This is important?

There’s something you should know.

Nothing is real, nothing is important.

To think that there is; is to think that you are important.

You are not important.

There is no real thing that is important therefore you cannot be important.

Nor can any other thing be important.

It is here and suddenly it never was.

It never was in the first place because it is here.

What is important is not known and not felt.

Not seen and not heard.

It is here and was never here.

Not suffered not savoured.

Not anything at all.

But you don’t know this at all so you think this is important.

Or that is important.

And you are spoilt for choice and they are important.

And then they are important but those are more important.

And after a dreary bit you are exhausted but that is not important.

Or really less important...

You are drifting but isn’t that lost feeling not at all important?

Stop. Reflect. Is that important?

Wait, is this important?

Slingin' Goliath Israel.

The argument put forward by the critics of Professor Stephen Hawkins’s decision to boycott Shimon Peres’ invitation is the most regrettable excuse imaginable to come from a body of supposedly forward thinking people with any semblance of a moral conscience.

They argue that the boycott is against the spirit of open discourse which science advances. Effectively, they are saying; turn a blind eye to Israel’s wanton transgression because the issue at hand does not concern land grabbing, does not concern the systemic destruction and oppression of a nation, and does not concern Israel’s flagrant and well documented abuse of human rights. Instead, it concerns this little matter of science and its ‘lofty’ principles.

There are some who would want us to believe that there is a campaign of calumny against Israel and any criticism whether rightly or wrongly is aptly surmised in one notion; Anti-Semitism.

What they have succeeded in doing however is an attempt at redefining science, removing the toga of fairness it dons and clothing it in the bloody toga of brutality and intolerance.

There is no equality between Palestine and Israel, neither in GDP nor military prowess. To argue that there is because Palestinians shoot rockets into Israel is to be ungrateful to whatever circumstance has determined that you were not born a Palestinian. It is to not realise how fortunate you are to not have your lands stolen,your people impoverished, your opportunities at succeeding in this life minimised. Those rockets instead are the efforts of a feeble last effort resistance to a dominant military that is perhaps bettered by that of the United States only by sheer size.

It might interest you to know that the Palestinians have no effective means of redress against the transgression they currently endure. The UN forgets conveniently its mandate to protect human rights when Israel is involved. Otherwise, why is a sanction so difficult to impose on a country that has been predatory over its cousin’s fields? Palestinians in their oppressed history have been subjected to talks that have not returned any land, livelihood or dignity. Yet the world sits high, nudnik-ed by Israel into accusing these folks of a terrorist agenda or a sheer willingness to shy away from talks in favor of violence.

Science is a tool for humanity. It does not stand above human life or the principles of justice. What is science if all it does is to create bombs and guns for the oppression of people? What is science if it serves to oil the propaganda of a branding campaign?  What is science if it formulates the psychology for terror? What is science if we rather theorize and research while women and children die? If science is a mockery then we people of conscience will have none of it.

The rest of humanity may redeem itself of its nonchalance and this boycott is the means. How else do you gain the attention of a country that cannot be sanctioned by the collective power of the United Nations? That scientists across the globe can join the movement for the Academic Boycott (spearheaded by Bricup) of Israel is not to punish its academia. That is propaganda talk. It is to make that tyrant of Goliath dimensions pause and check itself.  And if science has to be involved in partisan politics to draw attention, to redress ills, to champion humanity then it is imperative it does so for any attempt at maintaining a supposedly dignified distance is akin to collaborative silence. The very idea that a boycott threatens the impartial nature of science is saying that science is without morals and utterly undignified.

We are grateful that similar views are echoed within Israel itself and even more intrigued at the high handedness its government displays towards the freedom of Israel’s Leftist academia, it is a sign that it is willing to  abuse it’s citizenry to protect what is clearly a policy that borders on institutional prejudice.

A certain D. Newman of the faculty of humanities and social sciences at Ben Gurion University warned that this academic boycott ‘’just destroys one of the very few spaces where Israelis and Palestinians actually do come together’’. I say it is better there is no space in the world where people cannot meet each other as equals in mutual respect.

Parenting, learning, worshipping corruption and other rants.

That the Nigerian state is a typical example of failed leadership is, am afraid a cliché. However true this maybe, we seem to be in a hurry to forget the dismal role played by followers; the citizenry at large. We- quite frankly, are incapable of understanding the simple fact that a good leader is a product of good followers.

 See (http://lordedwardteach.blogspot.com/2012/05/motivational-leadership.html?m=1).

 The 16th century war strategist, Nicolo Machiavelli, predicted the doom of a good man amidst bad people. I wonder what he'd have thought at the expectation of a good man arising from bad people. When we go out to elect leaders, do we do so out of selfish personal interests or for our collective good? Do we really realise the potential for change that we squander or cause? 

