@instablog9ja Did she really have to reveal her cleavages before she revealed how her relationship ended?
There's a pandemic of morally decadent women in Nigeria. π€¦ββοΈ
You guys should stop promoting indecency among our girls. "If she relocates to Lekki, she'll buy cybertruck in 6 months".
And what is that caption supposed to teach the younger girls seeing this post? That prostitution is the answer to their problems?
You people who run these accounts with so many followers are some of the biggest problems we have in this country.
Take any woman seriously at your own peril.
Check out this lady's marriage and it's possible she's doing all these things that she's denied online.
They come online, spew jargon and deceive unsuspecting younger girls. The they end it with "I'm just a girl".
Imagine a man coming online to teach men how to avoid their responsibilities in the home and in the end he says "I'm just a boy".
Like I've always said; I don't blame modern women, I blame modern men. Because a woman would always do only what her man allows.
Last Thursday night I ran out of fuel on Third Mainland Bridge.
11pm.
Phone at 2%.
No powerbank.
I want to tell you what happened next.
I pushed the hazard lights on and sat in the car.
Trying to think.
Cars were flying past me.
Nobody slowed down.
Not one person.
Lagos at night on that bridge is a different kind of alone.After about 15 minutes I saw headlights slow down behind me.
A danfo bus.
Old. Battered. One headlight slightly dim.
The driver came down.
Big man. Rough looking. Dirty shirt. Chewing something.
My first thought was fear.
My second thought was I had no choice.He looked at my car.
Looked at me.
Said "fuel?"
I nodded.
He didn't say anything else.
Just went back to his bus.
I thought he was leaving.
He wasn't.He came back with a small gallon.
Maybe two liters.
Old plastic container with a rubber pipe attached.
Like he kept it specifically for situations like this.
He poured it into my tank without being asked.
Without negotiating.
Without even looking at me for approval.I started the car.
It came on.
I came down immediately and opened my wallet.
I had β¦15,000 on me.
I held it out to him.
He looked at the money.
Then looked at me.
And shook his head.I thought he wanted more.
I told him it was all I had.
He said "keep am."
Just like that.
Keep am.
I stood there confused.
This man just helped a stranger on a bridge at 11pm and didn't want anything.I asked him why.
He leaned against his bus.
Took a long breath.
And said something I have not stopped thinking about since.He said in 1998 he broke down on that same bridge.
Night time.
Pregnant wife in the passenger seat.
No phone. No money. No fuel.
He said he sat there for almost an hour crying and praying.Then a man in a big car stopped.
Suit and tie.
Looked like someone who had no business stopping for a danfo driver.
But he stopped.
Bought fuel from somewhere.
Came back.
Filled his tank.
Refused every kobo he offered.
Said only one thing before he drove off."Pass am forward."
That was it.
Pass am forward.
The man in the suit drove away and he never saw him again.
25 years he carried those three words.
Third Mainland Bridge.
Waiting for his own turn to use them.I stood on that bridge and didn't know what to say.
This man had been holding onto someone else's kindness for 25 years.
And he chose me to give it to.
A stranger in a car he had never seen before.He got back into his danfo.
Gave me one nod.
And drove off into the night.
I stood there watching his one dim headlight disappear.
Holding β¦15,000 I couldn't give away.I sat back in my car for a long time before I drove off.
Thinking about the man in the suit in 1998.
Who had no idea what he started.
A chain of kindness that crossed 25 years and found me on the same bridge.I don't know who that danfo driver is.
I don't know his name.
But somewhere in Lagos tonight he is driving that old bus.
With one dim headlight.
And a heart that has been quietly changing lives since 1998.
Pass am forward.
*What are you passing forward today*?
Karma!!!!!
You will definitely reap something some day.
Depends on what you have been sowing!!!!
There was a time in Nigeria when the man carrying a sewing machine on his shoulder was called Obioma.
Because almost all the artisanal tailors were Easterners of Igbo descent.
After the Civil War, many Easterners emerged from one of the most devastating chapters in Nigerian history with almost nothing but skill, mobility, discipline, and a survival instinct.
Some carried sewing machines from street to street, patching clothes, repairing trousers, adjusting school uniforms, and moving from compound to compound looking for work.
That image became so common that the name stuck.
Obioma.
A man with a sewing machine on his shoulder, moving under the sun and doing work many people looked down on.
But the same people who were once reduced in the public imagination to street tailoring slowly began to move.
From roadside tailoring to shops.
From shops to markets.
From markets to importation.
From importation to manufacturing.
From apprenticeship to industrial clusters.
From survival to ownership.
Go to Nnewi.
Go to Aba.
Go to Onitsha.
Go to Alaba.
Go to Ladipo.
Go to Ariaria.
You will still see poverty, struggle, disorder, bad roads, poor power supply, and all the normal Nigerian problems. Nobody is pretending the Southeast has become Singapore.
But you will also see something powerful.
You will see a people who took humiliation, displacement, and economic ruin and built a survival machine around trade, apprenticeship, mobility, and family capital.
And this is what makes my heart sink as a Northerner.
