now, like all those city women who rub pancake and wear trousers like men? Doesn’t she know she is now an old woman? Agadi nwanyi!” my father said teasingly when I had gone home for a brief visit.

    ***

    Some months after, something terrible happened at my work place. The Chairman of the company, who had founded it several decades before died. Most of the staff expected the only son, who was already a director in the business, to take over the reins of the company. But to our shock, the irresponsible young man sold it to some foreign investors, took the money and relocated out of the country!

    All this was done without carrying the workers along or even considering their welfare. We resumed work one morning to see a notice at the locked gates that a new management had taken over and all the workers had been made redundant. It was a big blow to everyone. The vague promise that we could be recalled some time in the future did not reassure any of us.

    I stood with the rest of the workers at the gate, feeling dazed as if I was in a dream. The thoughts going through my mind were confusing ones; how was I now going to take care of my family, pay my bills and take care of other things as a responsible family man now I had no job? I had been in the company for about six years and enjoyed working there.

    So, I felt really bad at being tossed into the uncertain labour market without warning. Worse still, I had just bought a new car and a plot of land in the suburbs of the city. My plan was to start developing it so we could move there in a few years’ time. All those plans were now on hold.

    My wife was supportive at first of the situation. She kept reassuring me that something would turn up soon and I should not worry. But one year later and still no job, I began to worry. As an accountant, I had thought it would be easy enough to get another job. How wrong I was! While I still had a job, I never knew how saturated the market was with job seekers.

    I wrote many applications but none were successful. But I never gave up. I kept writing, hoping and praying that a good offer would come. A few professional colleagues I knew gave me a few private jobs to do on the side to make some money. This helped a lot at least in feeding the family.

    Things went this way for a while with me continuing my job search. At a point, my financial situation became so tough that paying the rent on my apartment when my rent expired became a problem. I went to my landlord to explain my situation to him, promising that once I secured another job, I would pay. I had had a good relationship with the man since I began living in his house and he was understanding at first. But when a year passed with no rent, he gave me quit notice.

    I didn’t know what to do. Where would I move my family to if the landlord enforced the quit notice, I kept thinking worriedly.

    Then one day, I returned home from my usual job search to meet my landlord, the caretaker and a few others standing by the door of our flat. My wife and other members of my family were there too and it looked as if they had been pleading with him. The man was holding court papers which he waved in my face.

    “You have till the end of the week to move out else I will throw your things out! Did you give me money to build my house? So, why do you want to live here for free?” he queried belligerently.

    My wife knelt down and began to beg for more time to pay. I joined in too. But the man was not ready to listen.

    Flinging the papers at me, he threatened:

    “You either pay me my money or don’t let me see you here when I return later in the week!”

    Since I didn’t have the money to pay him, I began making alternative arrangements. I had spoken to a very good friend of mine, Mike concerning my accommodation problems. He told me about his younger brother who had travelled abroad, leaving his small flat empty.

    “His rent has not expired. You can move in and even take it over if you like the place,” he stated.

    But my wife was against the idea.

    “A mini-flat with just two rooms?” she stated incredulously when I told her about the flat. “It’s too small for all of us. Besides, what will my friends say? They will laugh at me if we move from this big place to a tiny flat like that!”

    I tried to reason with her that because of the situation we were in, we did not have much choice.

    “It’s only for a while till I can get another job,” I stated reassuringly.

    But she was adamant, insisting that she was not going to live in that ‘match box’ as she called the flat.

    “I’m going no where! You are the man in this house! You go and get the money for the rent or look for a way to appease the landlord!” she declared.

    I shook my head, thinking how unreasonable she was being…

    Then a few days before the deadline given by the landlord for us to pack, Vero told me on my return home one evening that the landlord had changed his mind and that we could stay.

    “He said we should not move again. That we can stay till you have the money to pay,” she announced, looking excited.

    “How come? Did you go and beg him or what?” I asked. I felt relief, as if a big weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

    But if I had known the reason for my landlord’s change of mind, it would have been a different feeling indeed…

    •To be continued

     

    •What made the landlord change his mind on the quit notice? Details next week!

    •Names have been changed to protect the identities of the narrator and other individuals in the story.