We live in a system where the basic unit of society-the family, is almost dysfunctional. While parents these days limit their functions to the provision of basic amenities for their children, they ignore uncelebrated, moral, values. And whether they realise it or not, emphasis is placed on grooming children into hardened criminals. By this I don’t refer only to men with arms and an intent to rob-God knows we have enough of those-but, I point out the other thieves everywhere else. From the elected crooks to the deceitful petty trader, parents groom for this nation kids, who thoroughly believe that profit is only attained by the deliberate circumvention of honesty and hard work.

Agreed there are socio-economic reasons for this malaise; with minimum wage barely able to cover school fees in a decent place of learning for the kids, provide food on the table, buy clothing.... parents are forced to look elsewhere to source for funds. Efforts at ‘‘looking elsewhere'' grinds to a halt when economic policy stifles genuine attempts at self sufficiency. It is almost as if there is a constant, gradual push from the economy into a life of crime.

No matter, we must quickly note that true character is best honed by resistance to the temptations presented by adversity and if the current landscape is any judge, most parents have serially failed this test since a little before the First republic.

 It’s not okay to ensure our kids go to places of worship, attend schools, do homework and get degrees. It really goes beyond that. How well are we raising these kids? Do we teach them to be rational, balanced people or needy, dependent, opportunists? What kinds of values are instilled into them? Do we excuse their wrongs purely on sentiments? Do we before their eyes place emphasis on the ends as opposed to the means?

Agreed it is illogical to argue that parenting is the single source of our ills. It is merely its cornerstone. A lot revolves around this unit and its direct influence on the health of the nation is understated. As if we do not realise that our society's actors are parents themselves and were once under the care of. That our inept civil service, the policeman demanding his #20 Naira bribe, the trigger happy soldier surveying the carnage at Bama, the subsidy thieves, the suicide bomber, the ritualist...cannot be divorced from that core of humanity.

 Society as we understand the notion is structured in such a manner that a sizeable amount of what we could learn from it is obvious to the truly observant. To learn the manners of a foreign culture isn’t it best to observe that society?  But in these present danger prone climes, just who do we learn proper morals from? What do we learn from observing the Nigerian society?

This is a society in which exists what can best be described as justification for a corrupt lifestyle; Economy is harsh, poverty is everywhere. Crooks will trample on your rights because the courts won’t protect them, clerics will justify the accumulation of crass wealth regardless of its source with the notion that God is a Prosperous God and most importantly, the fact that our sense of worth is tied to material acquisitions-solely to material things.

You see poverty, when inflicted upon a man is a painful experience. It puts man in a state where he is most vulnerable to temptation. This said temptation is even greater to resist when experience teaches that if you steal just enough, you can buy your freedom in any court in the land. In fact, you are rather 'unbalanced' if you refuse to 'help' yourself. This is what the Nigerian reality has taught our parents and it is one major thing they teach us. Am sure it is what is meant when thievery is rationalised...; ''I only want the best for you''.

112.5 million of us live below the poverty line. That’s an orchestra of 112.5 million voices twisted out of tune by poverty, singing a sad song.

  

The criminal indoctrination of the young Nigerian mind is further established when the child is sent along to acquire some education. Tracing his steps from pry school we see our public places of learning have become tax free trade havens. Headmasters & Mistresses in conjunction with minions divert free books allocated to schools and sell on to black markets. Teachers have low morale and in most cases, grossly unqualified for the job they hold. Where there are teachers with decent qualifications willing to teach, they are faced with unpaid salaries and underfunded classrooms.  The alternatives to government schools are pricy for most parents in the country. Some parents struggle to send wards to private schools even though there is a clear deficiency in National enforced guidelines and curriculum. Others, (read, govt. beneficiaries) pay easily from dipping into our commonwealth. Some even open such places to siphon money from 'bloated' parents and or to assure membership of some elitist facade.

   Consequently, the examinations for all national entry levels in the country are annual headlines of shame. The percentage of fraud; results obtained via illegal money exchange, the so called 'special' centers where candidates are  assured of passing grades after payment and even shockingly, the number of students who fail every year is always an indictment of the sham we call our educational system. (see Amina Idris Ebiojo's  Woes of Low Class Citizens. Daily Trust Jan 21, 2013.) Despite this and many other neon signs pointing at our progressive doom, we obstinately ship our poorly educated, ill mannered, opportunist brats off to higher institutions. There they find advanced cultures of decadence, violence, sleaze, and lecturers who teach them.  It is little wonder cultism exists at the level it does even in the face of efforts aimed at eradicating it. It’s a microcosm of the hierarchical system this country operates. The Cult and the Cultist, (a metaphor for the political party and its membership) is a higher citizen on campus; threatening fellow students, abusing the system with violence, gaining GPAs and favour alike. Compare with the corrupt politician who tramples on the rights of fellow citizens, abuses the system to win court cases and contracts with ease, and yes, our ever present pre and post election violence....! 

