I Still mourn Wife Nine Years After She Passed, Was it Love, Guilt, or Commitment?

I still mourn. Very much so. Marriage was a personal choice that I had to make. I wasn’t prepared to suffer the consequence, good or bad, for the choices I had made. 

No one knows that that thing called Marriage is a job by itself, requiring hard work, patience, planning, and endurance. Few men that I know have the stamina to stomach excruciating pain.

I went against the wishes of my father’s family members, especially my sainted mother whom I knew loved me to the core and wanted the best for me.

Talking about confusion, I have dealt with the guilt of disobeying the pleas of a mother who gave me her breasts to suck and made me feel special.

And I gave Mother my promise to have nothing to do with foreign women but to marry an Igbo (Nigeria) girl. I went back on my promise.

I had to go ahead with my choice of a foreign wife because marriage is a personal choice that only I could make.

Mother feared that a foreign wife would destroy the values she had deposited, instilled in me and  that a foreign wife could prevent me from returning to my native land and kindred. Sweet Mother felt I had to be rooted to the soil or else lost.

Fortunately, the woman that I married did not do what Mother was afraid of nor did I lose my sense of direction after my wife died. Guilt was eating me up as ikpuru (Igbo for maggots) eat up the corpse.

I didn’t kill my dear wife, and I didn’t kill Sweet Mother. I felt I disappointed both women, Maxine and Mother.

The point I want to emphasize is that I had made up my mind to be a disobedient boy when I decided, despite promise I gave to Mother, to marry a 24-year-old graduate student I had met at the University of Tennessee.

Maxine was her name, and she and I were working toward the Master of Science degree in different fields, the Master of Science in Social Work or Maxine, to be specific.

Several uninvited people got involved in my marriage. My Nigerian friends advised me to “get the Green Card and leave the woman.” Maxine’s  American detractors asked, “You still with that 

African?”

Uninvited people and detractors have one thing in common: they are critics, disparagers, hecklers, attackers, decriers. They speak unappealingly, unpleasantly, repellently, unenticingly, unattractively.

Maxine ended up being a perfect wife. She eventually had the PhD at age 37 in Clinical Counseling, she gave birth to our three sons, and we were married for 40 years until her death resulted from cancer.

What was more important was that Dr. Maxine M. Agazie followed me to Nigeria where we lived for a few years before returning to America for work toward the terminal degrees. What Nigerian woman could do what Maxine did appealingly?

I am glad I made the choice I made, having been influenced by my parents’ example.  Papa and Mama believed in the sanctity of the marital vow; they were grounded in the conviction that “whoever findeth a wife findeth a good thing and obtaineth favour of the Lord” (Proverbs 18:22), and that marriage is to last a lifetime.

Papa and Mama had 8 of us, 4 boys and 4 girls, and they were married for over 60 years until both died prior to end of the Biafra War.

This essay explores why many of my friends and your friends in America and Nigeria are still unmarried, and why those who are married are unhappily coupled, divorced, or involved in multiple unstable relationships.

The question is this: What keeps Nigerian men from marrying and staying married as my grandparents once did and as I tried to do? Is it money, fear, custom, or whatchamacallit?

Regrettably, folks are not marrying any more as often as they once did and should do. Those who are married are divorcing at alarming rates or going their separate ways at the slightest irritation.

Are the pressures of combining such seemingly incompatible activities as career, family and marriage exacting a heavy toll that destroys marital relationships? Not quite sure. It is a fastidious concoction of mismatched, unharmonious/inharmonious goings-on.

Are greed and selfishness responsible for frequent divorces and falling out of love? Yes. Add infidelity to the list of the problems warring against marital bliss.

Hollywood and Nollywood people make us sick. They are telling us that, since marriage is hard, we must just forget it, have fun, and the thought of marriage will go right away with the wind. Chinua Achebe would agree that separate objects not joined together can never fall apart.

The media is of no help when it comes to marriage. Media is writing one thing and doing the other. Wealthy people are going through marriages, divorces and remarriages. You wonder if life is s revolving door

The government offers the worst example. How many wives do Buhari and other Muslim politicians have

And the US Constitution which I read in law school tells me that marriage is a fundamental right we can heed or ignore. It is done at will.  

A fundamental right means a right that is important, central, basic, vital, or essential thing I can choose to get into or avoid getting into. It is not a do-or-die thing, like breathing or using the toilet.

In other words, there is no obligation to marry anyone, and one can divorce a wife for any reason or no reason at all. It is as easy as 1,2,3. Marriage is easy come and easy go.

I can divorce at random without offering any soul any reason for my action. A claim of Irreconcilable differences is the most prevalent excuse to get out of a marriage. The closest reason is ifunanya adighi (Igbo for no love).

What is going on? Why don’t people want the traditional marriage? They seem to want convenience, marriage for convenience, the ancient trade by barter?

Marriage for convenience means the overriding aim is fun, suitability, expediency, ease, handiness, openness, opportuneness.

Handiness means the marriage is based upon proximity, accessibility, closeness, availability, or user friendliness. No work is involved.

Men aren’t snatching women up at the marriage registry because there is nothing to snatch and there aren’t too many women who have the wife material. What do men mean by wife material?

Wife Material describes a woman a man would happily take home to introduce to his parents, a woman he would consider marrying someday after all conditions necessary to make a marriage work are completed. So that’s wife material.

What are the characteristics? A wife material is woman who is about her business. She is educated in that she is cultured, cultivated, tasteful, sophisticated, or refined, and she can hold her own in a conversation, and she is as learned as she can be.

Back to Dr. Maxine Agazie. She had taught university for over 30 years, being promoted to the rank of Full Professor. She completed post-doctorate programs at the Ohio State University, was invited to lecture at Oxford University as well as Madras Christian College, india.

A woman is wife material if she is generous, but takes nonsense, puts husband’s needs first and can give her man a breathing space. A breathing space means the woman is not a clinging vine.

Back to Maxine again. She delayed her PhD to assist me get mine. She was the first professional social worker in West Africa employed by the Eastern Nigerian Ministry of Health and Social Services under the government of Sole Administrator Ukpabi Asika.

She headed the group charged with the responsibility for repatriating Biafran children back home from London and other West African countries to which the babies were sent to escape starvation and kwasiokor.

Maxine was neither clinging nor arrogant. A clingy wife is suffocating, insecure, figure-hugging, tight-fitting, She is not okpagbue mu ( Igbo for she is choking the breath out of me).

The last four sentences in this essay are simple declarations. Yes, I was married to Maxine for 40 long years. It was a good decision I had made and do not regret making. It was a commitment. The guilt is gone. In its place are appreciation and happy memories.

A wife material takes her wifely duties seriously; though she does not allow jealousy to make her man feel uncomfortable to the extent he runs away or hides in the company male and/or female friends.

A wife material can cook sumptuous meals and keeps a clean home, and she can graciously enlist the help of her husband to do the heavy duties.

A wife material handles money well as she is not a spendthrift. wasteful, extravagant, improvident, prodigal, or reckless.

Women who are wife materials do not come by easily. One must search diligently to find the needle in a haystack.

Not being able to find women with wife material is not the only problem men find militating against successful marriage. There are other pressing issues. To militate is to influence, impinge, or affect negatively.

First, there is a preponderance of free sex everywhere you go where men and women get into bed to have sex at the slightest erection, without thinking about marriage. If one can have sex easily with Monica, chances are that Monica can have sex with every other Jack and Harry.

Second issue is that marriages involve much expenditures, such as expensive feasts and weddings rings that only a few men can afford the cost of nuptials without being in debt and without seeking extensive financial help.