    •Send comments/suggestions to 08023201831(sms only), psaduwa@yahoo.com or psaduwa007@gmail.com

  • Power reform is on course – Dagogo-Jack

    Power reform is on course – Dagogo-Jack

    Reynolds Dagogo-Jack is the Chairman, Presidential Task Force on Power as well as member of the Presidential Action Committee on Power. He spoke with Steve Osuji in Lagos recently shortly after the federal government divested control of major unbundled electricity generating companies. Excerpts:

    If there is any timeline to the power sector reform programme (PSR) you must know about it; please can you tell us where we are right now?

    The power sector reform programme was started by President Goodluck Jonathan in June, 2010 to that extent it is about three years old. The focus of the PSR is market reform, change of the current ownership, attracting new investment in generation into the market, expanding the transmission capacity to increase the ability to wheel more power and then transfer of the distribution companies to private sector to reduce losses, to increase efficiency, to increase metering penetration. Now it’s all these efforts that will combine to produce electricity. So pretty much we have been focusing on the electricity supply profile more than we should be focusing on the critical steps that must be taken so that the market reform will be concluded. Where we are now is that the market reform has come to an advanced stage. As at end of July, the last remaining assets – the generating company at Afam and the distributing company in Kaduna – the preferred bidders were announced and soon the National Council on Privatisation will declare whether these bidders have succeeded and will be given the offer to buy. So to that extent, in the sense of the elements that will drive us to a sustainable electricity market, a lot of work has been done.

    But it just so happens that Nigerians want to measure the progress on the number of hours that we have and the quantum of power that they have which will come when the structural changes take root. So we have two challenges, first is to change the market, bring in private sector players. That of course takes some time to deliver. As we all know, just getting labour to come with us so that they will play their own role till new owners come has been one long round of negotiations, but until the new owners come, the expected efficiency will not come, until the efficiency comes, the supply cannot ramp up. Therefore, structural change of the market is more critical than power output because one leads to the other. But because we know that Nigerians will not appreciate it if we say we are doing a structural change and power is dropping everyday government has deployed resources to keep supply at the level we met it if we cannot add more but not to allow it to drop. That is what we call the service delivery leg of the reform. That is working but that has more challenges than the structural changes because that one requires people to continue to be as committed even knowing that there is a change of ownership. That one requires funding the sector even when you have sold some of these utilities. So that is slightly more difficult to manage but in the transition window, we are doing our best to make sure that we achieve a balance between changing the market and also sustaining the service level.

    You are saying in effect that we are at the crossing over point of the transition. So how soon are we going to begin to reap results?

    The truth of the matter is that until you have moved the ownership and the management of the sector into the private hands and until the private people have configured their business agenda, created the additional capital that they need to recover the lost capacities in our grid, changed manpower, retooled ICT, start to do those businesses the way private people do business instead of government, those things cannot be catapulted; there is so much speed you can run in that space.

    But is it left solely at their whims, are there not some timelines no matter how loose?

    Yes but let us look at it this way, you have sold them the assets. You cannot reprobate and approbate as the lawyers say. You can’t sell them an asset and the set a timeline for them as if it is not theirs. No. Remember they are profit driven people, they know the cost of these facilities, you don’t have to go and wake them up in the night to do their reform and their readjustment and reorganisation. It’s something that you should presume that it will happen. They borrowed money, the banks are on their back, you don’t need government to tell them to give us light tomorrow; light now becomes cash to them. Electricity supply is now their cash flow, you don’t need to teach a businessman how to make money. They are faced with a situation of no electricity, no cash; this is what we have been trying to communicate to the people for some time now. It is a step-wise thing, we move from one step of progress to another so we need people to understand that it can’t happen overnight, we need people to understand that we can’t take our eyes off the ball, we have to move in one direction no matter how slow that may seem but we have to move forward one step at a time.

    I still think my point stands, I understand your explanation but this a strategic asset, there still must be some oversight, there must be a perspective on all these and I am saying that all these taken together, six months down the road, we expect so and so hours or quality of power supply in so and so areas of the country…?

    I get you and I also think that Nigerians are very knowledgeable people, very knowledgeable. Such times when you want to hold down to a projection, it’s always good to caution yourself; sometimes it’s good to use benchmarks which will tell you whether you can approximate to it. This is because if you ask the people who did the telecoms reform to give any kind of projection as to where Nigerians will be in terms of teledensity, access to telephone, what they delivered and what they could have projected are miles apart. But you see a lot of pressure from Nigerians to kind of lock in a particular prediction whereas it is not scientific because to predict a market, you can only do so knowing the fundamentals. Yes our fundamentals are right; we are 167 million people and we need light and there is a market waiting to be tapped; we have capacity to pay and pay even more as we have seen in the telecoms sector in a relative sense as many have two or three handsets. So ability to pay is not the problem, availability of the population is not the problem as there are 23 to 24 million households in Nigeria. So, the demand is there. So are you saying that you will set the right platform for the private sector and the right tariff and the private sector will not cash in on it? So let us be faithful on the things we know which is to allow the private sector to take leadership here. By what you are asking, you are still trying to bring government into the mix. You need to support us to take government out then we go to the next step.

