Nigeria on A Geek's Life

For Light

Fri, 16 Oct 2020 19:53:00 +0000

Because we really need to #EndSARS #EndSWAT and end whatever silk purse is being made out of the sow’s ear that is that organization. I make no claims whatsoever to this image.

\\\*

The shadow of a long, dire night
has lingered over us, the weight
of the might of the ones who swore
to serve, and to protect, seared into
the small of our backs by their whips
and their boots, the air heavy
with the stench of the dread
which drenches everything
in their wake.

On Returning to the City of Red Earth

Mon, 04 May 2020 18:18:19 +0000

With NaPoWriMo done and dusted for this year, I’m getting the chance to catch up on other stuff. The fifth (and penultimate) assignment for the Creative Non-Fiction Course I started in February was to describe a city and the feelings it engendered in us during our last visit. Here goes:

\\\*

In my more nostalgic moments, I call her the City of Red Earth, but that is as far away as possible from what I feel as I drag my bags towards the check-in desk ahead of heading back out there. The last time, H had just passed, and the three weeks which followed were consumed by the busyness of dealing with the dead. Everyone I tell about this upcoming trip shares cautionary tales; of the power industry grinding to a halt, the spiralling crime rates, and the rapidly disintegrating roads. Not to seem too dismissive, I smile and nod at their concerns whilst inwardly telling myself I’ll do a good job of passing; after all my pidgin English – lightly accented as it is – is passable.

Weekly Photo Challenge - Heritage

Thu, 18 May 2017 08:19:03 +0000

A few hundred years of Bini history on display a few thousand miles away in the National Museum of Scotland. #Heritage.

Weekly Photo Challenge - Danger

Wed, 03 May 2017 17:10:34 +0000

For the challenge, Danger. Rope Access inspections.. #Offshore

#22. The Curious Case of the Unseen President

Wed, 26 Apr 2017 17:05:27 +0000

Speculations about the President’s health - fuelled by an extended medical leave and missed meetings - are now cleared up. He is to rule from home. #Resolved.

– Image Source: PM News Nigeria

#21. The Quintuplet Solution

Tue, 25 Apr 2017 17:31:56 +0000

Moved by the Uduehis’ quintuplet problem EFAB have delivered a three bedroom house, a promise made by the Federation’s Head of Service, ostensibly in faith.

#19. That Dino Memoir...

Sun, 23 Apr 2017 17:57:00 +0000

With a foreword written by the Nigerian Senate President who is in court on corruption related charges, Dino’s memoirs chronicle his life of fighting corruption.

#3 - A Matter of Interpretation

Thu, 06 Apr 2017 17:26:36 +0000

Though Mo and P both pilfered stuff, their ends could not be more diverse. For his hard work he earned six strokes, For hers, apologies.

For Dame J and Mohammed who though both in possession of items of doubtful provenance, receive different rewards. Image Source Unsplash/Claire Anderson

Nigeria @52

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 04:07:50 +0000

Three years ago, I was really bitter about my Nigeria experience. Not a lot had changed since then, and arguably the country in general is in worse shape with a President more content to remain in power than effect change from the looks of it, and committing gaffes by the dozen… Sigh.

Seasons of discontent, a Nigerian wedding and other musings

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 15:00:05 +0000

Although it is only September, there has been a certain nippiness to the last few Aberdonian mornings. If I believed the weather app on my phone – and the state of my ears when my brisk twenty minute walk ends with my bum at my office desk suggests that this is the case - it has barely been warmer than 7 deg C on each of the last few mornings I have walked in to work. Besides the early morning chill, fall has remained frustratingly true to type; too warm to warrant breaking out the full shebang of a knee length winter coat, but yet too cold to be out and about with only a wind breaker for protection. If how many people already sport winter coats is anything to go by, I’m up there in the upper 10% in the hardiness stakes. When it slips out in an unguarded moment of banter with my mother, she thinks it is silly. I suspect all it will take to prove her right is coming down with the flu, if history is any judge, a clogged nose awaits me in the not too distant future.

Sunday delights, deconstructing the Nigerian conundrum and difficult work moments

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 04:32:11 +0000

An altogether forgettable weekend - and at my age they all are - is bookended by a pit stop at Union Square for lunch with a friend of a friend. A random conversation a couple of weeks ago about (yet another) mutual friend and my lack of proactivity had ended up in a challenge of sorts being issued in my direction. Three phone calls later - with a few text messages thrown in - I end up making my way up the stairs towards the safe bet that is Nandos for a quick bite and chat. I arrive early - knowing Union Square, getting a table can be a hassle on sunny Sunday afternoons - the added advantage being that I get to see her first, and the satisfaction that she fits the image I have of her in my head. We order simple food - lime and herb flavoured chicken with a mixed leaf salad for me and a ratatouille for her and bottomless drinks and make small talk over the course of an hour and a half. All told it is a pleasant afternoon, and but for the fact that I have dodgy genes, and family history I would already be inventing scenarios involving white picket fences and 2.1 kids in my head. :) Given the choice, I would most certainly like an encore by all accounts.

