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Tag: Jennifer Joseph

  • Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at 40: Ten inspiring quotes you’ll like

    Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at 40: Ten inspiring quotes you’ll like

    Award-winning Nigerian Author, Novelist, and writer of short stories and fictions, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Friday marked her 40th birthday.

    Born on 15th September, 1977 and hails from Abba, Anambra state in Nigeria, the veteran writer has received numerous awards both home and abroad.

    Her novels include Purple Hibiscus, Half of A Yellow Sun, Americanah, etc. To celebrate one of Nigeria’s finest writers, below are 10 awesome and inspiring quotes from Chimamanda!

    1. If you don’t understand, ask questions. If you’re uncomfortable about asking questions, say you are uncomfortable about asking questions and then ask anyway.

    2. We have to smash and dismantle the way we have constructed masculinity. I think it’s toxic. What if we taught boys to be ashamed of not being able to communicate, or be in touch with their emotions? What if vulnerability was something to be proud of? The idea of controlling women’s bodies because men need to be protected from something they can’t control – what we are really saying is that men are sub-human. Masculinity as we have constructed it is terrible for men and women.

    3. I’ve always been uninterested in the question of whether a woman can really have it all. Because it is a question about domestic work – domestic work is the woman’s domain, and we’re asking can she do it and then have a job? I was speaking at a school in DC a while ago and a young man asked me “How do you manage married life, home life and your work?” And I said to him “If I answer your question, I want you to promise me that the next time a man comes here to speak you will ask him the same thing. Societies are not structured to support women so we give them this burden and then say can a woman have it all? It’s really fucked up.

    4. The best novels are those that are important without being like medicine; they have something to say, are expansive and intelligent but never forget to be entertaining and to have character and emotion at their centre.

    5. I write from real life. I am an unrepentant eavesdropper and a collector of stories. I record bits of overheard dialogue.

    6. Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture.   – We should all be feminists.

    7. There are some things that are so unforgivable that they make other things easily forgivable.       – Half of a Yellow Sun

    8. There are people who think that we cannot rule ourselves because the few times we tried, we failed, as if all the others who rule themselves today got it right the first time. It is like telling a crawling baby who tries to walk, and then falls back on his buttocks, to stay there. As if the adults walking past him did not all crawl, once.                                      – Purple Hibiscus

    9. “Show a people as one thing, only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.”                          – TeDex

    10. Racism should never have happened and so you don’t get a cookie for reducing it

    • Americanah

    Happy Birthday chimamanda Ngozi Adichie!!!

  • Community to hold Akugbe festival

    Community to hold Akugbe festival

     

    The entire people of Idumowu Ebelle Community of Igueben local government area, Edo state, have expressed their readiness to host her first ever Akugbe festival.

    Chairman of the planning committee, Edmund Oviawe, said the event is scheduled to hold on September 30, 2017 at Chief Ezomon’s Arena in the community.

    According to Oviawe, the Akugbe festival is aimed at bringing sons and daughters of Ebelle community together in a festive mood, while also providing opportunity for them to socialize and exchange pleasantries.

    He expressed confidence that the event will further foster unity and development of the community.

    The festival will be rounded off with a Thanksgiving service on October 1, 2017, in all the churches domiciled in the community.

  • Who said Nigerian youths are unemployable?

    Who said Nigerian youths are unemployable?

    Mary Mcleod Bethune once said: “We have powerful potentials in our youths, and we must have the courage to change old ideas and practices so that we may direct their power toward good ends”.

    There is no denial that Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa with one of the largest populations of young people in the world, having about 33,652,424 members with a lot of innate potentials and resources. Unfortunately, they have been described paradoxically as a ‘demographic majority’ and a ‘resource minority’ in the country.

    They’re often regarded as unproductive, lazy and useless to the economy, and this assertion has lingered for so long that the youth are beginning to believe they are unproductive, unreliable and straight up lazy fellows.

    The advent of technological innovations and advancements in the 21st century has been blamed by several researchers, scholars, schools of thoughts, as the primary cause of the unproductivity and unemployability of an average Nigerian youth.

    Lots of scholarly articles and journals have been published on how Nigerian youth are unemployable, unproductive and incapacitated in the country and people hardly criticize or take a stand against these works because they believe the points are valid and the assertion is true, but contrary to popular belief, this is very wrong!

