Political Transfer Window In A MONEY-Pulated Economy.

The months to elections, in Nigeria, is usually marred by different antics and shenanigans by politicians, with a desperate move not to loose out in the elections.

In the past few weeks, the Nigerian Political Space has witnessed alignments and realignments, with Politicians jumping out of the sinking A.P.C (All Progressives Congress) ship and shielding from the rain using the umbrella of P.D.P(Peoples Democratic Party).  All these drama are geared towards the 2019 Elections.

Nigeria is a country blessed with natural resources, instead of developing it's human capacity to meet up with the emerging world trends and challenges, the leaders are busy looting the economy of the country dry. 

In 2014, the A.P.C  re-opened the Political transfer window, as it is similar to what we have in the football world. Then, different politicians and Bigwig's of the then ruling party - PDP left for the A.P.C and eventuality chased the largest party in Africa out of power.
The dimension the political transfer has taken is a source of worry, the once adored politicians who decamped to the P.D.P were labeled instantly with different unprintable names by those who felt betrayed.

As it is customary with politicians, especially in a country like Nigeria, their followers have taken over the fight, abusing themselves over the defections. But what they failed to know is that, they are tool in the hands of these politicians, who only fight for self-preservation.

When politicians make move in a transfer window, they are either moving because they are not sure of getting the party tickets or they have fallen out with the leadership of the party.

The recent political transfer move opened up the debate and questioned the ideology of these crop of politicians we have in the country. One politician joins a political party today, he is singing their praises and they are also singing his praises. The moment he moves out of the party, he suddenly realizes that the party is a confused party with no vision for the country. This can be related to what Governor Aminu Tambuwal said when he was addressed his followers, he said all the party promised in its manifesto, it failed to fulfill. He also accused the A.P.C of massive corruption and deepening poverty in the land. This was the party he once cherished and held in high esteem, and at the same time the party he defected to. The same party he joined hands to bury in 2015 election.

You may want to ask why the same party - the P.D.P ?
The excuse some of the defectors was that the P.D.P has rebranded and it has put its house in order.
But has the P.D.P really put its house in order ?
That is another question for another day.


In the aftermath of the 2015 elections, the A.P.C became the majority in the senate, the party leadership wanted it's own chosen candidates to become the leaders of the National Assembly. The man from Kwara went against the party's directives and thus became the Senate President. Saraki's emergence didn't go down well with the leadership of the party. He has since been labeled a villain, he has also seen his own part of prosecution or persecution if you like. He has been a regular visitor to the Code Of Conduct Tribunal (CBT), he won the case. He was also linked to the Offa robbery case. So when Saraki decided to join his colleagues who dumped the ruling A.P.C for his former party - P.D.P, he got more than he bargained for, with A.P.C members and leadership calling on him to resign as the senate President. There has been plot to remove him by the A.P.C senators but since it will take 2/3 of the senate which is 73 to remove him as the senate  President, of which presently, the A.P.C don't have, he remains the senate President.

The Nigerian Political space also witnessed the blockage of both the residence of the senate President and his deputy by the Police on the day leading to the announcement of the defections. In a bid to prevent the defections, the government quickly mobilized the Police to mount the residence of the leaders of the senate.

But in what looks like a coup last week, the D.S.S seized control of the National Assembly, preventing Lawmakers and staffs from gaining entrance into the National Assembly.
But in a U-turn move, the Acting-President, Prof. Yemi  Osinbajo sacked the man at the helm of affairs at the D.S.S, Lawal Daura and appointed another director, claiming the directives to block the National Assembly did not emanate from the government. While the government can keep on denying, it is a truism, that Nigerians knows the brain behind the actions of the D.S.S.
While the action of the D.S.S was condemned by lovers of democracy and freedom home and abroad, it is important that the government of the day, fish out those responsible for that dastardly act in our modern day history.

As I bring this article to an end, I will like to see a country where her Citizens are not moved by the actions and inactions of these politicians and leaders. Where our Politicians cum leaders would allow the interest and development of their people override their own selfish interest.

As we countdown towards the 2019 General elections, Nigerian citizens should keep in mind that politicians whether from the south or not, when it comes to the issues of money and self interest are all the same. And should they be called to kill or spill the blood of their fellow countrymen, they should gladly turn it down.

In this MONEY-PULATED ECONOMY, only love can set us free. When we refuse to become the tool Politicians use to fulfill their own selfish interest and agenda, we create the future that will want.

By Adetayo Omotoyosi Adeolu

omotoyorsiiadeolu@gmail.com

Boys Are Not Stones

When I saw this picture, I remembered how boyhood hurts. How we were planted in the hands of abuse; lost sisters and uncles. How our parents thought we were old enough to man ourselves, to find our way; so they gave us a weak freedom. They gave us the freedom to our doom. The freedom that would kill us later in life. Those pains still remain part of me. The pains of those boy children endangered in the hands of Auntie. Those boy children tampered like broken glasses, strong enough to hold their shattered bodies, thoughts, feelings and emotions together without breaking them; without telling their parents because society stereotyped them. Society foisted heroic names on them.

I wonder why parents always thought we were stronger when the other parts of us seek help and support. I wonder why they take so much consideration in keeping the girl child together. Teaching them how to sit properly. Teaching them how to rebuke a man that touches their body, especially their private parts. Teaching them how to avoid premarital sex. Teaching them how not to go to that boy’s house alone, but the boy child is neglected under the deceptive shroud of self-confidence, the false belief that he has full control of himself. We forget that those boys also have feelings and weaknesses.

We sing more of those girls from paradise than the boys from the ghetto school of hard knocks. Remember, we are all part of the struggle too. We face the same thing that girls face in that lonely room. Auntie and Uncle still stroke us in the dark blind room. They still ask us to plant a kiss on their lips and make us spend hours touching them here and there and watch them groan in an unknown tone. We didn’t tell anyone because if we did, they wouldn’t buy us those Christmas shoes they promised us.

We should be careful whom we send our boys to, whom our boys go visit alone. We should

be careful with home teachers, pastors in the church, Sunday school teachers and those we leave our boys with. The boy child is also prey to Sisters of Christ, the priests and those people we trusted with our lives. They are not stones. 
Boys are not stones, why neglect them to be abused by those lost sisters?

Boys are being raped and brutalized too. They get abused by women old enough to be their mothers but they keep quiet because no one would believe their stories. Because we believe more in the abuse of the girl child than the boy child, why?

Why does the society cry only in defence of the girl child? Lest we forget, the boy child is not a stone. Parents should look into our matters too. Let’s relate this with a family that has a boy and a girl. In the family diagram, the girl is considered more vulnerable in so many more ways than the boy, even though the girl may be older than him. They believe the boy is a man and can take good care of himself. They do not know that as much as he is a boy, he has his own weaknesses weighing him down, but he won’t talk because society taught him that talking makes him a weak man. He is not allowed to cry either because crying reduces him as a man. So, he has learnt to swallow more assaulted bones than his spit.

No one would respect him if he spoke his mind. This is where society also offends the boy child. Society stereotyped him to think he is a superhero, a superman who can take care of himself. Many crazy things happen to boys. We go through severe pains. The government will hear of this and nothing will be done. No imprisonment, no suspension. The priests hurt them. The pastors abuse them, their mothers hit them and their sisters hurt them morally as well as the house help using them also, but no one is saying anything about this. Is there no hope for the boy child in these matters? People don’t really care about what happens to these innocent boys.
We say words like “If anything happens to my daughter;” “Please take care of your sister;” “Protect your sister;” Then, what about the boys? Who takes care of the boys? They are like pastors who pray for others but hope unto God for our every success.

I think that the boy child should be given a voice to speak among his peers, a voice of expression. I think they should be given the chance to explain themselves; the right to see themselves in themselves. They shouldn’t be stereotyped, they should be taught how weak they are and not superhumans.

Boys you are not super humans! Take note, let no one deceive you into believing that.