0. Postscript

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 17:00:55 +0000

I struggled to not slip into an overly pessimistic, dystopian view of Nigeria with all its troubles. In the few intervening years I have been away, the Nigerian tragedy has hit close home. As with most other people, it turned out that the Dana air crash had claimed a fairly recent acquaintance of my father’s as it did a couple of friends of friends of Sister #1. It also transpired that she - whether by some quirk of fate, divine orchestration, or plain old chance - had resigned from her poorly paid job as a doctor in the police officers hospital the Friday before the Monday Boko Haram’s bloodbath hit the IG’s offices. One day late and that could have gotten really personal.

4. On A Nigerian PK Wedding

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 16:47:35 +0000

You know that the bride’s wedding gown will be ultra conservative as will be those for the bridal train. There will be no low cut, cleavage accentuating, eye candy-ish, strapless nonsense, and the hems will be at least an inch below the knee.

You know that there will be at least ten different preachers – each with the belief that he is a colossus in his own right - and where both bride and groom are PKs, they might be nearer fifty than not. You know that the program will be tweaked to provide an opportunity for every one of them to do something – give a word of admonition, pray, or lead the reading of the vows, or take a thanksgiving offering. You know that every speech and every prayer will be interminably long, as though there were an unofficial contest with a prize for the longest, most colourful speech. You know that it will be baking hot, and dry, because the powers that be have ‘decreed’ that there will be no rain.

3. Journey's end, red tape and finally a breather

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 16:45:17 +0000


Deserted... The House on the corner of 3rd and 12th.

The sun had began to lose some of its unblinking menace by the time my overloaded bus laboured up the final incline and began its descent into Ekpoma. Although we had made steady progress on the Lagos to Benin leg, navigating the maze of the Uselu - Lagos road and finding my way to the Big Joe motor park across town had taken a while and it was well past four pm before I found my not particularly comfortable seat on a bus to Ekpoma.

2. Road trips, small margins and a return to the city of red earth

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 08:05:03 +0000


Hawker, Lagos

Plan A was to catch a flight from Lagos into Benin and then a bus for the final leg of the trip to the small university town of Ekpoma, where the wedding was to hold, but the events of the last few weeks ensured that the one thing my mother insisted on was that the journey out of Lagos would be by road. I thus had to brace myself to navigate the tortuous 3oo km+ trip from Lagos into Benin with minimum fuss.

1. Eastwards

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 07:39:38 +0000

As I stand, satchel slung across my shoulder waiting for the call to board the KLM flight from Schipol to Lagos, I think back wistfully to a similar scene just over three years ago, when I stood within the Departures Lounge at the Murtala Mohammed Airport making the transit in the opposite direction. Then, as with now, it was a wedding - that of Sister #1 - that had lured me across the miles, outside the safety of what had been a year of near total insulation, back to Nigeria. In truth, the time and the distance have been mere blips on the timeline of life, but so total has the lostness been that it almost feels like I need to be reacquainted with everything all over again.

World Cup 2010 - Lessons (un) Learned

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 17:26:49 +0000

A moment of rashness by a certain Sani Kaita will go down as the defining moment of Nigeria’s World Cup - when the tenuous grip of one hundred and fifty million people was savagely hacked off. At that time Nigeria was 1-0 up - thanks to a somewhat fortuitous goal – and had largely being untroubled by the Greeks who had been pedestrian all through. The rest, as they say, is history and Greece went on to win to put Nigeria’s world cup dreams effectively on hold for four more years.

Cheesy smiles, Bullying, Spam and other randoms..

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:43:48 +0000

I suspect I am not the only one whose instinctive reation to the overly ebullient demeanour of sales people customer service assistants is to curl my fingers into a tight fist. I often want to punch them, so that the smile plastered on their face vanishes. They give me the impression of the legendary house rat - which I am told eats the skin off the feet, but aims a puff of air at the right time and place to dull the pain until it has had its fill of its victim’s feet! Thankfully, I am too lilly-livered to follow through my macabre thoughts with action - else I might be rotting in some jail on the grounds of causing grevious bodily harm.

If I did crushes.. this would be it...