While its not everywhere this madness prevails, Government's policy of underfunding of Education is an unspoken decree. Minimal government presence from the tertiary to primary school levels results in public schools lacking basic amenities such as running water, first aid, and classrooms with roofs over them. Laboratories in most if not all federal and state universities are ill-equipped. The old poorly maintained ones probably won’t run because power failure is rampant nationwide. Hence research, that enlightening adventure has become merely a dull, vain, theoretical experience.

The fact is that most of our students in fields say; Engineering probably spends five years pouring over books with outdated lectures and minimum practical or pays for grades if he were so inclined, for a degree to which he contributes nothing to neither its science or, practices with any hint of competence.

   When we begin to give serious thought to just how much damage the average, supposedly educated Nigerian youth is exposed to, we see why bad leadership is the norm. Understand that bad leadership becomes a natural progression.  Thus the young Nigerian, psychologically scarred by his life experience thus far is mentally unhinged. His priorities are misplaced, more likely there is a complete absence of any.  He cannot find any sense of achievement in any other endeavor but in the accumulation of material things. Amongst the many reasons for this is the need to compensate for a lifetime of lack. This he sets out to remedy regardless of the means he employs. The tragedy however is that this perceived 'lack' is a mental malaise and no amount of material accumulation can cure this illness.  

   There exists a plethora of ways to abuse the system eternally without fail. We have cultured corruption and hence our general, almost religious observance of it. It is the only way to move 'forward', to be relevant, to survive, and, holding any objection towards corrupt enrichment is a sign of weakness or a laughable holier-than-thou disposition.

   In chronicling our ever fluid corruption, the Reader will permit me a moment to narrate an experience (related to me by a friend) in which a young lady, a victim of an auto-accident needed prompt medical attention. You could imagine his dismay when a trader accosted him over the bag of sachet water used in reviving the young lady and even then; at a cost price of #20 per sachet! This absurdity did not end there as the bike man that conveyed them to the hospital was quick at cashing in too; charging over #600 for a fare that normally would go around #200. All this because, of the peculiar circumstance and our genetic disposition to profiteering. And this scenario is by no means a one off event, why then should any rational person expect good leadership in Nigeria when the humble lot is fast becoming extinct? Why should the state provide free healthcare as due when the people themselves begin to commercialise the barest sympathetic gesture?  Is there any choice then for any resident Nigerian but utter irredeemable corruption? Isnt it the only way his survival and that of his family can be assured?

What was that Darwin said about the survival of the fittest....? Make no mistake about it, 'survival' as understood by Nigerians in this context has never been and will never be judged by morality.

  We have millions of Christian and Muslim worshippers but the impact of religion on our young Nigerian's morality is questionable. Perhaps it serves as a reprieve for the fully developed kleptomaniac tendencies in our Nigerian's conscience? Or the most trusted weapon in the politician's Divide and Rule armory. Look and listen all around you, there is the blare of the Muezzin's voice over the speakers and two or three Churches on almost every street. The ever increasing number of the places of worship all around the country should give to an epiphany of sorts, right? 

Churches are built with stolen funds and Muslim clerics politicize sermons to favour certain patronages. All this time, fundamentals such as honesty and truthfulness are barred to the soul. One wanders in

a maze of get-rich-quick gospel and inflammatory 'jihadist' propaganda. It’s alright to NOT ask where that money comes from as long as Mr. B, an elder of the church, a Civil servant and a ''Big Man'' pays his tithes and then what else. Clerics will bless a man-anoint him even, regardless of the fact that this man steals his country blind.

 Religion as implied in its practice here is simply a tool to control the masses a s a single unit unit and as the most effective cutter to tear it apart.

I remember a book I once read asking; ''Will a man rob God?''  Welcome to Nigeria...

How does any parent who has looted Billions from the nation expect the child not to do more? And how do we collectively bemoan the excesses of our leaders when we do not appropriately punish the few guilty ones we find?  At what point do we realize that it is not okay to blame the leaders we have for the mess we are in when we encourage our children to pay bribes for certificates?

How do we teach them to be upright when we resent passionately, our current status(...and perhaps rightly so), all the while scheming on how best to exploit the system without any attempt at improving ourselves and that system?

 Ask any person you see on streets-parents, youths- what they would do for the country if they happened to become President, Senator, Governor, Local Govt Chairman, Councilor and the answer is almost always the same;

''I go tiff money na, who noh like money? I go tiff my own sef but atleast I go try do good ting pass all dis pipuh dem...''

We cannot continue to blame leadership 100% anymore as if they are some external, separate entity instead of threads of the Nigerian fabric of corruption that we also all belong to. The solution has always been with us but we pretend to not see it because living with cowardice is easier than dying a hero. A revolution of sorts will come in our favour but we have no right to expect one as we are most unworthy of it. That’s why our leadership is what it is...  Do we forget after all that their presence is a function of our concern or the lack of it?

Gbagaun.

Gbagaun: Origin: Yoruba: Colloquial to denote the sound made by a ringing bell.

Implied Meaning/ Usage: Error in one’s grammatical composition; written or otherwise.

It is with mixed emotions that I find myself contributing to what is at best Nigeria’s most popular hash tag on social media. There is no actual proof of its time of coinage, suffice to say that it has been in use since my primary school days in the 90’s way before its appearance on cyberspace. That and words such as ‘’Tabon’’/‘’Yi bon’’ (to shoot a gun), Gbosa (a loud cacophonic sound) would fly mischievously from student to erring school teacher or mate. Am sure these words were chosen to reflect the explosive nature of a shocking grammatical error. A gbagaun is that quiet explosion when, say, your mate embarrasses you with that poorly constructed sentence in public. You hear the English Language misapplied-murdered, shot down, and thus we would playfully point out such mistakes with screams of Gbagaun, gbosa, tabon-all to the chagrin of the offender.

Given that English isn’t our native tongue an artificial social strata arises consisting of those with a better command of the language pontificating over those with poorer grammar skills. It was usually the timid nerd’s way of soliciting recompense from the fumbling bully. The smarty’s way of deriving pleasure in a physical world he did not exactly fit.

Learning from that age however, you’d find no one exactly immune from the gbagaun scourge. A screamer would become the victim the very next minute. It was crazy fun, we’d giggle silly and recount the exact grammatical impropriety over and over. That was primary school, I thought it was done with then but that is not even close. It has instead waxed stronger.

Over time its usage changed as these things are wont to the point where the idea of a gbagaun has morphed into cyberspace. When exactly this happened is also hard to determine. The earliest recorded is sometime in 2010 according to Google. I bet some poor soul with more data bytes than knowledge of tenses probably triggered it, typing murderously what he thought was proper English to the irritation of some internet Soyinka.

On twitter specifically, the hash tag #gbagaun is recognisable as a source of popular discourse and as a humorous national sport. It has spawned various handles, cheeky songs, t-shirt captions and some would even argue; a sub-culture of its own! It was this line of argument that got me involved in researching this trend.

Earlier I said I contribute to this hash tag with certain reservations and my reasons are simple Gbagauns are fads and fads are usually irrational, self defeatist, have a short lifespan and reflect an underside of society that shows just how lacking in individuality we are.

But the gbagaun isn’t like any fad, for one: it doesn’t have a short lifespan. It has been around for the past 10-15yrs, online for 3yrs and doesn’t seem to be slowing down to a halt. Instead, it has become an online identity synonymous with the Nigerian internet user as is an IP address from this part of the West African coast.

I therefore took it upon myself to chat up one of its finest disciples: @gbagaundetector this fellow has over 51k followers.  A cult based on his RTs of grammatical errors.  A scroll through his favourites is a journey through humour land.

He seems to me to be a shy fellow, rather observant too. I am quick to suspect his motives. Among the many questions I put his way, I ask him why he does this. Is he some complex driven messiah out to absolve us of our grammatical inadequacies?

‘’it’s fun really. Mischief...’’ he replies.

Well I don’t imagine you’d detect gbagauns forever, do you think people will get bored and let go? His reply is quick and unpretentious

‘’most likely’’

I have a feeling he is wrong on this and I tell him so. I leave him thinking to myself perhaps he has no idea how much resilience this hash tag has. I bet he even thinks am nuts trying to write about gbagauns in the first place. Whatever doubts maybe expressed about my sanity pales into insignificance when you realise that some folks intentionally create errors just to have them ‘’gbagauned’’ and then trend.  

Fortunately for us all however, Goodluck’s Dame is not on twitter. Her famous; ‘’my husband and Namadi are a good people’’ would have shut twitter down am sure. I cannot honestly imagine the Dame with a twitter account, dear Lord no!!

GbaGaunDeteCtor.com @GbaGaunDeteCtor

Huh?RT @WoleBlaze: Sup wif MTN just deduction my credit for no reason."

GbaGaunDeteCtor.com @GbaGaunDeteCtor

#GBAGAUNorNOT "@TheSlut_uWant: Some people don't just known when to stops"

 

GbaGaunDeteCtor.com @GbaGaunDeteCtor

Capital #Gbagaun RT @_MajorX:"WHY DO PEOPLE HAS TO KILL ANIMALS

GbaGaunDeteCtor.com @GbaGaunDeteCtor

This gbagaun cant make anybody succeed "@iridiuminter: You think you are too young to succeeded?... "

GbaGaunDeteCtor.com @GbaGaunDeteCtor

Good Morning... "@Questionnier: That people that never Goes to church? #TGIS#QnA"