    In furtherance, a popular adage–you can’t put new wines in old bottle. The youth are the new wine of the society and they are always crop-fitted into the old bottles of the Nigerian Educational system and at the end of the day, they still take the blame for their unproductivity and ineptitude.

    According to statistics from the British Council, since 2002, the number of Nigerians being educated in the UK increased by over 75% and that figure was generated in 2010. Thus, it can be expected that the percentage is higher given the continued dilapidation of the country’s education system.

    Most of these young people running away from the country have become successful in their diverse fields abroad. So, who is to blame?

    The most recent Census Bureau study reveals that African immigrants have the most success in the American higher education system Nigerians appear to be especially, successful when it comes to attaining advanced degrees. The data shows that 17% of all Nigerians in the country have a master’s degree, and 4% have a doctorate. To put that in perspective, the same data reveals that only 8%of native-born whites hold master’s degrees, and 1% have earned doctorates.

    Why are our youth abroad doing so well? If Nigerian youth are truly unproductive, unemployable and lazy, how are they able to compete favourably with their counterparts abroad when they get there?

    They’re perceived to be unemployable because the nation is deplorable! Let’s take a look at the number of graduates poured into the labour market every year, Over 500,000! All these people go into the labour market in search of jobs, and quite a good number of them graduated with fairly good grades.

    What then is the problem? They blame it on lack of skills and talents, when they hardly made provisions for skill acquisitions in their educational system.
    They don’t know because they were not taught!

    The youth are agile, easily adapt to situations and are always ready to proffer solutions when need be. They have greater mental strength than their predecessors; they’re seen in most sectors of the economy using their technological, communication and marketing skills to rebuild the broken walls of our economy

    The youths are the brains behind the technological progress in Nigeria. They are the cyber Lords; the political activists and campaign managers, the industrial labourers, the marketing managers, etcetera, of the nation yet they’re called unemployable!

    They’re found in almost every sector; some of them don’t have a good training base and are subjected to learning these skills in a few months – what should have been incorporated in the school’s curriculum.

    Many Nigerian youths are grounded in different skills acquired through apprenticeship, education, observation and teaching which does not take very long and they become professionals at it.

    When harnessed, this population brings into life, goods that satisfy everyday needs although most times, they lack good manufacturing equipment for mass production.

    It can be deduced that the problem of the so-called unemployability of Nigerian youths lies not with the youth, but the leadership of the country. Perhaps they don’t want tomorrow to have leaders.

    Consequently, former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said it all, saying: “the youths constitute Nigeria’s only hope for a real future, if we want a real future, we should never look down on our youth”.

  • How did Nigeria exit recession?

    How did Nigeria exit recession?

    Nigeria’s economy, which entered into recession for the first time in two decades in 2016,has finally exit the period of recession in one year.

    According to National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Wednesday, Agriculture and manufacturing were the two key sectors that rescued Nigeria’s economy from recession in the second quarter of 2017.

    The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) report which was  released on Tuesday by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed that Nigeria has exited recession with positive growth of 0.55 per. Agriculture recorded stronger positive growth of 3.01 per cent during the period.

    The NBS identified crop production as the major driver of growth in the agriculture sector.The growth in agriculture and manufacturing is gradually narrowing the gap between oil and non-oil GDP.

    The report showed that in real term, the Non-oil GDP contributed 99.11 per cent of GDP. The report showed that oil GDP hit 1.64 per cent in second quarter of 2017, up from -11.63 per cent in second quarter of 2016 and -15.40 per cent in the first quarter of 2017 while the non-oil GDP grew at 0.45 per cent, up by 0.83 per cent points from the record of the first quarter of 2016.

    Manufacturing grew for the second consecutive quarter in 2017 to stand at 0.64 per cent compared to 1.36 per cent in first quarter of 2017 and -3.36 per cent in second quarter of 2016.

    Trade also aided the exit from recession as its growth contracted from -3.08 per cent recorded in first quarter of 2017 to -1.62 per cent in the second quarter of 2017.

    Analysis of the report also showed that finance, insurance, electricity, gas, steam, air-conditioning supply and other services also aided growth of the overall GDP.

    Mining and quarrying also contributed to the positive GDP as they grew by 1.65 per cent in the second quarter, pushing up the growth of the non-oil sector.

    Some experts said this may not be unconnected with the federal government’s policies in revamping agriculture such as promoting local cultivation of rice, tomatoes and other agricultural produce.