Men ask, “Why do you have to have a cheap wedding and the community calls you names or you are laughed at?”

Third issue affecting marriages is that men want working-class ladies who have skills to contribute to family upkeep. What does a man want in a “gimme-me” wife who says,  “give me this, give me that, why don’t you do so and so for me?”

Fourth issue impinging upon marriages is people do not trust each other anymore. What is trust? It is having the faith, belief, connection, or conviction in someone. Is the man or woman one is marrying of a good moral character?

Next issue is the unrealistic expectations of the in laws who often are selfish, uneducated, unemployed, and who demand that a man seeking their daughter’s hand in marriage must spend an arm and a leg in the process.

There are cases where families ask a would-be husband to do the near impossible like erect a 3-bedroom and parlor house for the in-law or train a family member in the university. 

Being a wife material means the woman ought to have a career at least to help in the case the husband dies, becomes so sick or incapacitated he cannot provide for his family; the wife takes over as principal breadwinner.

If one cannot obtain a woman that is wife material, one tries contracting marriage through trades by barter.

Barter is quicker, easier to get rid of and gotten out of. Why do I buy $700,000 Rolls Royce when I can lease a $45,000 Mercedes look alike that I can return and exchange?

It’s not the scarcity of eligible men that is causing the problem of not marrying, and the problem isn’t the result of not having beautiful women to choose from.

This essay is concerned with why there are fewer weddings nowadays performed in the traditional “native law” way, at the church or before a court judge. Why are these ceremonies getting fewer and rarer?

Can we say marriage has boiled down to the gimme stuff? The gimme stuff comes like this: if you give me sex, I will give you seurity. This is trade by barter.

Gimme marriage is a trade by barter; it does not last as the case of Cousin Mike at Abuja would indicate.

 Mike was in serious love with Paulina and everyone felt it was an arrangement permanently sealed in heaven before the throne of Jehovah.

Two years into the marriage, Mike would be seen driving 7 hours to Anambra village to form a shacking relationship he had with a beautiful widow named Mercy. Shacking?

Yes, shacking.   There is no responsibility. Shacking is when couples live together while having sex and not married to each other.

My cousin Mike married to Paulina at Abuja drives to the village to shack up with Mercy. The trouble with Paulina was that she is permanent, but Mike wants the temporary Mercy. It’s a case of having one’s cake and eating it.

Consider the marriage of my late parents who were married for over 60 years and sired or begat 8 children. Like my late parents, the olden-days people  viewed marriage as an a-till-death-part-us arrangement.

Marriage is the plan to produce and raise children in a permanent nuclear family setting consisting of mother, father, and children.

Nowadays, life has changed drastically so much that today’s men see marriage as an unbearable burden. It is no longer the till -death-separate-us thing. Some people want the temporary arrangement; a few want it permanent. 

Can marriage be made temporary and contracted as needed? That means man and woman can live together as husband and wife for one month, two months, or as long as they can tolerate each other.

If marriage is temporary, it is not worth waiting for; it is not worth being patient with; it is not worth holding together; and it is not worth being taken care of properly. Why?

The reason is that if it is temporary, it is disposable, throwaway, one-use, nonrefundable. A temporary thing is not reusable. It is like that filthy garbage bag you throw out with your unwanted materials.

I hear that billionaire Bill Gates knows how to throw things away. Suppose a thousand-dollar bill falls off this billionaire’s hand as he counts money or slips out of his trousers’ pocket, what would he do?

Does Mr. Gates bend down to pick the $1,000 up? No No No. He would just leave it laying there on the ground. Bending down wastes time. Picking it up will take longer time than the billionaire would spend to make another billion dollars.

Marriage is being considered as a thing out of vogue; out of fashion, it is no longer trending. The craze is going or gone, like the baggy pants or bell-bottoms of the 40’s and 50’s.

Who wears those out-of-style fashions of by-gone era? One must be brave to wear the old-fashioned stuffs at the risk of being laughed at or called names like “that old crazy fool.”

Women are going bra-less, saying it is hot and uncomfortable to wear bras, and women are cutting off all their hair to get the breeze in their heads.

Wigs are too hot, they say. and men want to see the real thing –sagging breasts that bra seeks to not shield.

A thing is temporary if it is provisional, impermanent, momentary, brief, or passing. American schools specialize in temporariness.

 Universities need adjuncts to reduce costs.  Public schools employ what is known as temporary or substitute teachers; these assist the permanent or tenure-track staff carry out the teaching duties.

Universities and the school system underpay the Temporary Staff, students disrespect temporaries, and temporaries do not receive such benefits as health insurance, sick leaves are paid vacations,

In shacking up arrangement, men want women to provide sex whenever the urge arises, and, on the other hand, women see the plan  as you-take-care-of-my needs-and-I-take-care-of-your needs responsibility. 

Coming to my old folks, how did Papa and Mama manage to stay longer in marriage than what is going on today with young people?

Papa had to work hard to prove to Mama and her parents that surely, ultimately Papa was ready for marriage. He had to have a job or a means to provide for food, housing, clothing. Was he prepared for the arrival of kids?

To prove his readiness, Papa had to satisfy many demands, such as payment of a dowry, consisting of a sum of money, a goat or goats, bags of rice, some chickens, yams, wines (palm wine and beers). 

The purpose of paying a dowry was not to exploit a would-be husband or to enrich the would-be in-laws.

The dowry served to impress upon the man seeking a wife that marriage was not to be taken lightly or gotten into easily or gotten out of easily. 

Yes, I was married to Maxine for 40 long years. It was a good decision I had made and do not regret making. It was a commitment. The guilt is gone. In its place are appreciation and happy memories.

Posted Friday, June 28, 2019

By Dr. James C. Agazie, jamesagazie@gmail.com; jamesagazies.blogspot.com

The Nigerian military should just go away, leave us alone to develop our democracy

It’s a shame, big time embarrassment that Nigeria, after gaining independence almost 60 years, is still under what appears to be military rule.  Which other progressive nation is as hopeless as my home to be controlled by uselessness?

Look around you to see which nations have developed well now under the military junta. Is it China? United States? Britain? Germany? Canada? Which modern nation? Every one of these nations is developing unhampered by the military.

Take another look at backward places where pure military dictatorship has made life difficult with high unemployment, endemic bribery, and insecurity. economically uninviting, corruption-ridden, and unsafe.?

What countries have military mismanagement such as North Korea? Thailand? Libya? Pakistan? Sudan? Myanmar? Read up on these nations where the military is a problem. This writer would prefer a democratic nation to a totalitarian setting.

Although Nigeria is said to be democratic on paper, yet in practice, the Nigerians are suffering under what appears to be dictatorship., such as was under Olusegun Obasanjo, Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida, and Sani Abacha.

That Nigeria is under military rule is undeniable as events seem to indicate and, unless change comes and comes quickly, Nigeria shall degenerate to the point of being ruled by the military for a long time. It would be a tragedy if Nigeria is an armed camp occupied by unfriendly foreign invaders who would not just go away.

This essay predicts that we Nigerians shall remain pawns in the hands of exploitative/manipulative strong men so long as we fail to acquire quality education that enables us to make wise decisions in choice of our leaders, to appreciate democracy and learn to abide by the rule of law.

This we shall do: become more politically savvy; vote for educated, nonmilitary persons; challenge unconstitutional legislation in the court system, and organize grassroot to present democratic views.

We don’t want to be ruled by the military consisting of persons who are armed, martial, soldierly, or fighting men and women who do not share love and well wishes to my people.