    Labour matter is a major challenge. What is the situation right now?

    Labour union has played a very critical role in the PSR. As most people know, we have reached the point when payment will start and as soon as that happens, the process of concluding this whole transaction will be pretty much assured. We believe that from the recent press release from the Honourable Minister’s office and from all the signals we have had from the Ministry of Power, payment will start very soon and that will be a major milestone and hurdle that we would have crossed. Let me also say that in terms of the cost of privatisation as relates to labour settlements, Nigeria is about to record one of the highest levels of financial settlement packages in order to reform power and move forward, but it’s a price the president is willing to pay because he clearly understands that there is no price you can place on darkness.

    What are the figures?

    It’s in the works, the Ministry has the accurate figures and it is better we get it from them but it’s slightly under N400 billion.

    What is the gas situation now, we know that has always been a problem, is that problem solved now?

    Okay, gas is a fuel for the generating plants just like all other elements in the value chain. They are moving targets. As we speak, molecules are being explored by the oil companies, pipelines are being built by the Nigerian Gas Company. So, every new capacity that is being added by way of molecules or pipelines increases availability of gas to the power plants. But to address your point, the truth is that in the past, the relationship between the gas owner and the generating plants was not contractual, it was what we call best endeavour. It was vertically integrated, government owns everything, if you are able to bring, bring, if you are not able to bring, don’t bring. We are moving away from all that. Part of this reform is that there will be a contractual relationship between the owner of the gas and the owner of the thermal plant. Such contractual relationship will be the basis for investment in gas; the basis for paying for gas that has been delivered without anyone saying that it is the government that owns them both. All of that is tightening up the system for efficiency. So, if the oil companies know that there is a contract, they know too well what a contract means. So, all of that are being put together and contracts are being signed as we speak.

    Apart from gas, are we exploring other fuel options?

    Yes, Nigeria is blessed with fuel sources but each source has a technology relationship and each fuel and technology matrix comes with construction time constraints. For instance, water, a typical medium to large hydro plant will require not less than six years before you have electricity, whereas a thermal plant, effectively delivered by a good project team will take about two and half years to realise. Of course, we could export coal if we want because we have a huge deposit of coal, but to convert coal to electricity will take a minimum of five years to realise. There has been a little bit of oversimplification of what is required to have electricity. Though there are other shorter sources, the renewable like sun which is technology-heavy. So, the cost of that is way higher than gas, way higher than coal and way higher than hydro, but again with improving technology, the prices are depressing. So we are looking at it. We have a lot of sun in the north and even in some places down south. Wind is another source of energy. We have a lot of wind and our wind map is very strong with potentials for wind turbines. So, all this will kick in when you see that the private sector has taken over the space. Even they will know well not to put their investments in one source but all this have to be market decisions. And because of our fundamentals which include heavy demand, and mark you, the population I told you is just home consumption, we have not factored in industrial needs large and small. At the end of the day, even the industries that relocated to Ghana will return because in Ghana you produce and bring it to Nigeria to sell, so why don’t you produce where you have the market. So, we expect an explosion of a dimension that we cannot quite stay here and project; it has to be methodical.

    Talking about Ghana, how come they seem to have gotten there power right over these years while we lag?

    No, that is not quite correct. Ghana is about 20 million people; it is about one fifth of Nigeria in land area. So, their transmission cost is almost zero compared to Nigeria’s. To transport power from Port Harcourt, for instance, to Yola, you know what that means. And after all the money you must have spent, it gets to Yola at half current so we are not in the same league. We supply them gas to fire their turbines. Ghana currently produces fewer than 2000 megawatts. When it produces up to 2500 megawatts the whole country will have power for 24 hours uninterrupted but we are on 4000 and we haven’t started.

    So are there any more challenges to realising the complete reform of the sector in the next two years?

    Yes some of the major issues which we need to keep our eyes on and close-mark in order for us to totally realise the power reform agenda include gas, which you raised earlier. But we are talking about gas disruption through vandalism, some people have argued that there can be some sinister motives to frustrate our progress or whatever their motives might be, so you see gas lines breached for no reason because we know that it is the tapping of crude oil and condensate pipes that we knew but now they are bombing gas lines. You can’t even take the gas, so again we are worried as the rate is growing. If we continue to have that challenge, there will be no gas to fire the plants and we can’t get the electricity we are designing; people are right now building massive generation plants in the hope of using this gas. So, vandalism is a major concern. As we do our utmost best, we also appeal to Nigerians to show some sense of patriotism and respect and safeguard our national assets for the good of us all.

    The Second challenge is labour. We need to close out on labour issues. We need the whole Nigerians to impress it on labour that it cannot get a better deal than we are offering them. Besides, after all this money is paid, the people will not go to China to pick the workers for these plants, most of them will come back the next day to continue work because there are no other people to do this work apart from them. Only those who have reached retirement age or those who think they can venture out with the money in their hands may opt out. Every other worker who decides to roll over has a good chance to roll over. So the earlier they put the issue of severance behind them, the better for everybody.

    The third challenge is transmission. As we work on generation, we must put transmission in view because it is the only aspect of the three segments that government is still holding as an asset for reasons of national security and issues of skill. We are doing that through the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN). So, there need to be conscious investments in this area in the short, medium and long terms.

    Are you saying transmission cannot be privatised?

    There is nothing that cannot be privatised but national grids in most countries are not privatised but can be concessional. But what we did is to bring in a management contractor, Manitoba, to manage it but the typical thing is to concession.

    The other challenge is distribution losses. The distribution companies are the ones yielding the money, they are the customer interface. It is the distribution company that puts meter in your house and comes to bill you so we have to ramp up efficiency in that area. Currently, because they are government companies, the losses are very high; we have to bring them down. When the losses come down, the tariff comes down and the customer is protected from increases in tariffs. When the new distribution companies take over, they then begin to deploy the tools for bringing down the losses including metering; there are still a lot of people who are not metered. We have to spend money to even bring the losses down. So I am telling you those areas we have to be efficient in so that this light that you and I want so badly will materialise. As you know, Nigerians are just interested in light, light, light –

    About time too –

    But it is also important to know how the light will come. It is like someone saying he must go to Lagos but he doesn’t have any idea where Lagos is or how to get there. There is also the challenge of serious technical gaps. PHCN for 20 years has not employed yet we want to grow our current capacity from 4000 megawatts to 20,000 megawatts. So that is a ratio of five. These megawatts we are talking about are equipment which will be manned by human beings. So, we have a huge skills gap. What that means is that labour ought to be working as one with us because if they understand where we are going, they would know that this place will explode and they are the ones to reap the immense benefits of filling the skills gap, they will be the ones to be given crash training programmes to take new vantage positions.

    Finally is the regulatory concern. This market can only work through strong regulation. We have NERC (National Electricity Regulatory Commission) in place. It is well constituted and has very capable people. So constantly, we have to keep looking out for areas where we will continue to make adjustments in the process so that both the customer and the investor are happy. These are basically the core issues we have our eyes on in order to wrap up the PSR.

    Let me drag you into a bit of politics. By virtue of the fact that you are from Rivers State and also by virtue of the fact of your position, what is your take on the crisis in Rivers State?

    Yes, being an indigene and a stakeholder who is impacted by what is going on, if you ask my honest opinion, what is going on is pathetic. But the more you look at it, you see in it, a deliberate agenda by the opposition, if you ask me, to distract the Goodluck Jonathan administration. It seems like a carefully orchestrated agenda to make sure that the president takes his eyes off governance because it is only governance that will yield the concrete milestones upon which the 2015 narrative will be engaged. We can’t go into 2015 in Nigeria talking about tribes or talking about zones. In 2015 we are talking about deliverables, what did you drop on the table while you are there? And that people know that the narrative of Nigeria is changing from tribe and region to performance, so if they can take his eyes off performance, when we get to 2015, the only thing that will be on the table is tribes and regions. This is the agenda of the opposition. Now what is upsetting people like us is that why should the people allow the opposition to define an agenda like that and suck them into the vortex of it.

    But the president doesn’t have to be distracted, he doesn’t have to be concerned about the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) for instance, he has his duties well cut out for him in bundles?