In as much as they invade our territories and want to have us by all means, we should also defend ourselves. You know when the tale is told, the world will doubt us by saying ‘Women cannot rape or sexually assault a boy;” “How can a boy be raped by a woman?” so, you have to defend your territories. This game is changing every day, and society can’t see it. We talk about the Chibok girls, Dapchi girls and those girls brutalized in the street, yet the boys are not talked about.

I actually observe that parents, especially mothers are just concerned about the girl child losing her virginity and getting pregnant and not worried about the issues of the boy child. They are not worried about the tale that the boy told them about Uncle Ricky removing his pants. They are not moved by the stories they told them about the pastor touching them here and there. Maybe they believed he was praying for them or maybe that Sunday school teacher that took Benny to the toilet and told him he had a big manhood was right saying such things to a boy. These people held in such high esteem are abusing boys, so why do we shy away from them?

Lots of little boys are suffering in silence in the street. They can’t say a thing about the

dangers they face every day. Even if they speak out, who will believe them? How many people believe boys can be raped too or sexually abused on any occasion? Maybe you will understand better when an adult male opens up to you about the horrors of their childhood. This has been my thought and will also be my message and the consciousness I exude. We should try not to keep fostering society’s mistake by raising one and neglecting another in the name of manhood. Don’t raise only a girl and not the boy because you think he is bold enough to stand alone.

I will now relate to my own childhood experience. I grew up in the ghetto town of Aba where survival was by who you are, how brave you are to defend your sister’s body from being defiled by men and boys. Mother always told us to protect our sisters. That was the ultimate role of a boy at that age. There were boys around. Boys that could take advantage of her. Boys that could harm her. Boys that could teach her bad things. So, she taught us how to defend our sisters, not ourselves, because she believed that our sisters were weaker emotionally and therefore could not protect themselves; but we boys can. We planted those beliefs in our mind. We fought harder so that we would not disappoint the mother and father. We have to make them proud. I fought too even though I was not that strong. But I needed to prove to my parents that I could protect my sister even though I was so weak to defend myself at that time.

There was one day when a friend of mine was beaten by a girl in school. He came back home and told his parents what happened. The whole house broke into elegies. It was torn into pieces and its fragments shattered into dust. The spiders went into hiding, the lizards were afraid too. Everywhere was calm and silence ruled our mind.

His father got angry. He shouted, danced here and there to his ability. He asked my friend where his hands were when the girl beat him up. I was there. I was afraid to explain what really happened to them. My friend was too afraid to speak. The father went into his room, got a rope, tied his hands and legs and began to beat him. His mother did not help the matter. She was supportive of his father. They beat the hell out of him. I helped him escape.

As I grew older, I tried to relate this issue with being inhuman and the things that have to do with boys and girls but failed. I tried to relate it to me as a man but I could not get a reasonable answer to all the questions bothering my mind. They were not abstract things. They were things we see day after day. A wife beating her husband and people laugh it away, a man beating his wife, it becomes violence against women, it makes the headlines in the dailies. Then, what is the name given to the former 

Is it a sin for a girl to beat up a boy of her age or one she is older than? Are we that strong emotionally and physically that nothing can defeat us? Or is it culture or tradition that made it so? Why do boys have to suffer this much and society doesn’t care about them?

The majority of these things happen everywhere. We think there is no way a boy can show his weakness to the world. They look up to the boy child as the firstborn of the family so he is expected to bury his father upon his death.

Boys are not stones, they are flesh and blood just like their counterpart.

by John Chizoba Vincent 

chizobavincent@gmail.com

Remarkable Night

The story began the night she died. 

"You really need to hear my story, right?", she asked, "alright, here it comes". 

It drizzled that night. With a slight prod, the wooden door creaked open. The room was dimly lit by the bedside lamp. It took me few brisk steps to get to where she laid while avoiding the yellow vomit pooled on the wooden floor. The chemist had assured me that the drug would stabilize her condition for some time. But what he didn’t tell me was where and how I could scrounge around for the surgery he spoke of. I scooped small water into a calabash and tapped her to wake. 

Her legs were cold to my touch and her teeth had stopped chattering from the cold. I put my ears to her chest. No heart beat . Then, I knew mother was gone without a goodbye. That night, I cried until my eyes were dried of all the tears.