What comes to mind when we conjure up military comportment? It is the organizational behavior of ignorant, undereducated, soldiers who had not had training in civilian government.

We are sorry to say that Nigeria is predisposed to the rule of the jungle where the male lion defecates 

on the ground to stake out a domain he defends with the combined ferocity of Babangida, Buhari and Obasanjo. Ferocity involves fierceness, cruelty, viciousness, wildness, and unkindness. Terrible!

Since soldiers are trained to defend a besieged nation threatened by a boko haran; the military is always ready to pick up guns and bayonet at the sound of a gunshot or flying arrow at the border.

The military has no rulership quality in a peaceful nation where there is happiness, roads are drivable, farmers are growing staple crops, and people are not dying from dehydration due to a lack of drinking water.

Who needs AK-47’s but killers? The military spends the budget meant for education to train killers and importation of armamentaria or weapons of mass destruction.

This writer is a Nigerian, has no political ambition; he is not a Biafran, does not condone armed violence against his beloved country. He wants the military to vacate and the country returned to pro-democratic state of time of Azikiwe, Tafewa, and Shehu Shagari and other pro-democratic politicians Have you heard us say we do not want the military? Yes.

The military is militaristic, bellicose, aggressive. Being martial and warmongering, the Nigerian soldier abjures or avoids the finer qualities of civility, defined as courteousness, a gentleman’s politeness, courtesy. Elevating a soldier to political leadership position is tantamount to covering excreta with akwa ocha (Igbo for white cloth).

The Nigeria’s ill-prepared soldier lacks the respect and graciousness of Dr Michael Okpara, the fatherliness of Nnamdi Azikiwe, the gentility of Tafewa Balewa, the longsuffering and the wisdom of Shehu Shagari.

Nigeria was a Camelot, Garden of Eden before the military came to power. The army boys are a group of ruffians, thugs with drug-infested brains who cannot comprehend civilian administration. What do we mean by civilian government?

We mean the administration and management by non-fighting forces, that is, a rule, direction, or lead where there is no war or emergencies. The military is known for creating destruction, mayhem or loss of land, limb, and property.

If you’re one of those Nigerians who feels that your home is the free, self-governing Giant of Africa, you’re in for a surprise. You are not free, you’re being deceived, taken for a ride, meaning you’re a plumb nincompoop..

Get down and off your high horse and experience reality. You’ve been on high horse since October 1, 1960, when the world told you freedom was within your reach and you developed an inflated ego upon being called “independer.”

What’s independer? Oh, that silly name we called ourselves when Great Britain and other countries sent white representatives to Lagos to tell Nigerians, “You’re free, free at last, thank God you’re free to go your separate way from us.”

The over-used words were independence, freedom, liberation. They mean nothing, nonentity, naught, zero.

The overused word-independence- created monotony to our ears, infused great false pride in us and makes us walk on Cloud Nine.

The Queen of England was invariably our Head of State. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe was there as Governor General and  Alhaji Tafewa Balewa was the first Prime Minister. We were told the Queen reigns but does not rule.

The ruling Africans were dressed majestically in flowing gown, looked straight ahead, and sat erect with sophisticated recherché Africans are noted for when they are not in the bush hunting rats and grass cutters for supper.

The presence of our Azikiwe and Balewa plus the dignitaries representing the Queen of the Commonwealth of Britain sparked inyanga (Igbo for great arrogance) as we sat in the hot tropical sun and watch children march barefooted on dusty field.

We felt not only pride, there was wild jubilation that we’d arrived at a juncture where  the world ceases to consider us as being a nation of “bush man” and “bush woman.”

Didn’t we feel great pride when Elizabeth 11, Queen of England, sent representatives to grace the occasion and increase our vulnerability and gullibility, vulnerable because the military has rendered our democracy weak, defenseless, helpless; gullibility as a result of being made naïve, trusting, susceptible.

The purpose of this essay is not so much to burst a carefully hidden bubble as to warn we’ve been had. What we had and were given was a subterfuge, a make-believe ceremony designed to tranquilize 

The questions to ask are multifarious, miscellaneous, diverse Where do Nigerians come from?. Do they need independence in a democracy or slavery on the West African slave plantation of Nigeria?

Why didn’t some smart person like Ahmadu bello or Awolowo dialogue with the white man to stay until further notice in Africa to help natives manage themselves first before being entrusted with the responsibility to manage resources?

The inability of Africans to manage the oil and coal in Nigeria, cocoa in Ghana, diamonds in Sierra Leone and so forth, is due to Africans’ selfishness buoyed or kept afloat by the greedy military establishment.

 That independence was and is still being celebrated on October 1 for almost 60 years. Independence with the military in charge is a joke played on children.

The Nigerian military should go away, get out of running a democracy, get back into barracks where they belong. Alternatively, why can’t the Army Corps of engineers draft the soldier to help build roads and bridges, construct hydro-electric power plants to conquer Nigeria’s everlasting darkness?  

  

This we shall do: become more politically savvy; vote for educated, nonmilitary persons; challenge unconstitutional legislation in the court system, and organize grassroot to present democratic views.

Dr. James C. Agazie, jamesagazie@gmail.com; jamesagazies.blogspot.om

Sunday, June 16, 2019

What President Buhari should be focusing on in the next 4 years

The purpose of this essay is to compile a list of things we Nigerians and our President can do to avert frustration over our country's dismal economy and prevent unhappiness from spilling into long-term suffering and possible violence.  

Read to the end of this essay to find out what the Nigerians are asking Buhari and the APC-led administration to do for them.

No one is contending that Nigeria is now in an uncomfortable crisis while population is pushing through the roof to a staggering 411 million in 2050.

Buhari accuses his people of being lazy, lacking in discipline and education, and waiting on Government to hand them freebies from the country’s oil boom.  Freebies are handouts, perks, giveaways,

“Give us dash (Nigerian term for free gifts),” the people say. Buhari seems to respond, “ Lazy people, get away from here, and oya go to work or school.”

His people come back with accusations against Buhari for being militaristic in his governance, ignoring pleas for protection from herdsmen killings, church burnings, also FGN’s insensitivity to security concerns.

High on the list of complaints against Buhari administration is perceived indifference and studied prejudice against Southern states. Some accuse him of hoarding public funds while workers go hungry and unpaid for months.

High on the list of economists and World Health Organization are questions of birth control, Ebola, and Monkey pox suspected to be caused by eating improperly cooked flesh of monkeys and other bush meats.

Some say jeeringly, derisively, mockingly, tauntingly, contemptuously, You say go to work or school while you lay around in cozy London beds and our children sleep in smoke-filled huts built with mud walls and thatched roofs?”

“I’m President and the Constitution allows…”

People responds. “Allows nothing. You are public servant and we are the citizens. We pay for your food even for your mosquito nets, the mouse traps at Aso Rock, and even your wife’s pink fashions.”

The Buhari administration seems frustrated over the people's unwillingness to support his programs and their propensity to criticize and protest. He is angry the Igbo and Southern ethnics voted for his opponent in 2019 elections.

And he cannot bring himself to forgive or forget fellow Fulani Dr. Atiku for suggesting that Atiku won the election and Buhari lost.

The people ask mockingly, “Did you win the election honesty? You haven’t defeated ISIS, have you?’

“Defeating ISIS is not easy, I don’t have the money, and you complain when I spent mere 450 million dollars for jet fighters to defeat insecurity. Don’t you know ISIS is a world-wide boko haran?”

 Buhari wants Nigerians to wait for change to slowly occur. Nigerians appear to be tired of waiting when rumors spread round that oil money in the amount of billions of dollars is floating around the globe.  

