“I’m the best in this field, no one does it better.”
“I may not have any hits or even put out any music, but I know I’m better than Davido and Wiz Kid put together.”
And the most common of them?
“I have made six figures every week since I started this business. If you’re interested in being like me, comment ‘Yes’ below.
More often than not, people who make these sort of pronouncements are noisemakers and nothing more.
My friend request still lingers on his Facebook profile.
Now I know it’ll never be accepted.
When rumours of his death began to gain traction on social media, I was slightly alarmed but quickly dismissed it as the usual negative excitement that often accompanied bad news in the virtual space. Knowing that people have a penchant for peddling fake news because they cannot be bothered to wait for credible news sources to report events, I muttered a prayer in the hope that it emanated from some mischief-loving individual.
And then it was confirmed.
“Livinus, I’m telling you that this time around, things go dey different. This new candidate don talk sey him go dey show face well. Sey all the things wey our community need, him go make sure sey him do something about them when him enter.”
Livinus wasn’t convinced. Over the years, they had heard different variations of the same lie, and at the end of the day, nothing changed. The politicians they had voted in the past had let them down. Once they secured the mandate of the people, they instantly became inaccessible, and now their constituency was a mess. Nothing worked. The roads were in a deplorable state, power supply was worse than ever, children of school age were out of school hawking wares, and the youths were idle.
19-year old Daniel Usman is dead. He was shot dead by gunmen while trying to exercise his civic duty. Daniel is only one of the many victims of the just concluded presidential elections. At the last count, about 37 people have been reported killed and many others, injured as an aftermath of the unrest in different parts of the country during the voting exercise. Even as I write this, there’s tension in Oshodi, a suburb of Lagos, as thugs look to disrupt normal trading activities; it leaves one wondering if we’ll ever get to the point where politics will be practised without rancour.
He had tweeted, “Your boyfriend is an Uber driver”, and to be sure the mockery was not lost on his audience, he posted “laughing in tears emojis” along with his tweet. In his opinion, Uber driving was not a profession to be proud of and a girl whose boyfriend drove an Uber should hide her face in shame.
It’s the zeitgeist of our time: the derision of those we perceive as unimportant or lacking material possessions.
The irresponsible use of prescription drugs to satisfy addiction cravings has created an epidemic, resulting in catastrophic damage to the social and emotional welfare of addicts. With more than 115 people dying every day in the United States, the opioid epidemic is a serious crisis that needs to be dealt with immediately.
Two divergent personalities.
One for the public…the crowd, the virtual mob who may deride or ostracise you if you do not kowtow to popular opinion.
How can everyone you know align with the two major political parties while you opt to pitch your tent with the third force? So you choose to be a closet cheerleader and chant “Four plus Four!” or “Atikulated!” because you’d sooner jump off a cliff than admit you’re voting an unpopular candidate.
The gloves are off and the fangs are out. Caution has been flung to the wind and we have arrived at a time when people have no care for the sensitivity of others. You’ll have to be living under an escarpment to miss this trend. As the 2019 elections draw closer, supporters of political parties have grown more desperate to see that their opponents do not gain the upper hand in the jostle for the approval of the electorate. A mash-up of this with the growing discourteous tendencies of young people is snowballing into a society where respect and civility are going extinct.
Dear Third Force Apologist,
How are you?
In particular, how are you holding up in the midst of all the electioneering shenanigans?
I know you probably feel overwhelmed these days.
Everywhere you turn, the odds appear to be stacked against your candidate.
And not just that, you are jeered and maligned for your “unreasonable choice”.
“Your political leanings make no sense. You are about to waste your vote and you know it. Your candidates have no political antecedents. They are hardly known beyond their neighbourhoods and are painfully lacking structure, yet, like a stubborn fly, you insist on following the corpse to its grave,” they say.
He is the boss of the uber-successful multinational tech company—Amazon— and the richest man in the world, according to Forbes. Jeff Bezos is synonymous with ingenuity and wealth. Before now, he was popular only for his tech genius, but the last couple of days have thrown the doors of his personal life open to the prying eyes of the public. At first, it seemed to be not much of a big deal save for the humongous amount of cash involved; yet another couple were heading to the courts to put an end to their union.