The next day, I was standing by the side of a mound of loamy soil. Tears rolling down my cheeks filled my chattering mouth. There was no shoulder to share my burden. I watched her corpse, wreathed in white sackcloth, as it descended down to the belly of the grave. 

My uncle took me in. But each passing night in his house came with a fresh pain and agony. 

Was it the pain of my loss? 

He came in every night with a rim of wrapper tied to his chubby waist. He would tell me that no one should know of it. He actually called it “Our little secret.” He threatened to kill me the day I would leak the secret and warned that this secret must follow both of us to our graves and I would wonder how many of such secrets had followed mother to her grave, because mother had shed a lot of tears on his account. Those nights, I would beg him in between sobs, but he would set a deaf ears.

“You are my Uncle. Please don’t do this,” I told him the first night he came.

“This is one of the good gifts uncles can give to their nieces,” was the reply. 

He would crawl into the bed, rip off my panties and would push himself inside me. In futility, I had tried to nudge him aside with my tiny muscles. Tears would pull down my eyelids, while he moaned with each thrust. I would feel a sharp pain running through my spines as his monstrous penis rammed my young vagina. 

Then, came a night –the night that would birth my freedom, the night that would change my story. He ambled in and walked into the bed. His eyes shone lustfully. He patted my legs and I didn’t bother to stop him as usual. I needed to keep him happy, because I knew that the happiest point of a man was his weakest. The moans and erotic air he breathed must have so blinded him that he didn’t see the knife shimmered as I tugged it out of the pillow. I gently sank the blade deep into his neck and immediately gagged down the wails with the pillow. I held to the position as I watched him writhe in pain, until he dropped still. My blouse drenched in his blood. 

“So, how did you find yourself in the prison?” one of the inmates asked. 

I submitted myself to the law. 

 

 #CHA_writes

by  Chukwuebuka Harrison Aninze

The Confession.

Appearing at the confessional every Saturday became a norm the moment I joined the altar servers. Bro Ikenna, the president of the altar servers in his husky voice would say,

"You have to appear before the Lord unblemished and sinless like the spotless lamb if you are to serve at his altar", so we would line-up to make our confessions before the Priest.

Fr Silas, with whom confession is always short and simple is our favorite. In our usual manner we would start with

"Bless me Father,  for I have sinned" and then rush our sins as though we're speaking in tongues. Fr Silas who is of Ijebu origin and doesn't understand Igbo will ask that, as penance, we say The Lord's Prayer 3 times, Hail Mary 3 times and the doxology (Glory Be To The Father) 3 times, while he says the prayers of absolution. With Fr Silas, I haven't stayed more than three minutes at the confessional. As with him, confession ends in a jiffy. 

Mother would always remind me on Friday night about the confession for Saturday morning, and she would always say,

"You have to be contrite for offending our Lord who is ever ready to forgive you".

I never really appeared remorseful maybe because I go to confessions without knowing what to confess.

The morning mass of this Saturday became unusual as Fr Silas was celebrating the mass with another priest. Just before the final blessing Fr Silas said

"The Provincial superior has deemed it necessary to give us an associate Priest to help in the pastoral duties of this parish".  So immediately after the mass, Fr Jude was at the confessional . 

My friend Kenechukwu, whom I always cherished our discussion of the penance given after confession, was to clear the streak as the first person to attend confession from the new priest

Kenechukwu had stayed beyond our normal 3 minutes and it was already ten minutes.  I was confused.  I tried to think of any other sin Kenechukwu would have committed, apart from lying, fighting and insulting people . I was still in this state when he came out sweating and looking so confused. I rushed to him and in teary eyes he said

"Is it not the same thing I usually say to Fr Silas and he will ask me to say, The Lord's Prayer 3 times, Hail Mary 3 times and the doxology (Glory Be To The Father) 3 times as penance, I said to the new Priest and he asked that I do the Stations of the Cross for seven days and it must be inside the church". 

That was how, with sweaty palms, I left the church to be blemished and full of sin on Sunday.

