Little Blue Car.

1983, somewhere in Sabon Gari, Kano.

The man in the dark 504 salon chain smoked. He had just gotten into position and was trying to get used to his new surroundings. From here he had a view of the road as it stretched down in the dusty sunny weather of midday Kano. His target’s house wasn’t visible from this side of the street, you’d have to drive into the first connecting street on the right or walk down if you were so inclined. He had established that his query lived in the large compound with his three wives and children but, with the property well manned and, his target hardly ever alone, he knew a quiet job would be impossible. Not wanting to risk being noticed and giving up his shaded spot, the man just waited. 

Get a feel of the place said he, stay here all day if I have to. ...

 BAM! BAM! BAM!

He jerked round suddenly to find a hawker peering at him. His dark face did not frighten her as she stood by; seemingly surprised he’d be sleeping just when she’d be hawking her goods.

“Kai! Shegeia!” He cursed bitterly.

The girl blinked as if she understood not a single word then walked away as quietly as she had crept up on him.

He looked at his watch, angry that he had let himself sleep off unguarded and even worse; unsure of his subject’s movements. One hour! He had been asleep an hour? 

“Kutuma.....!”

He sat up in one fluid motion and adjusted his mirror seeing that he looked haggard. His eyes were sunken, his beard untrimmed and his lips swollen twice their size in the rigor of sleep.

The man cursed under his breath then got out of the car. The neighborhood was a quiet residential one and that meant it had a little above 10 adults prowling its streets, most residents had gone to find a living. The little kids squealed and jumped around in the heat. Their little black, dusty, bodies moving in all directions as they played and chased after one another. A stop further down had a faded, rusty sign that read: "Tandi."

He walked in and signaled for a drink, turning around slightly to relate his position with his targets’ house. The Dongoyaro trees obscured his view and he couldn’t really tell if the query’s bus was still parked in so he asked the boy who brought him his drink if the master of the house opposite was in.

“I could ask if you wish to visit for I just resumed duties and am not really sure if Mallam Ali is indoors.”

He made to call out but the man called him off.

“No friend, I will visit him after this drink; I merely wanted to say hello, nothing you should be bothered about.”

He finished his drink and pushed his chair back, the cool shade-so refreshing from the blaze of the outdoor heat. Slightly tipping his hat down his nose he made to watch the entrance from the corner of his eye.

He woke with a start, his hat falling off, his legs shooting out, and his eyes opening, all in one continuous progress that resulted in an inquiring look at his intruder, his face contorted into a big expressive “whaaat?”

The boy was saying something and pointing down the road. His eyes followed the stretched hand’s direction to a lone figure walking down the road then back, and then back to the road again before realizing what was going on. He got to his feet and paid for his drink, nodding slightly at the boy on his way out.

                                                         

                                                    * * *

The man ahead walked slowly, sure of his movements. He walked to the Volkswagen beetle and rapped at the window. The door opened and he climbed into the back seat. There were two men in front, a young driver and his friend, Dan Lami riding shotgun.

"You don’t suppose they’d be done with the burial by now do you?"    He asked his friend.

"Well, we have to get there first to know now don’t we?"  Came the terse reply.

They started off slowly finally gaining momentum on the stretch road as the bug sped along leaving a dusty encore. The rest of the journey was a quiet one with neither man talking much. It seemed Dan Lami was more interested in gauging his young driver’s proficiency. There was much to be said but now wasn’t the time apparently. There would be ample space at the burial. He leaned back and closed his eyes, his lips muttering wordlessly as he pulled his Tesbih.

                                                      

                                                       * * *

The man in the 504 had to overtake two cars at full speed to catch up to the little blue car ahead. He hoped he had not made himself obvious by doing so. He was tired and he knew it, sleeping on the job-so unprofessional! Damn! He reached into the glove compartment box and brought out an old revolver. He had two bullets left and with everything happening so fast he had to make some sort of decision. Wherever these men were off to would only increase his operational costs, he couldn’t stay back either, who knew if his prey would be back? Should he follow? and for how long?

He put the Peugeot in fourth gear and brought the car a little distance behind the Volkswagen. He could see the man's cap through the screen ahead and a thought occurred to him. Flooring the gas, he drove past the Volks peering in carefully as he did so. Three people, just two in the chamber. The road ahead continued into the distance with an intersection on the left lane. He pushed his accelerator going a little over eighty; he could see the beetle in his rear view mirror.

