Nigerians are sheep!

Credit for this one goes to Texazzpete...

The above images show protesters in the US marching against the decision by AIG to reward their top management with bonuses even after the credit crunch and after tax payers' monies were issued out to the company as bailout.
The pictures depict outraged Americans marching to protest this issue. It is pertinent to note that the bonuses were not illegal in any way, but were construed by the American public as being entirely immoral.

Now let's look at Nigeria. We have bank CEOs who have been involved in shady activities that are not only immoral (such as handing out hefty loans without collateral) but sometimes illegal (like giving out loans to shadow companies, loans to fronts and companies with vested interest).
Due to the reckless and foolish handling of the banks and a reckless and stupid over-exposure to the fortunes of the stock market, millions of ordinary, hardworking Nigerian bank shareholders have lost billions of Naira both in share value and in terms of unpaid dividends.

Given this scenario, one would think Nigerians would be up in arms about this, eagerly in the vanguard of those calling for the heads of the bank CEOs. Instead the vast majority of Nigerians i've spoken to - seemingly unconcerned with their real losses in the market and the threat to the Nigerian economy - are more interested in accusing Sanusi of pursuing an 'ethnic agenda'.

Some even go as far as lauding the bank CEOs for 'providing jobs' and 'making the banks the way they are', as if competent bank work and honesty are mutually exclusive!

But that's Nigeria and Nigerians for you. Shafted 24/7 by people we should hold accountable, yet we focus on irrelevant matters.

Truly, i think Nigerians are sheep! Meek, mild and always joyful to the slaughter slab.

The end of the internet?

There used to be this website which I used to frequent back in those heady days of software piracy. However, Serialz appears to have totally disappeared from the internet. Why is this so scary?

People power

Yesterday, for the first time in a very long time I felt proud to be a Nigerian.

The reason for my pride was the conduct of residents of the federal capital Abuja with regards the national team's World Cup qualifier against the national team of Mozambique. They refused to turn up at the stadium, and for the first time ever, Nigeria's national team played a home game in front of an almost empty stadium.

The fans felt that the rubbish had gone on for too long and that enough was enough. For too long we had put up with rubbish coming from our sports officials about patriotism and the role of both players and fans in the build up to games, officials who only see our football as a cash cow to be milked to death.

read the rest of the article in NEXT

Twas the day before independence

This one isn't going on NEXT because Chxta needs to swear!

There is a whole shitload that is wrong with this country and we see it every God-damned day. I woke up at 0110 yesterday morning because I could not sleep and for the first time in months actually missed being in that bloody cold Blighty. Why would such a thing happen? It was freaking hot, there was no light and the mosquitoes emboldened by the absence of a fan sang in my ears until 0530. My skin still feels sore from the experience of a thousand little monsters feeding on me.

So what the hell do we want to celebrate when we cannot even provide ourselves with the most basic commodity of 20^th century existence, power? I actually blame myself for being a blooming idiot and taking the damned neighbours into consideration. You see, the shitty but satisfying thing to have done would have been to turn on the bloody generator and not give a toss as to whether they could not sleep. After all that would have made me a better Nigerian since we are a bloody selfish society who do not care about one another but only about ourselves.

I did finally make it to the office with a rumpled shirt and proceeded to do my damned ironing in the office at 0614 while normal people should still be having morning orgasms in bed, but hey, life in this messed up country we call home is anything but normal so we kill ourselves slowly, wake up at stupid hours each day in order to beat the bloody crater induced traffic snarls caused by no functional rail system, too many dead beat cars and cunt drivers at every turn who by the way possess full driver’s licenses.

After going through an early round of tweaking on the website, I felt peckish and stepped out to get bread from one of the many women that hawk along the road. That was when the incident that has fucked me up happened.

I was accosted by three girls who claimed to be on a rag-day fund raiser for their school, Yabatech. “Anything you contribute is okay,” they claimed and for a brief moment I was about to hand them something when I decided to do some quid pro quo. You see, tomorrow (which is now today) is meant to be Independence Day, so I felt that it would not be a bad idea to get them on camera talking about their hopes, fears and disappointments with regards the country. After all, being students, they are the future no?

Apparently not.

I asked them what they are studying at Yabatech and I was told with loads of pride that I was in the presence of final year Accounting and Economics students. So I asked what I considered to be the next natural question, “what do you think of Nigeria at 49?”

“As in how?”

“Where do you think the country is headed?”

“It is growing.”

“Can you please explain how it is growing?”

“It is growing, are you giving us the money or not?”

“I will give you, but first you have to answer me, and being an Accounting student, can you back up your statement with facts and figures? How for example has the country’s GDP improved in the last 49 years?”

By this time two of the girls appeared to have lost interest and walked away. The one who remained, the most vocal, asked me a question next that caught me off guard. She asked me what GDP was. I tried to remain patient and explained to her that the Gross Domestic Product of a country is a way of measuring economic performance over the course of a given period usually a year. Her next response made me weak at my knees.

She made it quite clear to me that we were not in a lecture hall and that all the rubbish I was saying does not concern her because GDP would not put food on her table, neither would it help her pass her exams. After putting me in my place, she asked again if I was going to give her money or not, at which point I sent her on her merry way without giving a dime.

So my dear readers, is there any fucking thing to celebrate? I can tell you. There is nothing.