Some people dey enjoy love today, some dey sleep, some dey confuse like me staring at chart 😂
Life balance no easy. You dey which category right now? Tell me no lie.
In order to be born, you needed:
2 parents
4 grandparents
8 great-grandparents
16 second great-grandparents
32 third great-grandparents
64 fourth great-grandparents
128 fifth great-grandparents
256 sixth great-grandparents
512 seventh great-grandparents
1,024 eighth great-grandparents
2,048 ninth great-grandparents
For you to be born today from 12 previous generations, you needed a total of 4.094 ancestors over the last 400 years
Pause for a second and really think about this…
How many hardships did they survive?
How many silent battles did they fight?
How many tears did they wipe away?
How many moments of joy did they celebrate?
How many love stories began so that yours could one day exist?
How many dreams for a better future were whispered into the dark?
All of it…
just so you could be here, alive, in this moment
You know that episode of Rick & Morty where Rick reveals that there is an entire civilisation of people living inside his car battery who don't know that the sole purpose of their whole existence is to generate electricity to power a mad scientist's wacky space adventure car?
That is where Nigeria is right now, and that's why I am militant to the point of putting myself in trouble by talking about why Nigerians need to stage the most bloody and violent revolution Africa has ever witnessed. Because entire future branches of history are being wiped out because young Nigerians are trapped in an economy whose job is to make white people and a tiny Nigerian minority rich at the expense of 230,000,000 people like this.
This 19 year-old kid already has the sagging shoulders of a 47 year-old man with the world's weight on him, and he has already learned to not expect anything good to ever happen to him in life. All it took to show him a fork in his future trajectory was a fucking $47 tile cutting machine, and he's now going to hold on to this new opportunity and make a better life for himself - but there are literally millions of him out there that will never meet a benefactor, or that don't even have the skills needed to maximise this opportunity.
There is only ONE entity in any African country that has the power to carry out interventions like this in people's lives on a large scale - the state! A content creator can change one life like this and get viewed 10 million times, but a government can change 10 million lives like this without batting an eyelid! Only the government has the transformational capital and the incentive to do this in millions of lives!
That is why being led by people who don't work for you is a literal life-and-death matter! When we talk about neo-colonialism, this is what the fuck it is about! When you have a government installed by foreigners, which allocates billions of Naira in public revenues to enrich foreign intelligence assets like Gilbert Chagoury via transnational corruption schemes like the nonexistent "coastal highway" - this is the result!
Nigeria's money is not being used to invest in the lives and betterment of Nigerian people! It is being used to enrich white men in Washington DC who are already richer than God, with a fraction going to their local collaborators in Abuja! This kid and millions like him are the direct victims! Their future possibilities and bloodlines are being extinguished with poverty so that Peter McBillionaireStein and Matthew Von WhiteManBerg in Manhattan and London can increase their Q3 dividend payout by 15%. Neo-colonialism is not a victimless crime!
You are all living inside Rick Sanchez's car battery!
While watching the video, I became emotional because it brought back memories of losing my baby brother three years ago. He had a close friend whom my dad used to take to school with him every morning. On the day my brother passed away, that boy came to our house, and it broke our hearts because he was the one friend we always associated with my brother. He kept pacing around, clearly confused and hurting, and the loss affected him so deeply that his parents eventually had to change his school.
Even now, he still comes around to spend time with us. Every time I see him, I can’t help but think that my brother would have grown just as tall and big if he were still alive. It’s painful, but it also reminds me of the beautiful bond they shared. They were truly good friends, and in many ways, his presence keeps a part of my brother alive with us.
Helen, at just 15 yrs had the beauty and physical appeal that would make men go rigid with desire and swallow empty balls of spit.
The problem, I was her teacher, yet the object of her admiration.
Our relationship started when I allowed her to use my office and PC to practice her writing skills.
She'd write and I'd edit and encourage her to write more.
She's was good at story telling and was learning from me how to turn her stories into screenplays.
I taught willing students Creative Writing, which of course, was due to passion as it was never part of my employment description.
All was going well until Helen started writing stories in one tab and writing love letters in the other.
"Uncle, this feeling is new. It makes my stomach tense, my feet cold, my palms sweaty and it feels I could not breathe when I'm close to you, still, I want to be close to you". (scared Helen).
"It's weekend again, I'd have to wait more than 48 hours to see you. I wake up at nights imagining if you're sleeping, if you ate, if you're holding someone". (Jealous Helen).
"I know you're seeing my letters and ignoring them. I know you're trying to protect your job, but can you do me a favour and say it back to me just once? I love you sir". (Dejected Helen).
At this point I had to act fast or there'd be problem.
I called her, acknowledged her feelings, told her it's normal, admitted I used to feel the hots for one of my teachers then.
It gave her the opportunity to express her feelings, the challenges she face from men who try to date her, entice her with gifts and others.