He reached behind and pulled down his window on his right back seat, careful not to lose grip on his steer then brought his speed down to fifty. The Volkswagen was coming up, apparently driving straight ahead into Daura. As the car went by on his right he pulled up his gun, maintaining his speed, the Volks slowly coming up his rear. He looked back into the car, waited a bit for the face in the back to come into view through his window, brought his gun level and fired.

Blood splattered across the seats and windows shattered as the little blue Volkswagen car veered off the road.

Hark o Hack!

   So am scrolling through my TL at past 11pm Monday night. A friend RTs @enspireATV’s tweet concerning Abuja’s first hackathon-good idea!! It’s scheduled for the next day, Tuesday from 10a.m to 4p.m in Maitama with the aim of introducing and meeting Abuja hackers, identifying new technology ventures and opportunities, and, creating an international standard for technology incubation platform.  I have no illusions about the benefits of technology to business; I have been interested in the dot com rise since the 90s and more recently, researching the business implications of adapting this model in Nigeria.  It is the future we have been sleeping on no thanks to a critical lack of internet infrastructure.

An Abuja based hub, finally!! The guys at @cc_hub (Lagos) are by now probably tired of me shooting random accusatory tweets their way, well they should be relieved and rightfully so. I go through my mind trying to put together just what I know about code writing, not much, – you’d probably write it all on a coin and still need a magnifier to read it with, and, with such dismal  thoughts I fall asleep.

   Its raining hard in the nation’s capital and I am late for the Hackathon event thanks to my erratic internet network-I just couldn’t print my e-ticket , and a newbie cabbie who got lost twice….

The enspireATV hub is located on the top floor of the NEPZA building in Maitama and the guys are way past introductions by the time I sauntered in. I manage to grab a seat unbalancing the projector, and, interrupting the guy currently giving his speech in the process. Somehow my awkwardness sparks a round of laughter allowing me to settle down quick and tune in. Participants are seated around tables, some quietly typing on Ipads and laptops and my horror grows. Surely these guys aren’t going to let hours go by trying to teach this rookie the rudiments of code writing, I really should have no fear as there are an equal number of business minded participants at the event who have never been the ‘techie’ type. Plus the hub has plans to get people into learning code writing but not today.

   The informal setting allows for discussions, questions and jokes. We listened to @deeman01 explain how the hub is structured to provide an environment that nurtures hackers, legal concerns, and business plans using individual participant’s experiences as reference and subject material. He was the middleman, the half geek prince-the other half being consultancy business. Then came @dasersoft and he was all geek, straight to the glasses too. He has a wealth of experience in the field and is recently working on a project that involves Geo-tagging locations in Nigeria. The idea is brilliant; think banks, hospitals and maybe ATM locations I might add. I also like the fact that he’s invented a means of mass-coding where even school kids can hack in no time. By this time, I am ready to kidnap the fellar for my private schemes.

Mike comes in too and talks expansively about the egg and chicken paradox, with the egg being tech and chicken being business. Which comes first? Should say, apps be developed for business or should business be developed for apps? There is no answer really, in this context, a synergy provides the needed results, and Mike knows this. He is a business man himself and wears a nice suit. He looks good in it too.

   It is rather a very exciting experience at this point with tea mugs hardly touched, @BankoleToba jokes about this and voila! Frosty soda cans and meat fillings appear almost magically. While this hub doesn’t hit target, (not a lot of hackers showed up, Abuja hackers are reclusive or worse, lost to Forex as Mike puts it) it does trigger the passion of its participants who are most mostly web developers.

I spend an hour more after the event is over chatting and networking in the viby green office surroundings. Some of the participants I talk to are brilliant, @fikitout has a video online library, and is a mechanical engineer so we spend more time talking about this project he has that models mechanical component parts and computes variables in test environments.

 It’s a wonderful experience and you should have been there, am glad I did and I tell @BankoleToba so.

Follow the guys @enspireATV or just walk into the place, they aren’t just happy idealists, they will shatter your silly ideas but will do so nicely, I’ll be working with this bunch, they’ve got me fired up proper!!

e-bitchn' on #childnotbride

The internet is a revolutionary tool. No, scratch that. The internet is revolution- perhaps; you should scratch that too and any other attempt at describing the internet.

 It is ever evolving; to attempt to describe its impact in definite terms is to do it crippling injustice. Best we just gratuitously employ it- and quietly too.