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 03:37:36 +0000

If I did crushes, Bassey Ikpi would be it. I stumbled on some YouTube videos back in the day, but I never got to dig into them until a bout of extreme boredom got the better of me. The poem Homecoming is a precise distillation of all the various emotions being caught between two worlds generates in us. I totally loved it! Oh and she’s cute too…. :)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTcOWR3uc0E]

The Life of a Lost Son...

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:57:00 +0000

Edit: This is me venting… Nothing personal.. Just vexed by the way certain things have panned out.. I fear that soon all I will have as memories of my Africa will be the melancholic bits interspersed with a few shards here and there of a nostalgic past - growing up, friends, family, schools, holidays and times spent in wanton play - occasional successes mired in a morass of resounding failure. I wrote in my journal when I turned 21, that I felt my future was inextricably linked to Africa and that whatever I did, I would always have her at the back of my mind. Nine years on, I fear I may have made a volte face; one not altogether of my own volition.

What not to say to my Nigerian Father...

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 13:12:30 +0000

Growing up in my own neck of the woods was an experience. We nicknamed our Pops the Ogbodons - not sure where the term originated from any more but my back side was a living testimony to his varied abilities and multiplied skills in inflicting pain. Mum didn’t help matters as she was was as resolute in hammering our ’evil’ proclivities out of our systems. I got the opportunity to contrast that parenting style a few weekends back when I went visiting some distant family members in London. Clearly their less than 3 year old daughter has more leeway with him than I do with my own parents at my (huge) age.

The Hot Seat......

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 10:33:23 +0000

For Me….In the midst of potentially destabilizing change…

The hot seat …..is the hot seat…. The place where you are put on the spot, and come under the most intense scrutiny possible. Here, the basis of your Faith is rigorously examined and the coherence of your worldview is systematically evaluated. It is the zone where well meaning words become dry platitudes devoid of any soothing balm, where textbook solutions fall apart, where time tested strategies cannot even begin to scratch the surface of the sickness that a hope deferred brings.

Too easy?

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:12:00 +0000

Perhaps Nigeria has it ‘too good’. Sudan in the midst of sanctions is building a home grown airplane, Nigeria with 10 years of democracy has a burgeoning insurgency in the Niger-Delta.

In which 'Kasala' nearly burst....

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:43:22 +0000

Kpekere was one of them typical razz waffy boys.. Clean shaven aside of a goatee, not too tall, legs slightly bowed and with rippling muscles under the skin tight tee-shirts he wore, he had a menacing look around him. He was suave in his own way though, waffy slangs rolled off his tongue like melting lollipops, enthralling us , especially when he chose to regale us with tales of his supposed exploits bunkering crude oil in the creeks. His skin was a very light shade of brown – a testament to a randy Portuguese ancestor back in the day. With lots of cash to spare, being a tough tackling no-nonsense central defender in the Department’s Football side added to the aura of hardman that surrounded him, and he used it to good effect.

The Damned Recession

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:13:00 +0000

Had a particularly soothing phone call with the bestie today - Olu and I are in a similar place - uncertain about returning to our old jobs in Nigeria and all that…. As usual we rambled on about many things - book work, wives/ girl friends, our Nigerian folks and the like. Eventually, we got to talk about post-study plans and all what not.. He’s open for both options - the UK or Nigeria, as I am. There’s still some time till we decide one way or the other, so I shall just keep my fingers crossed, and take it from there!

Living your Liturgy

Sun, 31 May 2009 13:47:01 +0000

Apparently an awe inspiring 90% of Nigerians are religious. Statistics like these make the likes of Richard Dawkins claim that religion is the root of all evil. Dinesh D’Souza, Ravi Zacharias the UCCF, and a whole lot of other resources exist specifically to discuss the pros and cons of the subtle nuances of the arguments around Drawinism vs Intelligent Design and Theism vs Atheism vs Agnosticism. It is instructive to also note that atheism has not done much better either - the Soviet era is a case in point.

On the inherent inefficiencies in eating pounded yam!

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 07:19:53 +0000

I absolutely adore African food - I made it a point of duty to eat everything from amala, eba, party jollof rice, beans, moi-moi, yam porridge, nkwobi, and that peculiar Cally town culinary delight of Ekpangnkukwo as well as a sampling of soups - ogbono, egusi, afang, editan, afia efere (hmmmm), and even gala and several FanMilk icecreams flavours all in the space of 12 days. In fact, the ability to make piping hot akara is a key requirement of the future Mrs DB!

