The Nation Newspaper

Tag: hatchet

  • Bury the love hatchet

    Folarin and Ndidi have been dating for about three years. Each time one of their friends sends an invitation to their wedding or bachelor’s or spinster’s eve, her heart skips. This time around, it was Biodun’s bachelor’s eve, and Folarin kept the details from her. But, fortunately for her, she got the news from Biodun’s girlfriend because they were close. She found her way to the venue and found him with another companion.

    Cheated? Well, if there was another word that could take care of her feelings, this wasn’t quite appropriate. She moved nearer and gave the gal a beating of a life time. The whole party and attention shifted to her and on the spot, Biodun told her it was really over. “Now that you know that it isn’t you that I love, then I can have some peace.”

    What could she really do now? Perhaps it was better to go back to the drawing board and bury the love hatchet. If she got another opportunity to talk with him, they would try to figure out what went wrong and what they could do to get their love back on track again.

    Wait a minute! Haven’t they been talking about this same matter before? As a matter of fact, the talks actually made her upset and even angry at times because his arguments were always unrealistic. But then she persisted because she felt if they could talk things through and make him realise how much she still cared for and loved him, then he may just change this terrible attitude.

    That was not all. Even your friends and family had intervened at different times and it all turned out that you were doing the right things and that if he wasn’t listening, opening up, and “getting it”… then he was the one to blame. That he was the one being selfish and immature.

    Naturally, some of these other reasons made her feel a little bit better but it was only for a moment. It still didn’t explain why, despite everything she was doing to improve herself and their relationship, he was still getting more and more distant, difficult and just wanted to end things with her.

    Sometimes, it is possible to make a miscalculation based on your intuition. This way, you are likely to ruin a great relationship because you did the right thing at the wrong time. Of course, there is nothing wrong with following your instinct, the only difference is to understand where and how to apply it.

    For a number of ladies, therefore, you discover that instead of using this intuition to their benefit, such people actually end up shooting themselves in the foot and destroying what would have been a marvellous relationship.

    But there are times, when what you have is not worth expending precious energy on. The heart that you have fallen helplessly in love with is actually a counterfeit, an adulterated version of what you dreamed of. It may also be that you are not totally ignorant of the antics but you just want to hold on thinking that things would sort themselves out with time.

    Sadly, some women get so caught up in the mindset that “he will change” once they are married and he would fit into the arrangement with time. But most times, it doesn’t really turn out this way.

    For Bimpe who has found 60 per cent of her requirement in her man, it still can be a hell of a time. “The same laid back demeanour and quiet disposition that my sweetheart possesses and the reason I fell helplessly for him is the same laid back demeanour and quiet disposition that sometimes work my last nerves at times,” she recollects.

    In every relationship, it is important to spell out the terms and understand the personality you are dealing with from the outset. This would let you know whether it is better to continue or make a u-turn if it is only going to end in tears.

    If you do not get off a stressful emotional train, then you may crash with the train. Many get caught up in trying to mould and perfect things even when it is obvious that they are never going to go far together.

    It is better to let your woman or man be who they are….flaws and all. The one thing you need to know is that you love unconditionally with not only all the person’s good sides but with all the bad as well.

    We also need to remember that men think differently from women, especially when it comes to why they do the things they do in a relationship (s).

    “I am going on my sixth relationship and have been with this current boyfriend for seven months. At the beginning, I liked what I saw and it looked like a dream come true.” But gradually, she began to discover another side of this emotional story and at the moment she is at a crossroads. “He stammers, but I didn’t see it as a problem because he was always smiling and happy. But when I got closer and we got used to one another, I realised that he always got angry if I didn’t quickly understand what he was saying while stammering. At such moments, he could be really difficult and I wondered how I was going to cope with such moods in future.”

    Well, she needs to make up her mind on time. This may actually make or mar their relationship and she needs to be sure that it is something that she can cope with in future.

  • Aliko Dangote, Abdulsamad Rabiu bury the hatchet

    Aliko Dangote, Abdulsamad Rabiu bury the hatchet

    The strength of friendship is not determined by how close people are when the going is good. The depth of it does not also depend on how long they have known each other. When quarrels ensue and pride intervenes, when comradeship goes missing and trust threatens to disappear, that is when we get the true measure of a friendship.

    Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote and his equally wealthy friend Abdulsamad Rabiu have both passed the test in flying colours. Dangote, the famous billionaire, and Rabiu, the silent billionaire, have been friends for years. And over the years, the two northerners have crossed the threshold of normal friendship to become true comrades in soul and spirit. But for a while, rancour and bitterness ensued from some conflicts of interest, leading many to speculate that they had gone their separate ways.

    But like life itself, solid friendship is full of surprises. While supporters of the Chairman of BUA Group and Dangote were fighting themselves in defence of their idols, the two men at the centre of it had apparently reconciled in private, realising that nothing is as precious as friends that are closer than brothers. It was not until the birthday gig held by Femi Otedola in honour of Dangote’s 60th birthday that it became clear to the public that Rabiu and Aliko had mended fences.

    Kano-born Rabiu strolled into the occasion and chatted excitedly with the celebrant. They even took pictures together, leaving their mutual friends who had expected a standoff with pleasant surprise. In the time they spent together, the two men were like brother-birds making up for lost time.

  • Tribe producers bury hatchet

    PRODUCERS of the movie, Tribe, Ifeanyi Onyeabor and his partner, Steve James have decided to let go of all altercations that had forestalled the release of the movie.

    This is coming after the 2011 confinement of Onyeabor by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) which they ascribed to a breakdown of communication between both of them.

    “I blame the problem on breakdown of communication between us. I was new in the industry and naturally reacted the way someone would react when third parties come to tell him that he is about to lose his investment. Luckily after everything, I discovered that Ifeanyi actually meant well, and his lawyer and my lawyer sat down and agreed to withdraw the matter from the EFCC. Ifeanyi is not a fraudster,” James stated.

    The trial lasted three years before it was eventually struck out for want of diligent prosecution on the 26th of May 2014. The case went through 3 different judges, before it was struck out by Justice Ipaye of the Ikeja Division of the Lagos High Court, according to information.

    Appreciating the film, Tribe, Steve James, said it has the potential to be an all-time favourite film from Africa, stressing that the storyline, plot and technical details of the film will certainly serenade the local and foreign film communities.

    Tribe which commenced recording in 2010 in Ghana, employed the services of actors and crew members from eight African countries and Jamaica after a 3-nation tour for auditions.

    Last year, in Texas USA, the movie clinched four awards including the ‘Outstanding Film Producer of the Year’, at the Extraordinary People’s Award, which the filmmaker (fondly called John Woo) promptly dedicated to his governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State.

  • Buhari,Tinubu and hatchet men

    The piece “Buhari beware of Tinubu” in Daily Sun September 2, comes from the depleting arsenal of the forlorn amalgamation known as the PDP. At least we can say that the newspaper has remained faithful. It was propaganda vehicle of the PDP prior to the election and has decided to stick to that role.

    This article can be cited as an exemplar of graveyard journalism, its author an unabashed necromancer. For he disinters and romances old lies and falsehoods that have been investigated and buried because they were unfounded. No person so publicly and fervently revives old lies to express new truths. The author’s motive shall not be found in the codex of honesty and fairness. The purpose is as murky as the PDP and the former government it led.

    Nothing these people do is straight. The arrows they shoot are crooked; the bow they use is warped. Nothing they say can be taken at face value.  Every time they speak, they increase their inventory of lies by at least one per word spoken. While in office and with all the power of state at their disposal, all they could do was break the nation while defaming our collective intelligence by telling us all was getting better by the day. Instead of leading the nation to fine pastures, they led us into a dark cul-de-sac. Now they have the gall to castigate Bola Tinubu in order to distract the people from all the wrongs they have done and the money they squandered. Had they governed the nation as well as the APC’s progenitors governed Lagos, Nigeria would be a much better place.  They know this. More importantly, the people know it.