Today, the mai guard, mai ruwa, mai shayi, mai kaya, shoe repairer, the man pushing a wheelbarrow, carrying loads, shining shoes, patching clothes, riding okada, clearing construction sites, packing refuse, digging soakaway pits, hawking small goods, or sleeping beside a kiosk in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Ibadan, Onitsha, and other cities is often called "Aboki."
That is the story we don't want to face.
One people moved from grass to grace.
Another moved from grace to grass.
This is not to take anything away from the Igbo people. I have nothing but admiration for them.
And it is not an insult to the Hausa people or to menial jobs. I am a proud son of Arewa, and in Arewa we do not look down on any vocation earned through halal means.
This is a history lesson.
Now look at us in the North.
We did not begin from the bottom.
Long before colonial Nigeria existed, Kano was already one of the great commercial cities of West Africa. Merchants from Tripoli, Fez, Agadez, Timbuktu, and Bornu passed through its markets. Caravans crossed the Sahara carrying leather goods, textiles, kola nuts, salt, and livestock. The city walls of Kano were not built around a village. They were built around a thriving urban economy that connected West Africa to North Africa.
We had cities that were centres of commerce when many parts of modern Nigeria were still organized around smaller local economies.
We had emirates that provided administration, taxation, courts, and political order across vast territories.
We had centres of Islamic scholarship that attracted students from across the region. In places like Kano, Katsina, Sokoto, and Borno, generations of scholars produced manuscripts and taught jurisprudence, theology, grammar, astronomy, and history. The reputation of northern scholarship travelled far beyond Nigeria's borders.
We had trade routes that linked us to the wider world. For centuries, merchants moved goods across the Sahara and across the savannah belt. Northern markets were not isolated local markets. They were part of international commercial networks.
We had cattle wealth on a scale few regions could match. Fulani pastoralists moved millions of cattle across grazing routes stretching from Senegal to Cameroon. Livestock was not merely food. It was wealth, trade, transport, status, and economic security.
We had one of the most respected leather industries in Africa. Kano leather was famous across the continent. Tanned hides from northern Nigeria found their way into trans-Saharan commerce and international markets. The famous red goatskin known as Morocco leather often originated from skins processed through West African leather networks in which Kano played a major role.
We had textile industries that employed thousands long before modern factories arrived. Hand-spun cotton was woven into cloth across northern towns. Entire communities depended on spinning, weaving, dyeing, trading, and transporting textiles.
We had the famous dye pits of Kano.
Not one or two pits.
Dozens of them.
For centuries, the Kofar Mata dye pits transformed locally woven cloth into richly coloured fabrics using indigo. Traders came from different parts of West Africa to buy these textiles. The dye pits became one of the oldest continuously operating industrial sites on the continent. They supported craftsmen, traders, transporters, farmers growing indigo, and entire commercial networks built around textile production.
We had the groundnut economy.
There was a time when the groundnut pyramids of Kano were not merely tourist attractions on postcards.
They were symbols of enormous agricultural wealth.
Thousands of farmers cultivated groundnuts across the North. Rail lines carried produce southward for export. Groundnut exports generated foreign exchange, supported industries, created jobs, and helped finance government revenues. The pyramids themselves represented mountains of produce waiting to enter global markets.
And if we move into the colonial and post-colonial era, the advantages become even harder to ignore.
We had numbers.
The North occupies roughly three-quarters of Nigeria's landmass. Depending on how one defines the region, the nineteen northern states account for well over half of Nigeria's population. Kano State alone has a population larger than many African countries.
We had manpower.
For decades, millions of young people entered the labour force every year. We were not a small minority struggling to find relevance. We were one of the largest demographic blocs in Africa.
We had land.
Hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of territory stretching across the Sudan and Sahel savannahs.
Land suitable for millet, sorghum, maize, rice, cotton, groundnuts, and livestock.
Land crossed by major river systems such as the Niger and Benue, and supported by irrigation projects in several states.
We had agricultural potential that many countries would envy.
We had political influence.
From independence onward, northern politicians, military officers, civil servants, traditional rulers, and power brokers occupied some of the most influential positions in the Nigerian state for long periods.
Prime ministers.
Heads of state.
Presidents.
Military rulers.
Senior ministers.
Powerful bureaucrats.
Influential legislators.
Whether one likes that fact or not, the North was never politically invisible.
We had religious authority.
The Sultanate of Sokoto remains one of the most influential Islamic institutions in Africa.
The emirates commanded legitimacy that extended beyond politics.
Mosques, Islamic schools, scholars, judges, and religious networks shaped social life across millions of households.
We had institutions.
Not perfect institutions.
But institutions nonetheless.
Emirate councils.
Traditional courts.
Islamic learning centres.
Agricultural boards.
Marketing boards.
Regional administrations.
Cooperative systems.
Educational establishments.
Commercial associations.
Structures that survived for generations.
We had a head start.
That is what makes the present situation so painful.
Because today, when millions of young Hausa and northern boys enter any big city, what work are many of them known for?
These boys are not lazy.
A lazy man does not leave Kano, Katsina, Zamfara, Sokoto, Jigawa, Bauchi, Kebbi, or Borno and sleep under a bridge in Lagos just to survive.
