Wise Wide and Wild

HEARTLESS: Listening to the President speak during the last media chat I dare not say my President is stupid. No, no, I dare not. The statement uttered that corruption is not the number one problem of this nation can only come from a head that thinks nothing but ogogoro. I have not seen corruption so pronounced in my years of existence in this country than it is under this ‘transformation agenda”. How can just few people that are employed by us, paid from our collective revenue tell us we are not seeing what they are seeing?’ Ask the Coordinating minister of the Economy’ the President retorted; that is, talk to the Prime Minister, Ms Okonjo-Iweala. The recent Oduahgate is long expected when many of us did not deem it fit to talk about the shams that are being done at the airport, especially Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), and we started praising Ms Oduah for her adroitness. Good work my foot. Billions were quoted for the renovations but what do we have to show for...

Well, if I have to come back after three months of going AWOL, I might as well come back with a big bang *KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM* That’s the big bang right there… Hahahaha *just kidding*   The Big Bang is no other thing than the masterclass of an event I was extremely lucky to have attended on the 3rd of November. It was the #ColourfulWorldOfMore Concert organized by Guinness Nigeria. My oh my, that was a Concert!!! In Nigeria, as it is in most places in the world, knowing the right people in the right places will give you access to the right things at the right time…   all I am saying is I got VIP tickets to the Concert – I am just saying, bragging not intended, but if bragging achieved, all well and good. If you are into entertainment and the publicity as well as the promotion of the Concert did not make you want to kill for the tickets, you need to reassess your priorities. All media outlets (both conventional and new) were awash with the news of the “ MostColourful...

I know! I know!! I know!!! I did promise I would not disappear again, but I only went and reenacted my own remake of “Gone With The Wind”. I apologise again, and as my people say, it is this hill here that blocks my view of the hill over there; therefore I have put structures in place to ensure the hill over there will be bigger than the hill here to counter-balance the view-blocking, hopefully. But it has been good news all this while: between the last time I was here and now, I have become both a HUSBAND and a FATHER. That might imply I have more and bigger responsibilities, which might also mean lesser time for blogging (obviously, I have less time for blogging already), but that might also imply I have more time (finding something else to occupy my time when Wifey and Mothers have taken over the TV and the Remote), let us just wait and see. #FingersCrossed Now to the question that jolted me out of my blogging-inertia – kissing and telling, why do people do it? Personally, ...

By ‘Sola Fagorusi Until 2001, the word Google meant nothing. Today, it is both a noun and a verb. My computer does not underline it as a spelling error. The only remotely close words to it – goggle and goggles means to stare wide-eyed and a protective eye glass respectively. There is almost nothing that Google can’t search out. It’s intriguing the even the word Google can be Googled! Google has conquered all facets of our internet lives. It is the kingpin of the new media family. Anyone today who uses the internet would have contact with one or several of Google products. The list grows a little less fast than weeds! Chrome browser, Google Calender, Google News, Google Maps, YouTube, Blogger, Picasa, Google+, Google Alerts, Google Scholar, Google Groups, Google Trader, Gmail, Google Hangouts, Google drive and others. The search engine which was Google’s first product and which conferred name on the company, is the world’s most patronised. The King of the internet is fast swall...

Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes As a Language Purist, every time I see someone murder any language, especially the English Language, through spelling, tense, or pronunciation, I cringe to the bone marrow. I consider Language as an integral part of a society’s identity which reflects how much progression or retrogression you can ascribe to such a society; thus any maltreatment of the language portrays the society as wicked and heartless. You can say this again and again for Yoruba Language, my Mother-Tongue. Eeriely, we Language Purists are becoming endangered species no thanks to the proliferation of smart devices and unending texting which has given birth to blatant ABBREVIATION and indiscriminate ACRONYMING. We could blame this on SMS limiting us to a mere 160 characters; we could blame also blame this on Twitter further reducing that to 140 characters; and we could further blame this on life ...

Literally, the easiest thing in Nigeria of today is to write about the myriad of ills persistently afflicting the nation. Presently, the  Baga   Massacre , the Nassarawa-Eggon Bloodshed ; and Asari-Dokubo's Interview  are events that would make you lose total hope in Nigeria, Humans, or Life in general. These events have been megaphoned in the Traditional Media and analysed cum dissected on Cyberspace; bringing it up again would be like flogging a dead horse. But should I just pretend these didn’t happen and go ahead writing about other funny stuffs in a funny way? I decided not to ignore this festering wound, but to approach it from another angle. Hope you enjoy my poem. THE HORSETAIL Life is a mirage, a fleeting illusion. A road paved with thorns and hedged with nettles. An empty barrel full of if-onlys. Life is a terrible bully. An ogre fond of devastation and destruction. A basilisk eager to cause cries and despair. A devil beating, bat...

"Swagger"  as a word was reputed to have been coined by the great wordsmith, William Shakespeare, as far back as 1590, in one of his classic plays “A Midsummer Night's Dream”; but on this side of the Atlantic, home to about 160 million people, we could as well claim “swagger” only came into our vocabulary in the late 2000s. Sauce Kid, now Sinzu, first introduced the word into the mainstream with his song “yebariba sanboribobo” where he kept repeating the hook “swagger swagger, hiiiinnnnn” (whatever that meant or means)… then the self-professed mad-man, Terry G, took it up a notch by mentioning the word in every one of his songs, then he took it up another notch by naming an album “Ginjah Ur Swaggah”, and from there, “Swagger” became Naija’s “Gangnam Style”, and woe betides any hip-hop artiste who refuses to use the word in a track, or any soft sell journalist or blogger who keeps malice with the word in an article/post. Interestingly, this post is not about Sw...

Writing about the AFCON 2013 after the Super Eagles triumph would seem such an easy task, but only for the hypocrites. To see people make a 360 degrees detour from calling them “Super Chickens” to “Super Eagles”, and to watch “the undisputed draw-masters” become “the true kings of Africa” in 7 days is an intrigue Kim Kardashian will dream of having on her Reality TV show. It was just as if the Eagles were waiting for the completion of the Knockout Stages to really display all the great qualities that sets them apart from other avians: vision, aggression, agility, decisiveness, and flair. The Eagles did not just win the the knockout stage matches by the scoreline, they equally won by the performance. They were truly deserving champions after dominating Zambia - the defending champions; Cote D’Ivoire – the pre-tournament clear favourites; Mali – a tournament favourite; and Burkina Faso – the conqueror of Ghana (a pre-tournament favourite). The vigour with which I criticized the Eagles ...