Believing that Naija money is building overseas cities, such as New York, London, Paris, Johannesburg, and other places, Nigerians cry out in pain of hunger, and frustration over Government’s interference  with their chances to feed their families.

Someone sings that a hungry man is an angry man. How hungry are the people? Are they hungry enough to go to work, any work?

Some Nigerians feel the Buhari administration Is less interested in citizens' affairs than in maintaining the status quo and using the armed forces to intimidate and maintain absolute control and prevent anarchy or being toppled in a bloody coup.

Buhari seems to have real fear. He finds solace in turning Aso Rock into impregnable fortress surrounded by armed forces personnel who has been given orders to keep presidential palace and Aisha safe in the other room safe and prevent another Igbo Nzeogwu from pulling off another abracadabra.

Abracadabra is Uzuakoli war dancers and shouts of “Igbo kwenu” from Nnamdi Kanu and his ragtag  army of IPOB boys.

Surely, Buhari is afraid of his people including ever-present insecurity defined as lawlessness, chaos, revolution, mayhem, or rebellion, wouldn’t anyone be? Wouldn’t President be so scared stiff that he packs his cabinet with trusted family members from his own village?

There is fear that angry Nigerians are planning on joining former Vice president and leader of PDP Dr. Abubakar Atiku in a mass protest that would paralyze the nation and make the country ungovernable and perhaps drive Buhari from office? The APC leadership is shaking in trepidation, a trembling fear.

Buhari’s fears are as real as they are unfounded. The possibility of changing government by force is improbable. Surely, the Nigerians are too intelligent to let their nation disintegrate into another Biafra.

The Nigerians want their country to flourish under democracy, not under a totalitarian regime which what the Buharians are developing to become.  

The purpose f this essay is to imagine what is happening in a beloved country and to venture a few suggestions to avert things coming to a head. To come to a head means to create commotion, uproar, stampede, turmoil, or disorder.

The ruler and the ruled groups ought to have a meeting of the minds through open dialogue if anything meaningful is to be accomplished.

President Buhari ought to de-emphasize control and decentralize his administration to produce the feeling of democracy and meritocracy his people deserve.

Since Nigeria is now a democratic nation rather than under military rule, it makes sense to de-emphasize totalitarian approaches to solving issues that concern our people.

Let’s try massification for a change and see what happens. According to Brazillian philosopher Paolo Freire author of Pedagogue of the Oppressed, massification is a strategy that some makers of luxury goods use to  stimulate growth in the sales of a product.

Buhari ought to sell his administration as merchandize for his people to buy into. An approach-approach strategy is better than the approach-avoidance tactic.

Consider two brothers this writer met at Anambra market. They were grinding black-eyed peas and frying akara balls while Mama was pouring red palm oil and dropping red peppers into ground mixture.

The balls were of different sizes- small, medium, large, and giant- for anyone in a long queue of buyers to purchase. The akara balls were made to fit budget of every buyer in the queue.

Buhari and the APC ought to imitate the akara boys if he can see this administration as producer of luxury brands that must be allowed to grow to accommodate a broader market clientele.

There ought to be a massification ( to borrow Freire’s term) in Buhari government. The massification   would allow the massified brands to grow to appeal to and accommodate a broader market.

Buhari cannot continue to see himself only as Fulani President or Northern President, or Daura Chief. He can try to be US President Obama who is considered the first Black US President for all races. Buhari can be a Mandela, the first black South African president after apartheid.

The Nigerian President is the President of the Federation. He is not the chief herdsman. To think he belongs just to the North is infantile, youthful, juvenile.

It makes sense to emphasize development of the whole country, particularly the  private sector. Let the President pour resources into infrastructure, building roads, bridges, bypasses, and other structures.

Let the federal Government employ college graduates, NYSC members and skilled workers to create a massification that would rebuild the nation, and make Nigeria great and give people pride and a sense of being a part of the solution.

Let’s find out what the complaints are all about. What are these people complaining about? My people   are complaining there is no circulation of money while their government turns ears that are stone deaf and impervious to reasoning. 

There must be a give and take situation, the I’m Okay-and-you’re okay state where. Buhari gives fatherly advise, takes friendly advise from others, particularly the youths. Let there be a meeting of the minds.  

The elderly learn from the youthful; such interchange is medicine for the soul, any soul at any age.

Why don’t the APC handlers advise the President to attend hall meetings with his subjects? Listen, Dialogue. Question. Crack some jokes. Be human like other persons with blood and flesh.

Listening to Nigerians may be a good start to avert raw emotion an frustration from spilling into unnecessary killings and bloodshed. People need to know their president is not a clone or double from Muslim North Sudan.

Reduce the enmity between leadership and citizenry:  Show that the Govt is friendly and  in tune with Nigerians; share concerned about the people's plight . 

Nigerians are crying out in pain, hunger, and frustration that Nigerian Government is less concerned with their needs but more concerned with maintaining order for politicians to continue looting.

 It appears there should be a balance between order and needs.  You cannot maintain order in a vacuum.

Listen to the People sometimes to find out what they need. Some of their needs are legitimate and ought to be redressed as a matter of decency,  particularly those that concern health.

We need good roads connecting our cities and villages.

We  need adequate generation of electric power/ light most of the day and night.

We need pure water supply that has no water-borne microorganisms that cause dysentery and other gastrointestinal problems.

We need adequate healthcare services for adults and children.

We resent the availability of effective treatments abroad for a few top politicians while the rest of us go to quacks and witchdoctors.

We ask to lower the high unemployment rates of the youth.

There is the public perception that Buhari and politicians are there to enrich themselves at the expense of the people they represent.

We wish the present Government would reduce our perception it is being as strong and brutal as the past military Government .

Our present Nigerian Government ought to be concerned with social services. The ultimate aim of our government is to empower women and children and give men reason to be proud to be Nigerians; to rehabilitate infrastructure that would yield a semblance of democracy with all the positive feelings that go with it. We should get out of the posture that a government must kill, maim, and imprison at the drop of a hat.

We should try the egalitarian, noblesse oblige side of ruling that maintains a friendly, open, transparent social order.

Buhari should tone down his readiness to pounce down on people suspected of being unruly and disobedient in order to maintain law and order.

Democracy does not mean we can always be in one accord. Democratic behavior may include allowance for disagreements, strong opposition, or uprising.

 

Disagreements and diversity can be strengthening rather than weakening us  if we have the right attitudes.

However, we ought to tolerant of others' views. We should not be always be ready to quell every protest with a drastic or sadistic response that involves  a SAS  (shoot at sight) order.

An exception is where the insurgency relates to murder or the taking of innocent lives or destruction of property as the case may be with Boko haram, or other violent groups.

Delegate Power to the People at the lowest unit of government:  Some of what our people need can be met at the local level.  Encourage governors, chiefs, local councils  and community heads to put heads together to solve some of the mundane problems that plague our people, such as inadequate food poor sanitation, or impure water supply.

Develop high tolerance for demonstrations and disagreements.  Nigeria is a democracy. Nigerians ought to be able to demonstrate short of violence.

Nigerians ought to have the freedom to come together in peaceful assemblies with rights to petition their government to address certain pressing issues.

Buhari should stop labeling every assembly or demonstration as treasonable felony. Stop seeing the gathering or two or more people as a plot to topple the government.

Teach the Nigerian Constitution at all secondary school and university and grant rights and freedoms enshrined in the Constitution such as freedom of expression and assembly.

Translate the Nigerian Constitution into every Nigerian language and distribute copies to reach every household, adult and children over age 18.

Nigerians ought to know what their Constitution says about their duties, obligations, and rights. Enforce the laws fairly and equitably. Non-violent law breakers should be required to do community service, assisting in building the communication, road, transportation network .

Presented by Dr.James C. Agazie, jamesagazie@gmail.com

Posted Tuesday, June 18, 2019

Alhaji Junaid Mohammed has no right to speak for the North or for any part of the country, cannot  disenfranchise the Igbos

Junaid Mohammed has no moral ground to stand to speak for the North or for any part of the country. He should be condemned for saying no Igbo shall be the Nigerian president or to contest in 2023.

Junaid is evil, divisive, deceptive., and Junaid Mohammed’s reasons for excluding the Igbo is ultra vires. What a dastardly product of immature thinking! Not all claiming to be Doctor can back it up. A trip to Mecca does not qualify. Commonsense and fairness do.

Ultra vires means the boko haram sentiments in this man with questionable credentials are making him talk and take action beyond his legal powers and authority. Read more: https://www.legit.ng/1231818-south-forget-2023-presidency-junaid-mohammed.html 

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According to Junaid, politics is a game of numbers. To those of us who know, democracy survives where one good group outnumbers the other bad groups clamoring for attention.

Therefore, Nigerians are urged to speak up, demand accountability and transparency as if your life depends upon the demand and it does.

Democracy dies when the good in you and me keeps silent, leading the bad to mistakenly misconstrue silence to mean support for badness.

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Progress is made when two groups of Nigerians fight it out in an honest discourse, such that the influence of one holding the key that unlocks the country’s future and greatness outweighs influence of those who seek to destroy or corrupt the key.

To get a glimpse of the contents of Junaid Mohammed’s hateful mind and divisive personality, read: http://dailypost.ng/2017/10/10/igbo-man-can-never-nigerias-president-junaid-mohammed/

The purpose of this essay is to show how bad leadership plus corrupt and hateful politicians like Junaid Mohammed are root causes of Nigeria wallowing in poverty, directionlessness,  and its inability to take a seat in the committee of viable democracies.

The essay further demonstrates that in addition to one Alhaji Junaid Mohammed, other equally  psychotic and soulless Mohammeds join hands to drive wedge-like dubious religious sentiment that makes citizen hate citizen for selfish reasons all in the name of polluted politics.

When I complained to a retired University Vice chancellor that, Junaid is a destroyer who cannot build anything of value and ought to quit the legislative body by choice or impeachment, the former UVC responded with silence.

Each Nigerian must decide which camp – builders or destroyers- to pay allegiance to. Since most trees bear fruits, good trees bring forth sweet fruits and bad trees bear bad or sour fruits, it is often said that a tree is known by the fruit it bears.

The problem troubling Nigeria is that many bad trees mainly seek to bear poisonous fruits while good trees stand there occupying valuable space and doing nothing. One such bad trees is Alhaji Junaid Mohammed whose effect on Nigeria’s politics has been toxic, venomous, noxious, fetal, or lethal.

Having gotten a glimpse of the contents of Junaid Mohammed’s dark, hateful, and divisive mind, let’s envision Nigeria as a battlefield featuring enables and hinderers, between builders and destroyers. Decide which group this man Junaid belongs to.

If you don’t classify Junaid as a destroyer, then you are part the problem plaguing us and the light of godly truth hasn’t shined in your soul.

There is a difference between interests of rightful owners of the land (true Nigerians)and wanderers who owned no place, who were thrown out of Senegal, and have been wandering  under the pretext of proselytizing for dan Fodio  while inviting other foreigners  from all over West Africa to illegally congregate on land without expressed consent of the rightful owners.

A so-called Second Republic lawmaker, Dr Junaid Mohammed, has alleged that Igbos are using the agitation for Biafra to blackmail the North into ceding the 2019 presidency to them.

Junaid Mohammed wants the country to adopt a move that will not only keep Igbos down but will also disenfranchise a section of the country and prevent the South East from ever participating in government.

Junaid tells Igbos that “democracy is a game of numbers,” adding that nobody can tell “people to vote for you because you are being irresponsible.” Junaid’s definition of responsibility is offering your body as target to be shot through with poisoned arrows

Speaking with The Sun, Mohammed maintained that Igbos caused the Civil war that claimed the lives of over one million people. This is a case of blaming the victim.

Sociologist Dr. William Ryan wrote paperback called Blaming the Victim, which is an impassioned, often brilliant expose of bourgeois ideology in which the victimizer assigns fault to the victim.

It is like “you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.” Thus, Victim blaming occurs when the victim of a crime or any wrongful act is held entirely or partially at fault for the harm that befell him/her.

Examples of victim blaming are: (1) Igbos Are suffering because they went to war; (2) Southeasterners shall not be allowed to produce a president because they caused Biafra.

Junaid has a few lessons to learn from the pages of history. First, you do not go a man’s house with the intension to haul insults and hope the door will be opened to you.  Unless you treat the hosts with respect and decorum, nothing good will come to you.

The second lesson Junaid learns is that you cannot twist history to suit the vagaries of your warped, perverse mind. Truth shall stand despite assaults mounted against it. Igbos did not start the pogrom leading to the War nor did they prosecute the War. They simply ran home as cowards.

The third lesson is not too farfetched, and that is, that as sweet honey attracts more bees and             sour vinegar repels them so attitude of love and forgiveness builds bridges that hatred can and often seek to destroy.

Another lesson Junaid ought to learn in that history does not justify victim blaming any more than it is reasonable or defensible to hold that six million Jews were persecuted and murdered in Germany because they wanted the Holocaust.

The truth is that, because the Igbos were being persecuted, they ran home and asked Ojukwu to protect them, and hence the Biafran War. By what formula can the persecuted become the persecutor?

The destroyers of Nigeria feel that, as a result of the deaths of four politicians (Balewa, Bello, Akintola, and Okotie Eboh) of the First Republic at the hands of young army officers, millions of innocent lives (including children and unborn babies) must be sacrificed to appease the demon of revenge.

We the sane tell the Junaids, “You’ve got it all wrong. Whatever you’re saying is ruse, trick, ploy, deception. “

Junaid Mohammed wonders why the same people who caused the Civil war will now turn around to demand for Presidency. Will someone tell Junaid this: Presidency is not for sale; it is within the reach of any legitimate child of Nigeria. Period. Wouldn’t the disenfranchisement of Igbo also affect the North?

Junaid said, “The Igbo are clamoring for an additional state, one of the reasons they are now talking about Biafra, even though the real reason is that they want to blackmail the North, to concede presidency to them come 2019.” Junaid spins conspiration theories faster than a spider does its web.

He concludes the Igbos will never get any hope for presidency because democracy is a game of numbers. “You cannot tell people to vote for you because you are being irresponsible.”

He warns the Igbo: “You caused the civil war that claimed over one million people, you will now come back and demand as a right that you must have a president. Is it democracy they are talking about or secession?”

Junaid Mohammed is simply putting words in the mouths of Igbos to justify his hateful, bellicose, truculent personality.  A man does not destroy the household he built, nor a nursing woman her infant.

“1966 Igbo Coup Decapitated Northern Leadership,” says Dr. Junaid Mohammed, the Second Republic politician and a Kano State delegate to the National Conference.

To decapitate is to behead, execute, guillotine, or kill a victim by removing the head. Where does beheading come from?

 Dr. Junaid Mohammed has blamed the 1966 coup as the reason why the North is today left with “scoundrels, crooks and despots” as leaders. He made the accusation during an interview with Sahara TV. Read more: http://saharareporters.tv/1966-igbo-coup-decapitated-northern-leadership-says-dr-junaid-mohammed/

Junaid ought to retrace bis steps back to where he comes from. His attempt to establish relevance is failing, Junaid needs to turn his mind to his Maker if he’s really made in the image of God whom he calls Allah.

I am going to repost essay I wrote on May 21, 2016, entitled Are There Such Things as Love and Forgiveness in the Holy Quoran?

If you are a Christian given to incessant moralizing about love and forgiveness when all around you are bodies of fellow Christians slaughtered by boko haram, you are as guilty of murder as the rampaging hoodlums masquerading as believers.

And if you are a Muslim who does nothing else other than take the stand that such killings of Christians are within the tenets of Islam, you are as guilty of murder as the violent suicide bombers and grenade throwers.

The world must find a lasting solution to the Muslim and Christian problem or the earth will end up in total disarray.

I am beginning to rethink the commandment Jesus gave me in Matthew 5 verse 44: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to those that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you."

I am willing to support the argument  that Jesus' commandment does not apply to some Nigerians. The Muslims do not feel comfortable in a loving relationship; they choose violence and hatred.

I am tempted to shut the Bible in great anger or try to burn it if I can, and then walk out of my dwelling one pitch-black night, aggressively pointing skyward to heaven, and screaming at the top of my lungs like a mad man.

"Lord, Jesus, what love? I can’t love the Muslims because their Allah commands its followers to hate me, kill me, and have nothing to do with me. Look at Abuja, Nigeria and Kenya for examples. Where are the Nigerian school abductees? What love? Hah What love?"

The daily clashes between Islamic boko haran militants and the Nigerian security forces are news not worth writing home about anymore. On Friday, September 20, 2013, as the Nigeria's state security commenced digging for arms at Abuja (near the legislators' residence) following tip-off by arrested Boko haran fighters, the security team came under heavy gunfire attack by other boko haran elements.

Then, just the following day Saturday, September 21, 2013, some Islamic gunmen went on a shooting spree at the Westgate Center in Nairobi, Kenya, leaving 59 dead and over 120 wounded.

Consider the tragedy of 300 something Nigerian sleeping girls who were abducted in Chibok and whose unforgivable sin was the desire to learn to read, write, and 'rithmetic. Think of the 78 Benue souls mowed down with powerful AK-47 and buried in a mass grave all in the Muslims attempted land grab.

It is hard not to be convinced that Islam is a religion entirely based on hatred, violence, and death. There is nothing remotely related to love in Islam. Is Islam a hoax perpetrated upon unsuspecting world?.

 I searched for the words FORGIVENESS  and LOVE in the Quoran and I found none. My question is this: Is Islam the figment of a cave dweller's imagination, the mindless, murderous and hebephrenic incantation of a mind gone kaput, of a cave dweller and extract of Saudi Arabia, a mind that love and forgiveness cannot penetrate?

A religion that does not preach love or forgiveness is the fortress, citadel, fortification, or stronghold of iniquity.

Every follower of Islam, every Muslim wherever he or she is found in the world, is enjoined to do one thing, and one thing only, and that thing is to hate the unbelievers with every fiber of his/her being. To enjoin is to command, instruct, direct, or charge Muslims to hate Christians or followers of Jesus Christ.

Jesus taught the world about love, forgiveness, and being long suffering. It appears that Islam envied the rapid spread of Christianity and harbored the political ambition to beguile and intimidate the world into accepting conversion to a religion that encourages worship  of a deity that sponsors jihad and espouses no moral teachings such as love and forgiveness.

Must a religion operate through lies, intimidation, slavery, cruelty, and massacres of women, children, and the indefensible in order to gin converts? Is the teaching of this violent sect simply a plagiarized and adulterated copy of the Jewish Pentateuch?

There are 109 verses in Quoran that call upon Muslims to war with nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule.  Some are quite graphic, with commands to chop off heads and fingers and kill infidels wherever they may be hiding. 

Muslims who do not join the fight are called 'hypocrites' and warned that Allah will send them to Hell if they do not join the slaughter. A few sordid passages of the Quran follow:

Quran (2:191-193) - "And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive theom out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution [of Muslims] is worse than slaughter [of non-believers]... but if they desist, then lo! Allah is forgiving and merciful.   And fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah.”

Quran (3:56) - "As to those who reject faith, I will punish them with terrible agony in this world and in the Hereafter, nor will they have anyone to help."

Quran (3:151) - "Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers, for that they joined companions with Allah, for which He had sent no authority".

Quran (4:104) - "And be not weak hearted in pursuit of the enemy; if you suffer pain, then surely they (too) suffer pain as you suffer pain..."

What drives a Muslim to want to kill others? What sort of radicalized speech would Imam give to inflame a Muslim to strap a bomb across his chest and detonate it amid people?

How much hatred can the world endure and where does hatred come from? Why does Islam and its recalcitrant Allah, for that matter, goad its worshippers to "walk through the valley of death" in pursuit of enemies? Islam divides us rather than unite us.

While my Bible preaches LOVE, the Quran teaches use of TERROR to intimidate and kill. The Quaran permits honor killing where a father is authorized to kill a child for disobeying family rules against loving or fraternizing with an enemy (Christian) or for bringing dishonor by marrying a Christian.

Quran (8:12) - "I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore, strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them"

Quran (8:15) - "O ye who believe! When ye meet those who disbelieve in battle, turn not your backs to them. (16)Whoso on that day turneth his back to them, unless maneuvering for battle or intent to join a company, he truly hath incurred wrath from Allah, and his habitation will be hell, a hapless journey's end."

Quran (8:39) - "And fight with them until there is no more fitna (disorder, unbelief) and religion should be only for Allah"   that the true justification of violence was the unbelief of the opposition.

Show these Quoran verses to Muslims and they are quick to tell you: "These are not from the Quoran" or " I don't know which Quoran you have."  

The story is told of two young friends, one Igbo and the other Hausa, who promised to stand by each other when Boko haran first struck their city in Northern Nigeria. To make the long story short, the boko came, and the Hausa friend joined the Islamists. Guess the fate of the Christian friend.

Posted Friday, June 14, 2019

By Dr. James C. Agazie, jamesagazie@gmail.com; jamesagazies.blogspot.com

Who is to blame for our African sons’ underachievement and delinquency?

What do you see at college graduation ceremonies or when you honor invitations to graduation parties? Have you wondered aloud or silently: “Where are the men?” If you’ve not asked, you’re part of the problem.

When we noticed this phenomenon of  scarcity and underachievement of  Nigerian men, we wrote an essay on May 26, 2019. The essay was entitled “How Come Your Nigerian Daughter is a Medical School Graduate and Your Son a homeless Addict?” Read more: http://chatafrik.com/articles/nigerian-affairs/how-come-your-nigerian-daughter-is-a-medical-school-graduate-and-your-son-a-homeless-addict#.XQCbeBZKjIU

We noticed a pair of things that prompted this essay. The first is the dearth of our African sons on  campuses while females feature predominantly among students receiving college and high school diplomas. The second thing is that far more women than men are grabbing the professional degrees in medicine, law, and pharmacy.

Who are these female graduates going to marry if our sons fall by the wayside or end up in the criminal justice system? What will be the nature of Nigerian families headed by educated females without husbands?

Do you ever ask questions you ought to be asking? What is happening to our African sons in the United States of America to make them do worse than those at home? Why aren’t they going to school and graduating? Why aren’t they achieving as they should with all the opportunities America provides?

This essay answers these questions and attempts to provide help for parents confronted with sons who appear to be delinquent and underachieving.