Back...... and thoughts on People and Airport Lounges

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 22:48:44 +0000

So after a maelstrom 12 days of travel and activity; 7 cities, 4 major events, and lots of travel time I’m finally back to hopefully face my books squarely. Thankfully, I met all but one of the 9 key objectives I set out to achieve. I had three full hours to kill at Heathrow both ways and for want of something more mentally challenging to do, I decided to try to categorize the African/ Naija people around.. I thought they fit broadly into ten categories.. Enjoy….

Live in Las Gidi

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:19:38 +0000

well……. db is live in las gidi after much! thankfully the peeps @ mtn reactivated my contract, so i’m good to roll…albeit intermittently via a USB connection between my lappie and my phone! now i need to locate ‘mama put’ for some piping hot amala and ewedu soup…

keep those questions for the 29th rolling in..looking very interesting already…..

cheers peeps!

On 'Normative Determinism'........and rebranding Nigeria!

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:55:10 +0000

I was talking to a couple of elderly peeps back in 9ja a few weeks ago and the case of a son who seems to be intent on self-destruction came up. The father opined that the chaps name might be part of the problem - his name is Ojo (I understand its given to a child whose birth was particularly difficult) and his moniker was Ojo-Jogbon (which seems to carry a connotation of a trouble maker). I decided, just for the fun of it to see what research had been carried out on the subject, and was shocked to discover a whole body of knowledge exists on it - aptly called normative determinism. Ochuko blogged about his name and its meaning, as did justdoyin’s post where a Noel Gist was talking about rumours!

The GbomoGbomo Chronicles........

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:36:52 +0000

Just Toluwa claims to think in her language which I’d assume is Yoruba. I, Akpenvwoghene DB, think in Pidign English; not the rarified widely intelligbile variant as spoken by the Fine boy Agbero but the razz, crass variant, spoken in the creeks of the Niger delta where my progenitors trace their ancenstry to. A number of people have cast aspersions on my Pidgin English abilities, as well as the appropriateness or otherwise of my raz9ijaboi moniker. This should put an end to it forever! Enjoy

Theifry in Paris......

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 12:13:00 +0000

Found this story on the BBC website. Its an ambitious heist at a top notch Paris jewelry shop.. Wonder how much publicity this might have gotten if it happened in Nigeria - or online????

Not all things bad are Nigerian....

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 09:06:00 +0000

Found this interesting article about forgeries of academic qualifications by some Asian students who somehow got admitted into Newcastle University.. With all the bad publicity 9ja has been getting (no thanks to crackdowns on journalists, inventive facebook scams and the brutalisation of a certain Ms Okere); its somewhat gratifying that not all things bad are Nigerian. On a more serious note though - what do y’all think drives the need to forge documents to gain entry into a University especially when these Universities have access to a plethora of tool for verifying these documents?

One Minute Madness

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 05:32:00 +0000

Na wah o!!! Just saw my man ‘Pescara’ nearly trading blows with an ‘Okada’ rider on the road o.. The issue? A hand trolley pusher on the road had strayed off the kerb onto the road and the car he was in had to stop suddenly.. As a result the motor bike behind the svelte 406 he was in slammed into the car’s rear end and fell on the ground.. Rather than the bike man to accept he was wrong and apologize, he launched into a tirade in the local language about ‘people who use stolen money to buy cars and then consitute hazards to other road users"

9ja wahala

Sat, 14 Jul 2007 14:57:00 +0000

WOW – tot I’d gone AWOL before but this certainly tops them all – No fault of mine though, my lousy ISP here in 9ja decided they needed to switch their US based service provider - and it took them over 1 month to sort out – Well - its good to be back and tho i hate to admit it - the speed’s a tad bit faster now…

Hopefully when the MTNs and GloMobile’s of 9ja decide to turn on the HSDPA switches, they’ll price it within the reach of the avergae 9ja guy and we’ll not be dependent on these half-baked ISPs anymore..

This PDP tsunami

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:40:00 +0000

I am still reeling from the sham called elections that were held in Nigeria this month. The flagrant abuse of power on the part of PDP, the lack of a credible opposition response and the total disregard of the 60 million (really?) registered Nigerian voters have combined to leave a sickening feeling in the depths of my guts..

I’ve had time to think through the whole process though and find the following salient points worthy of note 1. The PDP won only because they rigged more - every other party with the exception of possibly FRESH and Pat Utomi - attempted to put in place structures to aid and abet rigging in their favor. The PDP landslide only happened because they had more muscle 2. Most of the opposition candidates only featured on the platform of the oppostion because they were unable to gain a toehold in the party that had the “powers that be” in each region. 3. No credible plans and agenda were articulated by the vast majority of persons standing for election.