    You are right but do you know that when somebody thinks that his strategy will work, he doesn’t care if the strategy is actually working or not, he just works at it. But the strategy is obviously not working. The president is an administrator, he has line managers, some of the best, in finance, in agriculture, in trade and commerce. Look at the ministers there, they are top-ranked people, they are doing their job and they are delivering for the president. But because these other people’s interest is in the president and the presidency, so they come up with all this agenda, thinking that they are distracting the president but it is not working because they have to be distracting the whole executives; they have to stop them from working. But people are working 24/7. So, when it comes to 2015 will they realise that their strategy is not working. And you know most of these things people are saying it doesn’t come from the president, you know how it works.

    In Rivers State, it is clearly a case of – both the people who grandfathered the governor and those that he appointed into his own cabinet are talking in different tones with him – is that the work of the president? The people who made him who he is in politics and the people he made are in the same room saying something different from what he is saying, was it the president that sent them? So, for me it’s a dysfunctional setting and it is unfortunate because it is the state’s resources that are suffering, it is the focus that should have been put in Rivers State that is being expended in Abuja, in other places and sometimes abroad. It is a loss of focus; it’s a loss, loss for us. We tackle somebody we shouldn’t tackle because we are thinking of politics, then you use all the energy you should have used to do your work to do something else and everybody loses, that is not on.

    There are a lot of issues and we can debate it from now till tomorrow, so let’s look at resolution. How can the Rivers crisis be resolved?

    To be honest with you, if the activities in Rivers State are a part of a grand opposition strategy, it will go on in one form or the other because it is an opposition strategy. But if it is as a result of a misunderstanding within a political family, it can be resolved, it is not too complex to resolve.But if it is a grand opposition agenda to needle the president and make him lose attention and focus until it is time for the next election, then it is an opposition strategy and you cannot tell the opposition not to play their game now. So, until we decode exactly what the problem is, to design a solution around it will be a nullity.

    You see a lot of people are giving different dimensions to this problem, there is a programming of public opinion to talk about David and Goliath; there is a programming of public opinion to make it seem like a big man is trying to crush a small man which is all not true.

    Which is why I ask again, can’t this small man be ignored?

    No, the small man cannot be ignored if being in this position gives him visibility, relevance, importance, national narratives, drama – these are the values that are being played out. There has never been a debate as to take Nigerians to the next level in any of the areas of our national endeavour, it’s who should be governor-general and all that; that is all we have down there now.

  • How can I tame my stubborn 5-year-old son?

    Please ma, how best can one tame stubborn children, my boy of five plus is too stubborn but brilliant.

    -Uche IB.

    Dear Uche, children are a handful but they are very special gifts we all desire from God. Yes, at certain ages – ages which I like to describe as ‘the discovery stage’ – kids are aware of what they want and what they don’t want. You may want to serve them custard for instance and they tell you they want corn-flakes. You call that stubbornness but they call it self-assertion. From the period they begin to crawl and move on their own, they start enjoying freedom of movement and trying to stop them will elicit some kind of protests. Then by ages 4 through 5 to 8, they  know by instinct that you cannot wield the stick and they still have some kind of immunity, so, they use their stubbornness to great advantage over you. Do you see 10 year olds arguing with their parents and being really stubborn? Below, I have helped you get some tips on how to deal with this young man trying his remote control on your superiority and trying to see how far he can get with you:

    Story-telling: Try story-time to help them wind down. This works especially well with strong-willed kids, who may have a hard time relaxing enough on their own especially at bed time.

    Play the “yes” game. Ask your child questions that will prompt him to answer “yes” at least three times in a row, such as “Wow, you’re having a great time playing with those toys, aren’t you?” (Yep!) “What eating this now and eating that other one next time? Would that be fun? “Do you have strength to move that bag from the floor? Can you show me?” The “yeses” help break down your child’s resistance, and he also feels like he’s been heard and understood.

    Offer options. Gently guide him toward the next step with two choices, such as “Do you want to dry yourself off with the towel or should I help you?” Don’t announce that bathtime is over; simply start the process. Move seamlessly through the getting-ready-for-bed routine, offering two options at a time along the way, such as “Which book should we read before bed—X or Y?” If your child balks at the choices—”Neither! I’m not going to bed!”—respond calmly, “That wasn’t one of the choices. Did you want this book or that one?” Repeat calmly as needed. Stubborn kids hate hearing parents sound like broken records, and they usually give in. If they don’t, simply say “Okay, I guess you’ve chosen not to have a book tonight. Good night, sweetie! We’ll try again tomorrow night!” Lights-out. And don’t give in, even if your kid puts up a fuss. Sticking to your word practically guarantees you won’t have a repeat episode tomorrow night.