A lazy man does not push water from street to street.
A lazy man does not carry cement until his back bends.
A lazy man does not guard another man's house all night and still open a kiosk by morning.
The problem is not laziness.
The problem is that too many of our people enter the modern economy from the lowest possible point.
No certificate.
No skill that scales.
No capital.
No protection.
No formal training.
No strong educational foundation.
No industrial ladder waiting for them.
So they sell their bodies first.
Their backs.
Their hands.
Their legs.
Their sleep.
Their youth.
That is the real tragedy.
The Igbo Obioma story became a ladder because it was connected to apprenticeship, trade discipline, family networks, and commercial ambition.
The Hausa Aboki story too often becomes a trap because it is connected to poverty, broken schooling, rural collapse, insecurity, and survival migration.
One system turns a boy into a trader.
The other turns a boy into cheap labour or, worse, a recruitment ground for terrorism.
This is the painful contrast.
The Southeast came out of war and produced commercial networks.
The North came out of power and produced surplus labour.
That sentence is harsh, but look around before you reject it.
Who is carrying the load?
Who is guarding the gate?
Who is pushing the cart?
Who is fetching the water?
Who is sleeping in the market?
Who is leaving the village because bandits have made farming impossible?
Who is entering the city with nothing but strength?
If the answer to all the questions above is Arewa youth, then you must not be offended by the diagnosis. Instead, start asking your leaders the harder questions.
Because what is happening to Arewa is a failure of social organization. We shield our leaders too much and outsource criticism of them.
Our fathers inherited a civilization.
Too many of our boys inherited migration.
Our fathers inherited functioning economic systems.
Too many of our boys inherited survival.
Our fathers participated in trade networks stretching across continents.
Too many of our boys participate only in daily labour markets.
Our fathers built industries around leather, textiles, livestock, agriculture, and commerce.
Too many of our boys now rent out their muscles by the day.
And the painful thing is that the word Aboki, which originally means "friend," now, in the mouth of the Nigerian city, often becomes a class marker.
It becomes a way of saying: the northern poor man who does the work nobody respects but everybody needs.
That should break our hearts.
Not because the work is shameful.
No honest work is shameful.
What is shameful is that a whole region with history, population, religious authority, political influence, institutions, agricultural potential, and vast territory keeps producing young people whose first contact with the economy is desperation.
This is why history matters.
The question is not whether the Igbo are better than the Hausa.
That is a childish argument.
The real question is: what system turns hardship into enterprise, and what system turns heritage into dependency?
Because poverty alone does not explain everything.
War did not stop the Igbo from building trade networks.
Lack of oil did not stop Nnewi from producing industrialists.
Bad Nigerian roads did not stop Aba from becoming a manufacturing symbol.
Weak government did not stop apprenticeship from creating business owners.
So what stopped us?
What happened to the North that inherited thriving cities, trans-Saharan commerce, respected scholarship, textile industries, leather industries, livestock wealth, agricultural exports, demographic strength, political influence, and enormous land resources?
How did a people with so much historical structure produce so many young men with so little modern preparation?
That is the conversation we need.
Not insults.
Not denial.
Not ethnic pride.
Not hiding behind "our culture."
Not pretending every criticism is hatred.
The Obioma story should humble us.
Because it shows that a people can begin with a sewing machine on the shoulder and still build a commercial ladder.
The Aboki story should disturb us.
Because it shows that a people can begin with history on their side and still end up supplying cheap labour to other people's cities.
That is the mirror.
Igbo moved from Obioma to enterprise.
Hausa must not remain trapped inside Aboki survival.
The North needs a ladder.
@QueenUjunwa1 He's in his 50s and his sons in their 20s are beating him up and I'm supposed to feel sorry for the man? Lol! Any parent who fails to raise responsible children should happily reap their fruits of their labour.
@Kene_Nnewi@Jubex16 "Na photoshoot he come do".
It seems like you're happy the project is abandoned. π«΄
That being said, please I'd like to know what the dispute is about why Nnewi people won't resolve it speedily for the mall to be developed completely.
@OurFavOnlineDoc When people in places of power refuse to do the right thing, the peasants would first begin to pay the price. But surely, over time, the people in power also begin to pay the price.
This is only just the beginning!
Some men take this football of a thing too far.
He's dead now. The cause you died for is oblivious to your existence let alone your death.
Arsenal FC just did a trophy parade.Even the players who missed their penalties were all smiles during the parade. They'll keed earning thousands of euros weekly. Unbothered and unfazed.
But a football fan here in Nigeria invested himself so much into Arsenal that he had to die? Nahhhh! This isn't fanaticism, it's outright stupidity!
@Joshua__Ubeku Nothing! Absolutely nothing about this signing excites me. I really hope Alvarez proves me wrong cause as long as I'm concerned, paying over β¬120m for Julian Alvarez is not worth it.
Nigerians are too good at spotting rotten eggs, instead of laying good ones,
Our celebrities have more nuisance value than elevation value
Pain is necessary for the unlocking of your next level!