I told her her feelings are normal at her age but morally wrong for me or any adult to get into a relationship with her. She smiled and thanked me.
I thought I had won and was relieved...
She continued typing more letters, now more intense.
"Please, if you don't accept my feelings, I might fall into the wrong hands and....Please be with me and guide me until I'm able to know right from wrong like you said".
Then she escalated into snapping and leaving her pictures on my phone.
Admittedly, in retrospect, she's one hot 15yr old and she knew it.
You'd easily mistake her for a fledged 18/19 because of her build.
I became her 'friend' in a good and morally right way, helping her to complete one of her first short novel 'The image in the mirror'.
She graduated the following year and I left the school.
Five years later, someone texted my WhatsApp, I replied.
I admitted I was Uncle Martins that taught at Bethel College.
Then she flooded me with pictures... Hot, sexy, appealing, alluring, pool pictures and drop dead holy grail body.
"Years ago, you turned me down uncle because I was naive and was your kid, but now I'm a big girl, in my 400 levels, I know my left from my right now... and you're STILL my RIGHT (and I'm no longer your kid)".
But to me, a teacher's kid will always remain a teachers kid.
As a parent, I think this video has taught me something useful.
I recommend that you should try it on your kids, too.
I have also shared it with my wife.
Credit: joe_drummer_boy on IG.
As an aside, one cultural feature I would like to delete from Nigerian society is men paying their female friends for sex.
Stop. Paying. For. Sex.
If you're going to pay, find an actual sex worker, do your transaction, have your experience, and keep it pushing.
Don't let that transactional stuff thing seep into your real life. Stop making it socially acceptable for people to have sex with each other in exchange for money without the psychological acknowledgment that this is prostitution (which to be clear, I have nothing against).
Sex is not a precious or rare commodity. It is not a capitalist invention. It is a human experience which must either be freely experienced or traded in an acknowledged transaction. While I am a proud advocate for prostitution (I think it serves a very important societal role), I think it is very important to keep prostitution and regular human relationships firewalled away from each other.
Because this lack of firewall is taking human relationships in Nigeria into this weird, hyper-financialised space where even in committed relationships and marriages, people are trading sex for money. Even in schools now, kids are normalising trading money for sexual favours. So instead of going through the normal, awkward, personality-building teenage development phase that a boy must pass through to become a man, boys are now learning that money is this magic shortcut/hack for getting everything including the girl you like without actually putting in effort or improving yourself in any way - that money in and of itself is what gives you value.
Part of the manifestation of the externally-driven modification of our society that I keep warning about is that 15 years ago, a 14 year-old boy in Igbosere who wanted to date the cute girl in his class would have had to make an effort to learn to hold a conversation, dress and smell good, maybe play a sport or 2 and learn to speak confidently so that Tinuke would notice him. Nowadays, his immediate visual reference for what "man near me who gets all the girls" looks like is one dirty loser on Twitter called Ezra who looks like he has a permanent smell, or one Yahoo Boy down the street with colour riot clothes and trousers hanging below his butt - simply because they wield money.
Someone is trying to morph Nigerian men into a group of disgusting, pathetic losers who try to fill the void in their souls by paying for everything under the sun including love, and we must resist it. There are only so many rich perverts and liquid social deviants. If enough Nigerian men collectively stop normalising the hyper-monetisation of sex, the equilibrium will be restored.
Both the Yahoo Boy with the blue tongue and mouth odour inside his Mercedes GLK, and the sociopath nerd waving his American VC dollars inside his Tesla are signs of the same loser disease that someone wants to become our norm, and we mustn't be afraid to tell losers that they are losers. A loser does not cease to be a loser simply on account of wielding money - money itself is a construct.
GHS 5,000 each freebet to 3 people, making GHS 15,000 freebet giveaway. Two from random likes&retweet in next 12 hours. 1 from my top 10 shuffle players. 🫣
1. As soon as big money enters your account, buy things in bulk - Cook in bulk, data, groceries, clothes, foodstuff. You are spending more to save even more later.
2. If you CAN’T do anything about it, don’t stress yourself about it. Worrying over things that are out of your control is a waste of time.
3. If you want to really go far in life, don’t womanize. It is one of the most expensive hobbies with little to no ROI. Not worth it.
4. Call your parents, siblings and friends whenever they cross your mind. It is the universe telling you something.
5. Don’t try to change people, instead change people. Read that again.
6. You are nobody’s last hope. Say NO as often as you can if it is inconvenient for you.
7. Fight your addictions early. The habit and lifestyle you build in your 20s plays a huge role in how long you’ll live on earth.
8. Don’t let money finish from your hand. It is hard but try.
9. Don’t date when you are struggling, in a bad shape or in debt.
10. Always have it at the back of your mind that you are on your own and nobody is coming to save you when things get tough. Choose you unapologetically.