    Establish a connection.  Before actually moving your kids toward the direction you want, use a technique psychotherapist Susan Stiffelman calls “Connect Before You Direct.” Take a few minutes to sit beside your child and show interest in the game he’s playing or TV show he’s watching. Ask a few well-placed questions or say something supportive like “I can see why you like this show—it’s really funny!” When kids feel connected to you, they’re much more likely to do what you ask next.

  • Will he be faithful to me since I am not …?

    He is a graduate and am in year one. He is 26 years and I am 17 years. He said he loves me and I believe him. I told him I don’t want sex until I am married and he said he won’t even touch me except I want him to. My problem is that I don’t know if he will be faithful to me since I am not offering him any sexual pleasure. I am ready to leave him at any moment he ask me for sex because I can’t just give my pride away and that was what broke- up the relationships I’ve ever had. I need your advice ma. You’re indeed like a mother to many teens like me. God bless you ma.

    Hi darling. I’m happy you’re holding on to your virginity till you get married. Actually, there’s no point in pleasing any guy against your will until you’re ready. Now, we’ve just talked about you. You’re just 17 and you’re  a young women. Women may stay off sex for years and may not feel like they’re missing anything. That’s the makeup of most women. But not men. Yes, this guy may love you enough to leave you till you’re ready, but this is a 26-year-old man we’re talking about here! If he’s already sexually active, he will wait until you (YOU with emphasis) are ready. More than that; he’ll wait until you’re married. But he may not wait that long for sex with other women. Too many girls are on offer and they won’t need to be asked before they give it to him, they knowingly settle for someone any guy willing to have sex without talking about marriage. So make up your mind here: it’s either you accept the fact that he won’t disturb you, but he night go after other girls while keeping you till the wedding night or you say goodbye to this relationship.

    On the other side however, if he’s a born-again Christian or a committed Muslim, he will wait body, mind and soul for you till you both consummate your beautiful rrlationship on your wedding night.

    From you to me

    Good afternoon madam, l enjoy reading your Saturday page ‘Hearts’. Well done. This last Saturday, l read about d woman who wrote ‘My husband has other women maybe because I’m not good in bed’. Please can I have her phone no just to share experiences. I work with women organization. Thanks. Mrs. Ehinmowo.08081456612.

    P.S: For certain reasons, I’m sorry I won’t be able to give you her telephone number, but I’m publishing this because I bet there are so many women out there who may benefit from your wealth of experience. Please make it a free service to them. Thanks.

  • Ways to spice up marriage

    Get busy anywhere but your bed: Using the dining room table for something other than dining adds variety, but there’s another reason to ditch the bedroom.

    Try spontaneous hugging: Try this hug hint: Sneak up behind your husband and wrap your arms around him. Men have breast receptors’ all over their bodies. Your chest feels great against his back – it’s a big turn-on.

    Use the past as an aphrodisiac: Not a fan of talking dirty? Take a stroll down your shared sexual memory lane with your husband instead. “All it has to be is, ‘Remember when you did X?’” says Paget. It’s likely to get you a repeat performance.

    Surprise him in the shower: Kids are unlikely to be suspicious of Mom and Dad being in the bathroom together in the

    Build anticipation: As your husband is walking out the door in the morning, tell him what you can’t wait to do with him that night. Use code words so your kids won’t understand. The two of you will feel excited all day.

    Recreate your first dates: Bring back the initial lust you felt by revisiting the spots you went to in the beginning of your relationship. Or if you’ve moved since then, at least bring back that level of creativity when you go out. The key is to pay that much attention to your mate.

    Ignore the clock: Stop viewing sex as a nighttime activity; you may be too tired to do it then anyway! Fooling around on a Saturday afternoon while your child takes a nap can be very steamy.

    Get him in a lip lock: Everyday intimate gestures are key to a sizzling sex life  and kissing is the number-one thing that turns women on. Pull him close and say, I adore kissing you.

  • How to experience a working relationship

    Every human craves a working and extraordinary relationship; a phenomenon many desire. Many may, however, question the possibilities of experiencing an extraordinary relationship in a depraved world such as ours. I beg to differ – It is possible! No matter how rotten our society is, extraordinary relationships exist.