    In the article, a so-called guest columnist accuses Tinubu of having amassed an unimaginable fortune. The writer claims that Tinubu cannot be part of any progressive change and that President Buhari must disassociate himself from the former Lagos governor. This author is the latest to ply a transparently slanted and incredible theme that seems to have become a psychological life rope to the PDP and its mercenaries.  “If we can only get rid of Tinubu” goes their salacious dialogue.

    Implicit in this sinister plot is the belief that driving a wedge between President Buhari and Tinubu will not only take Tinubu out of the picture, it will leave President Buhari politically isolated and vulnerable.  They seek to politically kill a progressive political actor in Tinubu and Buhari’s progressive government with one regressive stone.  We could not reasonably expect a strategy any less treacherous from this group and they did not fail to live down to our low expectations of them.

    None of the accusations made against Tinubu are new. They are a rehash of a rehash. All of these things have been investigated and discovered to be acidic lies. The writer tried to explain away the case that the Jonathan administration opened but lost against Tinubu. But the writer could not intelligently tell why the Jonathan team would have let Tinubu off the hook if they had incriminating, potentially incarcerating evidence against him. When they took him to trial, they were acutely aware of his political stand and the threat it posed to their hold on office.

    They knew him to be the prime strategist behind the political merger that became the APC that would eventually unseat the PDP in the 2015 elections.  While no person is indispensable, the APC would not have been established with the form and capacity it assumed had Tinubu been sidelined.  The history of the elections might have been different and more beneficial to the PDP incumbent. Jonathan and his team knew this.

    With so much at stake, there is no way that the Jonathan team would not have closeted Tinubu if they had the chance to sideline him with criminal culpability. They would have relished the chance because it would have come as close to sealing the election as any one singular act could. The decision not to pursue Tinubu did not result from a largess of spirit. The decision was based on the realization that they lacked evidence to pursue the contrived suit.

    In any case many of the allegations made in the hatchet piece are already issues of libel in the law court against AIT and similar organizations.

    That this story appears now is predictable. For the last few weeks, the regressives have tried their hardest to cause acrimony within the APC, publishing fiction that Tinubu was at war with important APC figures, particularly in the South-west. Try as they might, those lies could not gain traction. Facts and common sense rebutted the machinations.  The APC stalwarts were too wise to take the bait. Having exhausted that approach, the provocateurs quickly switched to see if they could pit President Buhari and Asiwaju Tinubu against each other.  The attempts to tarnish Tinubu’s relationship with the President and with other APC stalwarts have been recurring tactics pulled from the PDP’s bag of tricks.

    Having destroyed their own party from within, they now seek to destroy the APC. The observations we can make about them is that they excel at failure and are creative in destroying things. By their wiles, we know them. By the results their conduct has produced in Nigeria, we reject them.

    Overripe with lies and falsehood, the article says more about its author than about Tinubu. The writing is a sad testimony to barrenness of the PDP. The party is slowly disintegrating before our eyes. Yet, they stubbornly refuse to change their ways. Like thief gravediggers they venture into the cemetery in broad daylight to dig up old, refuted calumny and defamation.  As the opposition in an open democracy, they have free and wide latitude to offer alternative policies recommendations and a different vision for the nation. They can’t take advantage to this option because they could not produce one credible new idea if the whole lot of them gathered for a year of deliberations.  After all they did not do it in 16 years of blatant misrule.

    We know now that the regressive conservatives who comprise the PDP and its allies are a stubborn brew. Their stubbornness so deeply envelopes them that it has affixed itself to them as terminal blindness. They refuse to see what is plain to all others.  They lost the election because the people rejected their policies and the corrupt, mean way they implemented them.

    These blind men now go thrashing about feverishly, trying to engage a battle already lost. They boast that they shall make the government and governing party quake. However, their desperation is palpable. While they rudely hector at the democratic procession passing them by, deep down they know their voice is weakening; they themselves are but apparitions, fading as a new and progressive political economy takes shape despite their futile efforts to halt it.

    Try as he might to ridicule the President Buhari and Tinubu, the author of this piece merely showed the bankruptcy of his own mind and of those who asked him to sign his name to public libel and false witness. Instead of being aware of Tinubu, they ought to be aware of the hole they have dug. It appears they are close to falling into it.

    – Dare is the Media Adviser/Chief of Staff to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu