I am done with life…happy birthday to me

Long years of eluding dreams, long years of fulfilled dreams, I got it in equal portion. Beautiful manuscripts wiped off by the tears of mother nature. It was a long night of cries, flood came visiting. Now I have discrete stories, but still struggling to string them. I have suffered a mental loss, a productive loss that could have moved me a step further. There is no longer pain in my voice since I can now identify the color of agony. I have moved far away from yesterday, yesterday of nothingness, yesterday of grills, yesterday of dream backlashes.

I am done with life…happy birthday to me

In my growing up years, failure was my partner. But every of my failure was a success in waiting. So anytime I failed, I moved a step further. Then at a point, everybody wanted to fail like me. I knew from childhood that I would not toe the path of Abraham Lincoln. My head flattened out due to long years of hawking. It was a routine, from school to the streets, customers would be expecting. With a short stint as a heap scavenger before I was 10, my curiosity metamorphosed into a beast. Last weekend, I went back to the same heap, not to scavenge this time, but to tell the new generation of scavengers stories. After all, I was a founding member.

I am done with life…happy birthday to me

Now I am blessed, not with material wealth, but with riches of lovers and haters. I vocalise in rich languages, some people call it show off. I use wisdom to open up minds, some call it pride. In this course, looters have approached me to be their image projector, I declined. I select calls to pick, some friends threw me away like a tasteless chewed gum. I don’t call them friends anymore, I call them passers-by. In my story, I doubt if they will feature. I value people who value me. I break barriers to keep friends’ dreams alive. But in all, I concede to my haters the right to be sad.

I am done with life…happy birthday to me

I have been lucky and unlucky. I lost the lady after my heart, my mum. If I had finished school earlier, she could have been saved. I missed my dream of making my first million at 22, of becoming a chartered accountant at 24 – my ATS results are dusty. I am calm and loving, so I like ladies – not what you think. I have a facial disadvantage, too soft to be seen as a serious leader. So I deviced my leadership style, it is working for me. I don’t talk often, I get more by listening, though I am not a conformist, I may appear as one.

I am done with life…happy birthday to me

I was a cook to a family of six for six years. I grew up without parental tutelage, but with self guidance. A time came, I went on exile to Oshodi. Oshodi bridge played host to me for some nights when I was 13, just to be inspired to complete a poem. So I made friends with kids who were on exile on the streets. I did not leave Oshodi until police messed me up. The same poem later made me a mini celebrity when it was published in The Guardian. Then I fell in love with literature. I hate Nigerian police. The demise of my Physics teacher in secondary school, again, changed my trajectory in life. He was cheated by life. I would never trust life, I would never be disappointed.

I am done with life…happy birthday to me

I have conquered my own world. I am a free man today, free from the burden of waiting for the future – the future is here, free from the bondage of hopelessness, free from the thought of destitution, free from the fear of the unknown. My flattened head is back in shape. My voice is clear and loud. Today I speak to thousands, I get paid for telling my stories. Out of 36, I have been to 30 states in Nigeria, not in search of greener pasture but in search of the truth, in search of desolated souls, in search of people in need of my stories to move. Not because I am the only one with stories but because I talk wisdom, I write wisdom. I am building people’s dreams. I am enriching my generation. Don’t call it pride, this is me.

I am done with life…happy birthday to me

I keep a low profile. In my travels to 18 countries, I have not met a single soul exactly like me. I am uniquely created. Not pride, it will be suicidal for you to floor me in logic. I practice engineering, I love literature because I weave words, I live my whole life in philosophy. I go about with my opinions and I don’t impose them. I am always close to tears, too emotional to be a man, may be because I am still single. I have wept for Nigeria in corridors, I love Nigeria. Until the country change, I will not keep quite, I will not rest my case.

I have recovered quickly from my past. I am starting anew all over again. For the ones I have offended, let’s start together. For the ones I will still offend, I wish you well. Old things have past away, behold, it is a new chapter. I am done with life, never to struggle with life, never to struggle with what is not mine. Life is not mine, God owns it. He gives and takes. As I move closer to my grave, I am reminded that life is ephemeral. I don’t want jets, I want God. Don’t wish me long life, wish me good life. I want comfort to comfort others, don’t give me loud wealth. Hate me and be sad, mock me as I move up and you stay glued. Don’t waste your life hating me, your life is not yours. For me, I am done with life, I am a free man. Happy birthday to me.

It is me, @Obajeun

Critics of the Russian justice system, which has a notoriously high conviction rate, were outraged when the video purporting to show judge Yevgeny Makhno sleeping through a defense lawyer’s speech in court was posted online in January.

“The Judges Qualification Panel accepted Makhno’s resignation from his judge’s post,” regional judge and panel member Valentina Pozharskaya told state news agency RIA Novosti.

The film, allegedly shot during a fraud trial last July in the far-eastern town of Blagoveshchensk, seems to show Makhno slumped in his chair fast asleep with his head cocked to one side.

The businessman sentenced to five years hard labor will have a new trial on February 14 after an appeal was lodged over the “unjust” sentence, Russian media said.

Russia’s justice system has been in the spotlight recently over several high-profile court cases including the trial of punk protest collective Pussy Riot.

The band’s three members were sentenced to two years in prison on charges of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred after they performed an anti-Putin prayer in Moscow’s main cathedral in 2012, which Russian and foreign commentators called excessive.

Makhno will eventually be able to return to his post provided he retakes his exams, Russian media said.

Priscilla Pena and Michelle Blassingale were caught wearing “cocaine diapers” when they arrived at JFK Airport after a JetBlue flight from the Dominican Republic, CBS New York reports.

Pena was selected for search after a drug-sniffing dog alerted airport officials to something around Pena’s midsection.

According to an affidavit on the incident obtained by Gothamist, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials didn’t find anything when they inspected Pena’s luggage but noticed she “appeared to be very nervous” during questioning. Pena was then given a pat-down before consenting to a strip-search, prosecutors said.

During the search officers discovered she was wearing a black apparatus with a silver plastic wrapper “rigged like a girdle around their hindquarters.” Inside the “diaper,” officials say they found cocaine.

Pena then revealed she had been traveling with Blassingale, who was also searched, according to the affidavit. CBP officials found her wearing the same “cocaine diaper” as Pena.

Together, the two women were carrying 6.5 kilos of cocaine.

They were arrested and charged with smuggling, according to the New York Post. Blassingale was held in custody in Brooklyn and Pena was released on $150,000 bond.

This isn’t the first time this month someone has been caught stowing cocaine in their unmentionables in JFK.

Luz Massiel Pérez Arlequín was arrested at JFK on Jan. 12 after CBP officers found a bra and a pair of sneakers packed with cocaine in her luggage, according to the Star-Ledger. Arlequin, who was also traveling from the Dominican Republic, faces federal narcotics smuggling charges.

Vincent Burroughs, 40, of Fall Creek filed the lawsuit last week in federal court in Eugene. The agent, Dora Abrahamson, and the federal government are listed as defendants, and Burroughs wants a jury to award him unspecified punitive damages.

According to the suit, Abrahamson contacted Burroughs about an audit in August 2011. Abrahamson allegedly told Burroughs “she knew who he was, and that it was lucky for him that this was the case, and that they should meet.”

The agent subsequently flirted with Burroughs over the telephone and via text messages, offered him massages and sent him a photo of herself in her underwear, the lawsuit states.

Burroughs initially ignored the woman’s advances, according to the lawsuit, but he surrendered after a “provocatively attired” Abrahamson arrived at his home in September 2011, the lawsuit states.

“She told (Burroughs) that she could be a bitch, or that she could be nice,” the suit states. “She said that she could impose no penalty, or a 40 percent penalty, and that if he would give her what she wanted, she would give him what he needed.”

Burroughs had sex with Abrahamson that day, the suit states.

IRS spokesman Richard Panick said Friday he could not comment on any aspect of the lawsuit, including whether Abrahamson was still employed by the agency.

Abrahamson declined comment when she was contacted Thursday by The Register-Guard newspaper (http://bit.ly/14v0zTJ).

The lawsuit claims that Abrahamson’s conduct caused the plaintiff distress and a rift in his relationship with a “significant other.”

The suit alleges that the government is liable for damages because IRS officials provided inadequate supervision.

Burroughs didn’t initially report Abrahamson’s advances “out of embarrassment and fear that she would cause substantial financial penalties to be imposed upon him,” according to the lawsuit.

We have on our hands such charlatans traipsing the corridors of power, puffing and huffing in habiliments reeking of ignominy, underdevelopment and stagnation. They obviously got so intoxicated with their own sense of nonsense they began to imagine themselves as the messiahs of our departing nation. As the apocalyptic rumbling intensifies, it is suicidal for these men and women to stay too long in the corridors of Aso Villa. Shorn of authority, they can only become authoritarian, swaggering about in an infertile display of violence and naked aggression against their own citizens. It is raining thunder and sulphuric acid. This is the reality of our animal kingdom and we have a bunch of hypocrites to deal with.

With no exception at all, they care less about Nigeria as a progressive nation but the corruptive leftovers that accrue from it. And so they will stop at nothing to discredit those they think are not as brainy as they imagine themselves to be. The Nigerian people have unfairly become the target of their intellectual kwashiorkor. In case you don’t know, we are talking about the hypocrisy of today’s men in Aso Rock.

With their stuttering tongues and wide mouths, they arbour deep-rooted hatred for the brainy among the electorates. Perhaps, it is a malady they inflicted on Nigerians. In the same advanced societies which today’s men and women hate to be measured with, public service is taken as a privilege. People are called upon to serve; they do so in humility and great commitment. The special adviser spends his time to perform his constitutional duties; the lawmaker makes his presence in the chamber productive, the minister discharges his duties with measured decorum no matter how wide his mouth is, the governor tells the truth about his health to his people, the president makes priority of his deliverables and makes himself accountable to the citizenry. As public citizens, they are not entitled to use the benefits of their positions to shield corruption, to cover up sickening First Lady. They speak up on matters of public importance not as a part-time job as in the case of today’s men and women in Nigeria.

*Haba Obajeun
What then, is the problem with our public governance? As part of our regression into nothingness, most people become elevated beyond their competence. With this, public service becomes private service. Then they easefully forget they are mere journalists and trade off their once writing activisms and get swamped up in the national corruptive emergencies. They become emperors and spit acid from their Olympian heights. They fly the shortest distance in jets to attend parties; they arrange international media conferences to lie to the world and to morph into self-appointed messiahs of the power sector of Nigeria. They sell Nigerian property to themselves in the name of privatization.

They are currently milking the country, lobbying to move from the less juicy ministry to the juicier one. They belong to the political party hosting the largest political gangsters in Africa. They keep quite on obvious conspiracy among themselves and write books to unveil the mystery once they are kicked out. They disregard their journalistic ethos and lash at their former constituency at the slightest opportunity. If that still doesn’t work, they open twitter handles for houseboys and instruct them to abuse the Nigerian taxpayer, with a jobless doctor who prefers to be called an ‘attack dog’. Power blinds them to the reality that they are all in corruption together and not with the unsuspecting and hardworking electorates.

Unsatisfied with the performance of their dogs and social media voltrons, they arrange and spend $60,000 to grant interview on CNN where they lie against the Nigerian people hoping to force themselves into the heart of Nigerians. They swiftly arrange soldiers to take on assignment in Mali in order to gain undeserved attention from the international community. Sadly enough, no one talks about the Nigerian soldiers in Mali, the praises from the Malians have been on the French soldiers. These characters suffer from creative delusions, claiming they brought facebook to Nigeria. The fact that they have dedicated employee who manages their social media accounts and the citizens often correct them for their misfires through these accounts since these accounts provide direct engagements, makes them feel uncomfortable.

Saying that the government of the day welcomes criticism and political activism is like saying it is possible to clap with one hand. The government’s readiness for criticism was murdered on arrival. During the build up to the 2011 elections, the president shunned a debate put together by an independent body, apparently running away from criticism of his rulership after Yar’Adua’s demise. In January 2012, the same administration sent its troops out to march protesting Nigerians on the streets gun to mouth. This administration is wobbling in lies, and the goons are running away from the issues, calling the brainy liars. The current administration has held and still holding the country to ransom. The goons in this administration have appropriated the right to determine what is best for the country. The drunkards in the corridors of power who have turned public service privilege into a life-long self corruptive aggrandizement must be told to work for their pay, hence they become jobless.

The current Ministers, current Special Advisers, Current Governors, Current DGs, and all sorts who have been busy defending their wastes and promoting goebellian propaganda must be reminded that the Jonathan administration is in fact trying to finish up the $67b foreign reserves left in 2007. The ball is in their court, but they don’t know how to play the game. They are refereeing their own game, they are the accused, they are the judge, they are the prosecuting lawyer, and they are the defense lawyer. They are playing God with Nigerians and what they don’t realize is that in the end, they will still come back to us.

When one of them argued that Port Harcourt airport was abandoned by a self acclaimed social critic and there was a sign of corruption noticed in the abandonment, he failed to tell us if there was a paid budget to execute the ‘renovation’. If there was, what happened to the money? Who was the budget custodian? Has the case been investigated by the Jonathan’s administration since it noticed the corruptive lines? Who has been brought to book? If there was nothing like this to show, then they should bury their rotten heads. It is not about pointing fingers alone, it is about being up in the logic of our reasoning. It is a shame that our primary school pupils are now rationalizing the logic of the crop of the PhDs we now in government. There is something to learn from Oby Ezekwesili, use facts, numbers to argue your case.

They said the rail lines are now working and when they wanted to cap it all, they said, very ‘soon’ more rail lines would start working. The word ‘soon’ will continue to haunt them. They are jealous because they could not think through crisis and come up with creative solutions. Somebody invented due process and opened the door of accountability, but they are scrambling to talk about railway lines that will ‘soon’ start working. We ask them that where the money in our foreign reserve is, they are saying that the money is not missing but they could not just find the money. They have declared emergency in the power sector, they have managed to move from 2000MW to 4200MW. Unfortunately, this is not reaching the bottom-line. And this is evident in their 2013 budget allocation for generator set. The 2013 budget provides that, to fuel generators in the State House alone, the Presidency will spend N72,510,832. Also, the Presidency in its entirety is to spend the sum of N654.02m on generators. The money also covers the amount set aside to replace some generators in the agencies under the Presidency. Also, the Ministry of Petroleum Resources plans to spend N22,525,507 for fuelling of generators and N25,036,676 to maintain the generators.

There is also another huge sum allocated to defray the cost of power supply from the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, such as the sum of N148,105,373 to be expended by the State House alone to pay for electricity charges in 2013. MDAs include purchase of generators at very exorbitant prices and this appears year after year. For example, the National Primary Health Care Development Agency has a budgetary allocation of N23,515,181 for this purpose. The lifespan of every generator, even the one called “I pass my neighbour” exceeds a period of at least two years. So why is there the necessity for this request for the purchase of generators in the budget of some MDAs every year?

They are saying that we are complaining of bad roads. If illegal contracts were awarded to the tune of billions, what have they made of it? They said to the ‘tune of billions’, no figure. This is vague. We told them they lavished our $67bn, this is definite. Yet they claim to be PhDs. Has any court convicted the person who apportioned plots of land to his people? Was the apportioning illegal? What have they made of the case? If they really have a case, they should make the case with sense and come out to defend it. The summary is that they don’t care about the Nigerian taxpayer who has had to bear the brunt of their wastes and making a mess of our treasury.

We are not being hysterical for the sake of it. We are greatly appalled and disturbed by the grim social reality of our time. We are confounded by the savage existence of humanity. We are perturbed by the descent into bestial cruelty and the callous disregard for human life. We are aghast at man’s inhumanity to man. All we could do for now, is to laugh at grief.

Nigerians are wiser; they know who to follow and who not to follow. Today’s men and women are supercilious, and they are lost in their own ignorance. The power currently intoxicating them is transient. A time will come, they will be stripped naked of the power and they will need us to cover them. We will drag them on the street, and try them in people’s court and then, they will be remanded in their own solitude of quietness!

It is me, @Obajeun

However, the recent seedless corruptive emergencies in respective ramifications, witnessed the later strand of the last century, has left a pungent puncture on Nigerian honourable garment, thereby recommending the Nigerian legion to the rising human Diaspora to be wrongly and badly punctuated and referenced. Nigeria is ken to be seat of rival-free multivariate material and immaterial cultures, exceptional traditional containment, culturatitudes, exacting values, artistical arts, and among others, keeping human pulchritude displayable by Africans.

Perhaps, the Nigeria we now know has metamorphosed from primitive practices and cannibalistic savagery of nude figures dashing in and out of dense forests, with an unintelligible chatter as language and of an arboreal existence but non corruptible order, to a post-modern Nigeria with chemically polluted, sprawling civilizations, corrupt governments, failed institutions and disease-ridden interiors; of stick-thin, half-dead children staring fixedly in different postures of hopelessness at an impending fatality. This, unfortunately, has shaped our subconscious, that we no longer blush about killing.

So how did we get here? How did we arrive at this point where news of killings no longer appeal to our inner feelings? How did we finally arrive at this dead end where the country seems to have been wiped out of genuine value for life? How did we travel down to this age of de-civilization where the stench of clogged human blood has become the natural aroma of our atmosphere? How did we fly to this zone where common sense is no longer common among our kinsmen? How did we lose our sense of commonality? How come we still live as Nigerians, we still crave for our oneness, we wave away the possibility of our departure from nationhood, yet we are no longer jittery to daily news of mass killings? Where did our national feeling evaporate to that we no longer blush about mass killing?

National feeling plays a central role in providing a focus for our sense of commonality. The nation survives based on the principle of commonality, operating through a shared set of collective memories, as narrated through popular culture, school curricula, the media and so forth. Ideas about the continuity of nations are often conveyed through a cultural perspective that emphasizes traditions and cultures as a set of fixed and repetitive practices, as a means of forging common feeling and combating the indeterminacy of changing events. Like any work of memory, the concept of nation is selective and, in the case of official national feeling, often reflects the interests of dominant elites. So when the country, led by the president mourned late Yakowa and Azazi, which passed as the national feeling, the other four victims were at the mercy of their own sorrowful tales. It was a case where the dead mourned the dead.

How how did we come to where we no longer blush about killing? It was a gradual journey of negligence and failed promises. The communal clashes became escalated in Jos in 2008. Till now, the city of Jos now lives in the shadow of its own fear. Mass killing became rife with the arrival of Boko Haram. Churches became ashes, families wiped off, bloodshed everywhere, suicide bombing now the order.

Suspects have been arrested but same suspects have been freed in jail breaks. Promises fell on promises, that perpetrators would be brought to book, that Boko Haram would fizzle out, that we would win the war against terrorism, that there would no longer be bloodshed. Today we are still living with the burden of Boko Haram, we have not started fighting terrorism not to talk of winning, Boko Haram influence is growing, and we record mass killing everyday. For the fear of the unknown, our media houses now refer to Boko Haram as “Gunmen”. This is where we became hardened and we no longer blush about mass killing. Sadly, we are now used to it.

The mass killing in Connecticut took tears from Barack Obama’s eyes. He was moved by actions, not rhetorics of promises. Today, the gun control debate is sweeping across the God’s own country. This is why Americans blush about mass killing. The national feeling of grieve overrides sentimental judgment. When Madalla bombing happened, we were told to bear the burden of the ongoing killings by “gunmen” until it fizzles out. Today, the ongoing killings refuse to fizzle out, we still live with killings and killing has become a natural part of our national life. Our newspapers have taken news of mass killings off their front page since it is no longer news to their customers.

The last time the president visited police college, he did not blush about the rots, he blushed about the film. It is the same message. We are victims of our choices. Until we throw these rotten eggs called leaders into the thrash-can of history, until we action our grieve, until we move with conviction, until we unite with a common purpose of pursuit, until we dance to the rhythm of informed choices, until we decide to jettison kinsmanship in our electoral journey, until we see reasons to reason with logic, until we start seeing ourselves as electoral opposition, fighting to defend the dead, we will still not be blushing about mass killing.

It is me, @Obajeun