    Good things, they say, don’t come easily. To experience extraordinary relationships that could result in a marriage require sacrifices but how many of us are ready to do what it takes to achieve the feat?

    If you desire a working relationship or marriage, there are certain habits you need to inculcate. One of such is speaking favorably of your significance to your partner, especially when they are not there. You should endeavor to desist from uttering negativism about your partner such that if they get to hear of it, it could have adverse effect in your relationship.

    Another habit that should come handy is that everyone in your personal circle should know you are in a relationship and hear more positive than negatives about your relationship, it’s very important you make people aware of your status and also.

    No other couple could say it better than Mr. and Mrs Ogundipe. The couple has been together for over 40 years. They spoke extensively on the subject matter. The under listed are their do’s and don’ts to having a successful relationship:

    1. Be patient with your partner: It’s easy to become snappish or disagreeable when we’re tired or frustrated. Remember, this is someone we love. Therefore, love should always be evident in each communication. Love intensely, passionately and frequently! If all the world needs is love, it’s absolutely the most key ingredient in our relationships. In everything we do, the plan should be to have no regrets. Can you imagine how powerful a relationship could be if we loved like there was no tomorrow?

    2.Ultimately, all we really must do is treat our partner the way we desire to be treated people are pretty much the same we all have feelings that can get hurt, dreams we want supported, and the need to experience an honest and healthy love relationship. Once we have that understanding, we are well on our way to achieving an extraordinary relationship.

    Things we must avoid in a relationship according to the Ogundipes:

    1. Channel your talking energy rightly, not to gossiping but to keeping your partner company.

    2. Do not engage in unnecessary fights and arguments because no one loves a troublesome partner but every man hates women who fight anyhow. So try to control it.

    3. Selfless men hate women who are selfish, who work but plan for their income alone. The abhor women who never share their ideas with their husbands. If you’re a married lady and you do such, soon you’ll be single again.

    4. Foreign children: This goes especially to single ladies! Control yourself before marriage there’s no single husband who will look after kids who belong to other men.

    The Ogundipes also gave the list of things that can improve a relationship:

    1 . Good communication: Always ensure that once in a day, you communicate with your partner, e.g ask how their day is? What they’re doing etc so as not to disconnect

    2. Realistic expectations: Don’t be too demanding for partner, be contented and accept him or her the way they are. A lot of people have mental blueprint of how their partner should be like and end up wreaking the relationship trying to configure your partner to your mental image

    3. Insecurity and trust: Your relationship should be based on a foundation of honesty and trust, because it is the backbone of every relationship. You should be confident of yourself and partner and trust them always even when they lie

    4. Jealousy: You should not be envious of your partner, some relationships fall apart as a result of people not being able to handle their partner’s success. You should always wish your partner better things and carry them along in whatever you do

    5. Always rebrand and improve yourself: At all times make sure that you improve yourself everyday to improve yourself worth and value to improve the quality of your relationship it can be attributed to property ,it can depreciate and appreciate just like property.

    It is my utmost belief that the rules listed above could go a long way to making our relationship work especially as they come from a couple who has been together for several decades. Let’s make our marriage and relationship a blissful one and stay positive that we all can all be EXTAORDINARY in our relationship

     

     

  • ‘I never thought I’d be king’

    ‘I never thought I’d be king’

    The designed crown on the arch entrance into the expansive palace is conspicuous as it adds to the aesthetics of the palace. Engraved on the arch is Olukare’s Palace. The leaves on the big baobab tree at the centre of the market serve as a shade, protecting people from the scorching sun. According to the monarch, Oba Akadiri Momoh, the tree has been there since 1923. The dark in complexion monarch looks younger than his age: Simple and humble with his fly whisk, the royal father appeared in immaculate flowing white gown (agbada) as he walked majestically with his beaded royal staff. He spoke using anecdotes and punctuating them with nuances on how he unexpectedly became the king on his arrival from America in 1978!

    According to him, he never thought he would become a monarch, because when other contestants were warming up, it never crossed his mind until he was invited to come and contest by the “elders” who had consulted the Ifa oracle and asked God to choose the best. “ I did not have the notion, the idea wasn’t in my mind. People just told me sometime before then that if there was a chieftaincy vacancy I would be the one to pick. I didn’t believe that until when I returned from the United States in 1978, people were approaching me from my royal family for the royal stool saying ‘this vacant stool in your royal house why can’t you join them in the contest,?. But I said I did not have the energy, I did not have the capability of struggling, of running up and down. All my people continued advising me. I had a sister who is now late, she financed all the running around from Lagos to Ikare.”