But the internet can be questioned, its reach as many other aspects of its being can be argued upon. Suffice to say it is massive potential, one that can be applied for and against the advancement of man.

Here, I intend to concern you with just how the internet ‘’advances’’ man. The internet as we know it today is technology that is very young. It is the product of centuries of humanity’s accumulated intelligence. It offers us certain advantages but, certainly not the type of advantages that are entirely exceptional when singled out for scrutiny. However, the internet has changed a lot of things. It has reformed the way we work, interact with one another, direct the flow of ideas, and organize folks and movements around the globe. However the scale of its influence is grossly underrated and in some cases; out rightly dismissed.

Along with the change the internet has advanced, it has also introduced its own lexicon: e-commerce, e-government, e-mail and a plethora of other ‘e’s. And here is the catch; we add the e-prefix to convey the internet/online variant of an already existing idea-word-thing-practice. It does not necessarily create a new entity, it merely restructures the entity with internet attributes-namely; speed, transparency, etcetera.

             @KathleenNdongmo; there is a difference between an active citizen and a passive citizen, irrespective of the fact that we are all citizens. Now pick your corner.

There are people who are always going to be content with the status-quo. This is not because the said status-quo is a favorable one. Instead, it is because they are all too willing to settle for less, seeking to eke out a negotiated existence on the fringes of cowardice. Sometimes, it’s just narcissism. An obsession with one’s self so advanced that one becomes oblivious to the inequalities of society simply because our ‘negotiated existence’ provides some temporal relief from some these hardships. Life being the complexity that it is full of these ‘harsh realities’ and in some cases, we accept whatever inconvenience life/society gives because we do not know how else to confront them. We are weak and down trodden. We cannot fight; we need heroes, champions, and people more ‘active’ in pursuit of better living conditions than we are. We need an activist.

Activism has existed ever since man realised he could attempt to change whatever misfortune that befalls him. Activism has been around for a very long time and justifiably so. The world’s collective history is one continuous active march. To be active is to do. To do is to do. Do something,- not particularly one specific or agreed thing but ‘something’. Thus there is activism in raising objection to a particular notion as there is to pursuing a favourable one. Preferentially patronizing a particular business is activism just as boycotting another is activism. Street marches are expressions of activism, sit-ins also. Occupy Nigeria movement-remember that?-yeah, that is activism. So also is writing a letter to your government.

         Whoever amongst you sees anything objectionable, let him change it with his hands, if he is not able, then with his tongue, and if he is not able to do so, then with his heart, and the latter is the weakest of faith.  Muhammad, SAW. (Reported by Muslim).

Fortunately for activism, the internet (that phenom that defies apt description) has come to its aid. Or has it?

Internet activism, A.K.A digital activism, digital complaining, e-bitchn’, online activism, is the use of electronic media tools such as YouTube, Twitter, Face book, Podcast etcetera, etcetera, to enable faster communication by citizens, organize movements and engineer the delivery of information to a large audience.

The opposing views posed by critics of internet activism are realistic ones regardless of how helpful or revolutionary the internet actually is. They (these views) highlight the paradox that is the internet itself:

Demographics;  Digital divide, literacy level. Not everyone can use the net. The impact of its reach in this case is limited. Similarly, not everyone can afford the internet.

Echo Chamber effect, Cyber balkanization ; reducing issues to debate topics where contributions  become merely for ego aggrandizement consequently leading to fragmentation and further polarization as opposed to increased mutual understanding of the topic. Also, there is the risk of information overload and questions concerning the source of information and the motives of the source that posts the information. To educate or gravitate? Anyone can get online and misinform, even an autocratic government.

Offline action; its hard to be able to gauge just how effective the internet is at generating a coordinated offline response. Just because people click or read blogs does not necessarily mean that they are willing  to go out on the streets to act it out.

@Atomlim; we should be a team complementing one another. This u r not doing anything talk is BS jor.

The argument about the effectiveness of internet activism is not limited to the above reasons only. I only mention them because they serve as the basis for the most potent criticism of internet activism in Nigeria. But to be fair, how has internet activism fared in Nigeria?

It’s a tricky question to answer accurately, but a clearer picture emerges when you remove internet activism in Nigeria and then try to judge the impacts of recent movements. Would #OJB have been so successful without internet activism?  Same can be said of #OccupyNigeria. Looking outside these shores we have the ongoing Arab spring revolution. Would these movements have the impact that they possess without the internet?

The internet is a massive ongoing experimentation; so also, its impact cannot be said of in a fixated manner. It is dynamic; changing according to the cause it is applied to and with varying degrees of success. What cannot be disputed however is the speed of dissemination of data. This is its ultimate triumph.

As the Nigerian government employed strong arm tactics in the wake of the fuel subsidy protests, it tried to misinform Nigerians about certain aspects of the fuel subsidy programme. It was a ploy that most likely would have worked well for it if not for an active internet presence that acted promptly to educate Nigerians on the true nature of things. Internet activism helped coordinate and maintain a massive protest that had the government deadlocked for days. Until of course a treacherous offline labor leadership sold out.

So yes, internet activism is informing Nigerians, “doing something”, and empowering people by information dissemination at least. But it is a work in progress. Recently, there have been anguished cries over #childnotbride. A menace that the Nigerian media, both private and government owned, has refused to educate people on. (It eternally fails to do so)

Led on by that randy rascal in the senate, Sen. Yerima seeks to manipulate a clause in the constitution to allow him and his likes to sexually abuse underage females under the pretext of enjoying his “religious entitlements”. A matter that has on social media provoked, passionate discussions, with some in support of the senator. Ignoring the fact that the child in question is only recently 16yrs and him, having ravaged her for the past 3yrs. (He contracted the marriage when she was only 13yrs old.)

There is no point in mentioning what manner of outrage this would generate in saner climes, our internet activists are doing that  just nicely. Effectively pointing out, limitations in street marches and an alarmingly impotent media.

@PUREHAIRE;   We’ll be meeting in Abuja tomorrow @ unity fountain 9am-12pm. Do your part. #childnotbride. Spread the word & force the senate to vote.

Mr. Horror's Humor.

   Here is a picture. From this upper position what do we have here? Why, there is a sharply trimmed handlebar piercing the air, curling ever so slightly, an extension protruding from the curious specimen man. Specimen Man is sitting in what appears to be a wicker basket. He has his hands folded and by the nature of the smug position he chooses to sit, he rests his full weight; basket, boots, hat and “sharply trimmed handlebar piercing the air”, anchored heavily on a head and its continuity. Specimen Man is most comfortable.

  When some Heavy things sit on other heavy things, there is a simplicity that is almost sporting. When Lighter things sit on Heavy things, generosity abounds. When a Heavy thing sits on a Lighter thing, Lighter things break and painfully so.

Lighter thing Head has a face. It is within. Lighter thing Head is female, crowned by a bond of weight to Heavy thing. This face is not some singular expression. It is a reaction to the weight she endures, her plea against this forced existence.....

When Lighter things tend to break, they do it in resistance to the continuing weight of the Heavy things, slowly resisting, resisting, overwhelmed..., overwhelmed.

Bend, bend you must! When we bend over to see the picture, suddenly realizing how silly those legs are dangling “so blasé” in midair and beneath; horror at this back so bent that it seems there must be some trickery at play. We see that Woman does not stand straight. Woman stands ‘bent’. Woman has hands hanging limp, they clutch at nothing-static in passivity. These hands, they tempt you into thinking they share some of this dead weight but, the curvature of this spine is so severe that quiet creeps your spine. Perhaps we contemplate our existence burdened with such a deformity?

Woman, O! Stress yielded woman! Carrying such mean dead weight, bend! You must bend! Woman is a quiet face, the kind of quiet that exists between calm courage and wise resignation. Woman’s face.....show strength?

Whatever gives, Specimen Man, to sit so unperturbed upon a dignity? You of the “sharply trimmed handlebar piercing the air”, did those shaded eyes not see the contours of that body cry under your imperial weight?  I swear, the “sharply trimmed handlebar piercing the air” winks a mocking answer. It is the colonialist mock of triumph.

There is a shadow lower still. The long ears of a stupid ass, the legs “so blasé”, seen clearly in the dark. The lazy ass that would not work and caused a famine. Stupid! Stupid! Braay!!

And this ass; she, subdued, subservient, sad. Working hard as all mules, carrying deadweight that deforms. This ass, so unhappy, its dull, non-rebellious demeanour has led it to such a fate.

Both asses. One stupid to subjugate the other so.... The other, made such an ass of in broad daylight by such weight. Both asses.....