A delinquent son is one who is criminally minded, aberrant, antisocial, offending, or refusing to go to school when he should. He disobeys parents, fails to follow rules, and opposes things family holds sacred.  He hangs out with friends doing nothing, just chilling out.

An underachieving son is one who is disappointing, floundering, drifting, or underperforming on tasks. An underachiever is most likely to drop out of school and end up doing things that make parents and society ashamed, not proud of them.

Nigeria is not America. Africa is different from America in so more ways than one? The cultures are dissimilar. In Nigeria, for instance, the pressure is on men to marry, have children, and head families, while wives play supportive roles to provide nurturance and ensure that rules are followed, everything is going smoothly in the family.

In Africa, especially in Nigeria, orderliness in family and community is valued, and sons are responsible for managing this neatness or tidiness. Men maintain the decorum.  Decorum Is defined as the dignity, propriety, sedateness, or correctness without which things fall apart and no family can survive.

There is hope and there are things parents can do to handle the problem of lack of men at graduations. Ask your sons questions about what is going on in their heads. The importance of questions cannot be overemphasized nor underrated.

Here is the bottom line: our sons are underachieving because we men and fathers also are underachievers. Although Nigerians are said to acquire more college degrees than any other immigrant group, yet the Nigerians in US are underachievers. For every successful Nigerian there seem to be 10 or more who have done nothing with their lives.

We make bold to say that thousands of underachieving Nigerian men have been in America for 10, 20, 30, or 40 years without acquiring even a diploma in things as mundane as housekeeping/ janitorial service, auto mechanics, or word processing. Ask relevant questions about these underachieving old folks.

Our hope is dashed when dozens of Nigerian taxi drivers in New York, Washington DC, Chicago and other mega cities, have Master’s and PhD diplomas (in political science, economics, public administration or international relations) tucked in their cars’ booths. We should ask why these PhD’s can’t use their knowledge to teach or do research.

We shouldn’t be tired of asking questions. Ask your son pointed questions concerning his interests in life, such as why men are not interested in school, why they appear to have interests other than education.

Interest in sex and fucking women seems to control minds of many Nigerian underachieving boys, keeping them away from schools.

This writer once ran into a group of Nigerian young women surrounding one Nigerian men, all recent college graduates. While the women were discussing their future (for the PhD, PharmD, and MD), the lone man was listening attentively.

The writer barged into the group with questions: “Why are you women struggling to better yourselves, and why is this man (pointing at the lanky fellow) not doing or saying much?”

They said, “He’s going for the Pharm D.”

“Why can’t he go beyond just PharmD to grab the PhD?” I asked.

They said, “There’s no PhD in pharmacy.”

“That’s a lie” I shot back. “There are the MS and PhD in pharmacology.”

The truth is that our Nigerian young men are lazy, indolent, idle, lethargic, languid, sluggish; they 

seem to be always thinking about sex, beer, and enjoying easy life of loafing.

Young Nigerian women massively contribute to the delinquency and underachievement of their male counterparts in devilish ways. Women provide easy sex for men eager for pussy. Men think all they need to survive are sex from women, some alcohol and drugs, and a little money.

To cut a long story short, underachieving African men, too lazy to forge ahead, become willing sex slaves for college-educated African women. Sex-starved overachieving  women descend upon male underachievers as vultures go down on carcasses.

Sex-starved young professional women use men’s underachievement as drugs to capture their victims’ attention, creating a victor-vanquished relationship where women want the women to remain financially dependent on women despite the fact the men are academically disappointing, underperforming, floundering, and drifting.  

Here is the predictable conclusion: let’s pull our young sons from the abyss of listlessness, also known as laziness, or underachievement by prodding them along and being persuasive role models.

Let’s help the man by telling our young women to stop.  “Stop encouraging men to not achieve; stop giving easy sex to our young men; make them go achieve something, and then come back for marriage.”

Tell our young people just to have the MD is not the end of the journey, Universities have the MD/PhD, MD/JD, and JD/PhD joint programs for motivated persons.

Tell them that the JD (Juris Doctor) is first professional degree; it does not entitle one to be called Doctor.  If you want to be called Doctor, you must go beyond JD to the LLM (Master of Laws) and finally grab the JSD (Doctor of Juridical Science).

There is no end to knowledge.  Continue to ask our children questions about achieving higher goals, and to not accept ike ogwugwu (Igbo for tiredness) as an excuse for underachievement. Ask questions.

Ask your boys what their thoughts are about their future, the future of their families. What is the future of black African families without black men achieving to their fullest potential? 

Ask your sons to ask parents questions of their own, such as why college is important, and why one cannot join the military and postpone school for a while, and why can’ t a man seek employment now after high school.

Nigerian patents ought to demonstrate genuine caring for their children and for themselves. Shower yourself with love by doing what gives you happiness. Shower your son with genuine love but do it correctly.

Love is much more than buying expensive cell phones, iPhone, and other electronic gadgets. Love also involves demanding respect and being responsible from your son. Impress it upon your son that he must do things to make you, himself, and the family proud, proud to hold heads up in nganga (Igbo for pride),not to hide face in shame.   

It pays to talk about your faith in God and the central place God occupies in your family affairs. Accompany or let your son accompany you to a place of worship and Bible study. Get to know your children’s friends and relations.

Being in the midst of under achieving peers makes one underachieve, Notice how iron sharpens iron. Tell your son so. Teach your sons to choose friends carefully as a bird is known by who it flocks with.

Teach your son the importance of saving and investment. Demonstrate how to save part of monies earned from part-time jobs in bank’s saving account as an investment that earns rich dividends.

Do not spoil your child with expensive car in high school. This writer bought each of his three sons a used Honda vehicle which they maintained during college with money earned on part-time jobs.

Share the stories of your life’s struggles - at school, work, marriage, and raising a family- with your sons. Show that life is not always honey and pancakes; there are splinters, thorns and tears too along the way.

Give your son choices without being too dictatorial or hard-nosed. For example, when one father found his son was resistant to becoming a medical doctor because of the long years involved, the father suggested physician assistant or nursing.

Do things together with your son. Such together things may include eating delicious family dinners, speaking the native dialect, and going on vacations to Nigeria to meet grandparents, cousins, and old friends you have left behind.

Travel round the world through reading together and surfing the internet. Read wide, laugh out aloud, embrace a lot, and pray earnestly. It shall be well with you and family.

Humans learn through observation, modeling behavior and attitudes of significant others, especially parents. Look around you at your African (Nigerian) friends, men and women your age or in your circle of acquaintances.

Although Nigerians are said to acquire more higher education and degrees than any other immigrant group, yet the Nigerians in US are mostly underachievers.

There are thousands of underachieving Nigerians who have been in America for 10, 20, 30, or 40 years without acquiring even a diploma in things as mundane as housekeeping/ janitorial service, auto mechanics, or word processing.

There are dozens of underachieving Nigerian taxi drivers in New York, Washington DC, Chicago and other mega cities, who have the PhD diplomas (in political science, economics, public administration or international relations) tucked in their cars’ booths. Why can’t they do work with these degrees?

In conclusion, let’s pull our young sons from the abyss of listlessness, also known as laziness, or underachievement by prodding them along and being persuasive role models. Tell our young women, “Stop giving easy sex to our young men, make they go achieve something, and then come back for marriage.”

Posted Wed., June 12, 2019

Dr. James C. Agazie, jamesagazie@gmail.com; jamesagazies.blogspot.com

The controversy surrounding Pastor William Kumuyi

Why are Nigerians slamming a popular preacher and what are his sins? There was a furor having something to do with something else, like the fulanization and Islamization of a country by Buhari.