    His growing up

    The Economics graduate of Ohio University, USA said he was brought up by his aunt, a disciplinarian. This, according to him, helped him in life later. “My aunt brought me up. She was a very serious disciplinarian, she was called Mama ‘Deoti, and was junior to my father. She made me. Anytime I was going to school she would give me money for my feeding and warn me not to go to anybody’s house to eat. I was always the first to get home when we finished from the school because if I was late mama was ready to discipline me. Much later, I discovered something. The first salary I got, I brought it to her in Ikare. I told her, “Mama this is my first salary, if you want you can take all. She did not say anything but prayed on the money and gave it back to me. They all liked me in all the places I’ve worked and that is the work of mama.”

    Forced to be baptised

    Though, he was born into a Muslim family, he was forced to become a Christian while at Victory College, Ikare. “When I was in secondary school, I became a Christian, though I was born into a Muslim family. My original name was Akadiri. I was named Saliu Momoh Akadiri. But when we went to Victory College, our principal, Rev. Akinrinle, said we must be baptised, and very many of us were. The baptismal name appeared in my certificate but when I became the Olukare I had to go back to my original Muslim name because we are originally Muslims. We have a soft spot for Christianity. When Babalola, the CAC founder, came here, it was the Olukare who housed him and helped him to establish. When Isaac Lenor came, it was Kabiyesi who first assisted him too.”

    Friendship with the late Fawehinmi

    Oba Momoh during his school days was a friend of the late radical lawyer Chief Gani Fawehinmi, “Yes, I’ knew Gani Fawehinmi, we were friends, we were boys together, and he was a good company at Victory College.” According to the monarch, the late human rights activist, “although was a little bit rascally but sharp. Gani had a friend, two of them were very rascally and they were very good in the class. I think the other boy is also a SAN now. He practised law in Kano. They were good boys. You know when you are in school, when you are young you would say if I had known I would have done this, or done that, it happened to everyone, almost everybody.,”

    Why he broke his marriage vow

    While many monarchs have harem of wives, Oba Momoh did not pray for such. However, due to circumstances he had to bend the rule of one man one wife. “I have two wives now. Before, I had only one but when I became the Oba they said it is untraditional for an Oba to have one wife. I said I was not so much interested in having plenty women. I only married one more just to obey my parents,” he declared.

    Asked to look back and check whether he had made any mistake or the other with his years on the earth, he declared, “I am 75 years old and I can’t remember if I made any mistake because if my parents told me something I obeyed except when as a small boy I went to school to watch football and when I’m back my aunties will spank me.”

    The first day to wear a crown

    On how he felt the first time he wore the royal crown, Oba Momoh exclaimed: “I was firstly uncomfortable. But by and by, I got used to it and it was no more a new thing.”

    When he assumed office a new palace had to be built because the old palace was built in 1900. “When I came to the throne I had no place to entertain my visitors, and it was during the military era when one of our sons who was an Ambassador died in Ikare. The President sent somebody to come and commiserate with us, so the governor came with him to Ikare. They came with an entourage, we sat down for 10 minutes and the place became very hot and I felt very, very uncomfortable. I came out, went in and was disturbed. After all said and done, they left. I now sat down and thought of how I would get money to improve the palace. I prayed and got help. Many good people assisted. And I was able to build a big one where I entertain visitors. Then I had a very small mosque but I said ‘no, we’re Muslims and my grandfather brought Islam to Ikare. I had a sister who was very rich, I talked to her and to some people, and told friends that if I have visitors where would they go and sleep or stay for the night? That was how the new building was erected.”

    On how he manages the town

    Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown, the saying goes. While the monarch did not deny it, he said he leads his community with comfort and with simplicity and with a cool mind. “I always listen before I pronounce my verdict. I soft pedal to carry the whole people along. If somebody has come to lodge a complaint, I would ask him to state his own case and if any one of them is wrong I will say he was wrong and that is one thing I do. The truth is bitter but at the same time I will have to tell it.”

    The monarch said he listens to radio and read newspapers to know what is going on. “When I was young my hobbies were playing football and I used to run. They gave me a nickname. I enjoyed my youth. I don’t harbour any ill-feelings against anybody. I look simple and happy. I don’t put things in mind. I am very straightforward. Whether you abuse my simplicity or not, I take things easy.”