By Ozor Onyebuchi
buchizzhenry@gmail.com

Odomagana

“Odomagana is a spirit,” they would say

He sat in Papa’s favourite sitting spot in the small hut, clad in a white singlet. He looked at me frowning. “Do you need a hard kick in the ass before you will go and bring the remaining oranges?” my uncle asked before he buried his squinted eyes in the orange he was peeling. 

What is this man even saying? I muttered under my breath. Does it mean that his mind could not read the possibility of Ikebunekpe lurking behind the drum of water opposite the orange tree? or Eveghuri prowling around the stacked mould of blocks very close to the orange tree? 

It was the season for the masquerades and the two masquerades –Ikebunekpe and Eveghuri are commonly known to chase children around with long whips. If I had feared anything about them, it was their long whips and their cackles. The long tortuous mark the whip had left on Chiamaka's back rented a space in my memory. Okechukwu, Mcdon and Christian still bore the fearful marks too. Masquerades are regarded as spirits in these parts and if a spirit could flog a human, the marks the whip would leave on the human’s skin should be spiritual marks and I wasn’t ready to bear such marks. 

I stared at papa's face, searching for any trace of creases or twitches, any sign at all to show he was not serious. His demeanour was stoic. He wasn’t joking. Then I wondered why I didn’t follow mama to her friend’s place.  I wouldn't be facing this imminent danger had I gone with mama. My eyes fought not to look at him again. Any eye contact would poke his memory. Stretching my left hand, I snatched off the floor, an orange that had glided over to where I sat, my heart still beating with fear. I began to fumble with the orange, but it didn’t make him stop. He warned me again and this time he almost pounced on me like a rabid dog. 

I clucked before jumping up from the wooden stool, picked and emptied the little steel bowel beside him, then ambled outside. It was ghost quiet. My heart fluttered with each step that took me closer to the tree. The fact that the heat from the orange sun was still gentle to the skin, and there wasn’t any sign that it would drizzle made it more precarious. It was only the scorching heat of the sun or harsh rainfall that could keep the masquerade off the road. I often wondered how possible it was for a spirit to get drenched in water or burnt by the heat of the sun. I kept watchful eyes as I walked slowly closer to the orange tree, but started from time to time, looking over my shoulder to make sure no one was trailing me.

I got to the orange tree and there wasn’t any masquerade in sight. Heaving a sigh of relief, I threw my little steel bowel to the ground, squatted down and began to pick and drop the oranges into the bowl. One, two and three oranges picked. As I stretched my left hand to pick the fourth orange, a strange hand appeared from behind the tree and grabbed my hand with the orange. The strange hand became Ikebunekpe when I raised my eyes. I felt goosebumps flooding my skin. 

Even though there was vigour in my scream, I am sure it couldn't have risen above its loud cackle. In futility, I tried to pull out my hand. As I struggled furiously, my mouth got closer to its hand, and my teeth sank into its skin, making it flinch. Letting out a loud gasp of pain, it lost its grip. Picking up the steel bowl, I flung it at the masquerade and it landed squarely with a thud on its forehead. Its staggering bought me enough time to dive into the bush. As I ran deeper into the heart of the bush, my eyes quickly scanned the bush for any possible prowling masquerade, while I paid little or no attention to the sharp edges of dead grasses jabbing into my barefoot. When it was apparent that the ‘spirit’ must have disappeared, I paced as fast as possible back to the hut. 

When I narrated my ordeal that evening, they couldn’t help but laugh at me. 

That evening, my other Uncle came back with a wound on his forehead. The wound was fresh and conspicuous. It was like a pebble stuck under the skin of his forehead. When I asked him, he said it was an accident but he wouldn’t say the kind of accident it was. Our eyes kept locking that evening and each time they did, I would feel a pang of guilt. His eyes never stopped communicating this message, “See what you have done to me.”

Since he was never going to admit the fact that I almost blinded him, I kept my sympathy to myself, after all, I hit Ikebunekpe who was supposed to be a spirit in the face, not my uncle.

“Odomagana is a spirit,” they would say. 😂😂😂 

#CHA_writes.

By Chukwebuka Harrison Aninze