Must a pastor watch the words he says with his own mouth in a church he has built with the sweat of his brows, for that matter, in a business he collects tithes from each Sunday to take care of his family?  Readers are asked to “Speak now or forever shut your damned mouth.”

What is the bottom line? The bottom line is the controversy that gave rise to the furor:. The furor is over  democracy which, like water, is fluid, always moving and not static. To keep democracy moving, we Nigerians are required to actively participate in making history with our ideas, input, and struggles.

Does Pastor Kumuyi realize that disagreements are good for democratic principles to take roots and that protests provide the best building blocks of democracy?  One who opposes citizens’ full participation is undemocratic and  is therefore enemy of the people.

Does Pastor Kumuyi hate his people? What Kumuyi fails to understand is that asking my people to keep silent in the face of egregious provocation is too much; it is like he’s the formidable enemy.

Why was the General Superintendent of the Deeper Christian Life Ministry, Pastor William Kumuyi, slammed as most formidable enemies are, for standing with Nigerians with APC membership cards who have been saying for long: “Don’t criticize PMB”?

Talking about a formidable enemy, can a pastor who preaches a seemingly harmless sermon be that public enemy that is tough, difficult, daunting, arduous, challenging? Does Pastor Kumuyi hate his people?

There was a tremendous furor when this poplar Nigerian preacher mounted unto his church’s pulpit to deliver a sermon. Everyone likes to hear a good sermon to help one go through the grind.

The grind is the tedium, the routine that characterizes daily life in Nigeria, usually the common “light no dey, water no day, food no dey” complaint, including particularly the pressure of mosquito bites that cause malaria. Besides, insecurity is another problem that gnaws at people’s hearts day and night.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Like most Nigerians, Mrs. Ade is not one to make something of controversies, especially when she reads the Bible daily, doesn’t pick up the Punch that has palaver plastered on every page.  She is not a woman  to get in the midst of esem okwu (Igbo for quarrels) nor does she understand the furor surrounding her favorite pastor.

 Mrs. Ade is lost, completely lost like one of those ten shekels a woman misplaced and swept the whole compound and still couldn’t find.

Last time Mrs. Ade went to Kumuyi’s church, she heard uplifting sermon about how a handful of corn flour and a few ounces of olive that never gave out in the house of a widow woman.

Courageous Mrs. Ade takes Pastor Kumuyi very seriously and knows that with Kumuyi preaching his sermons, she would not lack any good thing that comes from the Lord. She often goes home to share the gist of Kumuyi’s sermon with her heavily inebriated husband.

As she repeats Kumuyi’s sermon, she also informs her drunk husband that his inadequate control over his love affair with his mistresses-beers and liquor- is depleting their family bank account balance and threatening to force the landlord to throw the family of seven from their second-floor flat.

Her husband is Sunday Ade, a messenger at the Ministry of Education. Sunday has been inebriated since the couple’s wedding day at Kumuyi’s church many years ago..The smell of beer has never left Sunday Ade’s breath since that day even when he is  at the Ministry.

When he drinks, Sunday Ade is intoxicated, stone drunk, high, and he’s smashed mostly on weekend. Abstemiousness, moderation, or abstinence is not a word used to describe Mrs. Ade’s husband.

Why is there such a furor this time over Kumuyi? If you haven’t experienced a furor, it is a deafening nose made when there is uproar, outcry, commotion, controversy, or protest.

Nigeria is a place known for frequent furors, and the Nigerians are an uproarious set of people who feed on controversies as rats do in the house of cheese. We are hilarious, hysterical, funny, riotous, or raucous when something like furor agitates us .

Pastor Kumuyi was quoted as saying: “Don’t attack the president of the country, whether in words or in the newspapers or through the Internet. Honour kings. Don’t disrespect or dishonour the governors. Don’t disrespect leaders of the community and leaders in the church. If we are to honour the governors in the states, how much more the pastors,”

Newspaper boys reported that Kumuyi gave his don’t-criticize Buhari sermon as he spoke during a church service in Gbagada area of Lagos one Sunday morning.

Lagosians went crazy after the sermon. They went berserk, meaning that my people went totally crazy, and beside themselves; Biafrans were mad, and wild. The rest of the country went banana, with a few going nuts.  You could see murder in the eyes of die-hard Igbo people who felt marginalized. How dare?

What the hell was Kumuyi talking about? The purpose of this essay is to create an imaginary scenario depicting the import, significance of Kumuyi’s otherwise innocuous, harmless honor-the-king message.

The Nigerians didn’t think the sermon was a joke, they didn’t take the insult lying down, and they weren’t amused either.

It is often said that the party ain’t over until the fat lady sings, and that fat lady is none than the Umuahia man named Nnamdi Kanu who wants to carve out a separate nation from Kumuyi and Buhari’s world.

 Supporters, including Kumuyi’ wife and a bevy of fat choir girls agree that “Pastor Kumuyi is a respectable and responsible man of God, I like him; But we should allow him to speak his mind as God gives him utterance.” 

Opponents disagree. They say that that man went too far, and he ought to stay clear of politics which he does not understand. Why can’t he stay within his comfortable zone-saving souls going to hell? After all, opponents argue, ddn’t Jesus criticize Herod’s claim to be a god?  

Didn’t Apostle Peter declared his innocence  before judges pulled together to decide whether to stone him to death for heresy, and didn’t Peter say,“Fellows, we must obey God rather than man”?

Didn’t Jesus flog Igbo-like merchants desecrating the temple with their wares? What about prostitutes claiming to have received secret message from God after smoking one or more joints  of Indian hemp?

We are not going to worry about many embarrassing things like asking akwunakwunas (street prostitutes) about how much money they’ve made from male members belonging to Kumuyi’s church.

And we are not going to worry about whether Pastor Kumuyi remembers ever using hallucinogenic when he made that I-beg-you-to-respect-Buhari admonishment.

Hallucinogenic is a psychedelic, mind-altering, mind-expanding, mood-expanding drugs such as cocaine, LSD, and so forth.

If a thorough investigation of Christians’ use of intoxicants must be made, what do we suppose the survey would reveal?

Bear in mind that a discussion of use of drugs among church members is beyond the scope of this inquiry; and so is inquiry into whether Pastor Kumuyi has ever smoked marijuana or drank alcohol. Can we blame his sermon on overeating or excessive use of some substance?

Such inquiries are topics better left for subsequent essays. It’s a spicy, salacious, or scandalous subject. At this time, let’s respect the things of God.

Suffice it to say this: Pastor Kimuyu got in trouble when he preached a sermon that got the Nigerians furious and made Buhari and his supporters happy.

You are furious when you decide you are going to wage undeclared war with a man of God or with God. Some small-town preacher at a small Pentecostal church at Fort Valley had told the congregation: “Your hands are too short to box with God.”

The furor over Kumuyi’s sermon still rages on when Mrs. Ade gets into one of her husband’s drunken tirades after Sunday Gbadamosi Ade, a low level Ministry of Education messenger, joined the mob calling for Pastor Kumuyi’s blood.

Mrs. Ade said, “ Pastor is a righteous man, He saved our marriage when you drank all of the rent money away, didn’t he ?” Didn’t his prayers help?”

Mr. Ade responded, “oh yea. Oh yea. It helped a lot when I borrowed that money from my office workers. Where were he and Buhari when you were diagnosed with pancreatic disease and he was busy collecting tithes and the other man was laying around in a London hospital?”

Posted by Dr. James C. Agazie, jamesagazie@gmail.com; jamesagazies.blogspot.com

Posted Saturday, June 8, 2019