Roving Journalist

The Adventures of a Roving Journalist by Phil Aragbada is a compelling collection of 94 essays drawn from more than 2 decades of journalism in Nigeria.

[Roving Journalist @RovingPhil]

BADAGRY
Symbol of Slavery and Salvation

“The neck chain, which is long enough to hold about 100 slaves by their necks, is said to be about 50 meters long. The dehumanizing process was achieved by clasping a ring of about 0.”

The lip clasp is said to be used to lock the left leg of one slave to the right leg of the other to make movement very uncomfortable for them. The most heinous aspect of it all is the babies’ link. Each unit has seven links, and they were used to hold the hands of innocent babies, while those too fragile to withstand the torture normally died before reaching the point of delivery in America.
The flagrant commodification of human beings was glowingly displayed by white slave dealers who were too powerful to be challenged by resistant native chiefs with their Dane guns, charms, cutlasses, bows and arrows, thereby giving advantage to the negligible but greedy local agents. This resistance by the less powerful chiefs, however, paid off with the assassination of a prominent white slave merchant, Mr. George Fremingo, in 1620.
Unfortunately, the revolt was only transient as the slave dealers retaliated with fury through the provision of sophisticated weapons to supportive chiefs for the suppression of ‘recalcitrant’ local leaders through inter-communal wars, where captured natives were sold as slaves in return for alcohol, glass mirrors, and gunpowder.
Another sensational and piteous area in Badagry is the POINT OF NO RETURN, situated in “Gberefu Island.” It got this sobriquet from the abundance of white salt on the island, which was strange to the natives in the very olden days. Of course, the frightening “point of no return” nomenclature symbolizes the critical point at which the slaves’ barest freedom expired. What a pity! It was the place where their state of civilized human dignity was debased as the captives were marched with chains around their necks, lips, hands and legs into the waiting ships, thus bringing a brutal finality to the relational bond with their kinsmen, ancestral base, freedom and culture.”

[Roving Journalist @RovingPhil]

NIGERIA POLICE
Victims of Official Oversight

“It is an irony of history that after many decades of independence, our leaders at all levels are yet to sever themselves from the umbilical cord of British heritage.”

They are so colonially straitjacketed that the slave-master relationship enjoyed by the white police officers as a token of British overlord is still very much with us.
The disparity in the salary structure between junior and senior officers is sinful, if not criminal; the living conditions of many junior police officers are substandard (except for the lucky ones who are quartered). The promotion prospect is hopelessly slow and ethnically biased.
With the poor salary, which condemns an average policeman to grinding poverty and still expects efficiency coupled with productivity from the men in uniforms, only exposes the level of our collective hypocrisy, thereby making the “Nation first” slogan completely nothing but vacuous rhetoric. Joining the police force has become the last choice for the jobless, and background checks of enlistees are weak, thus allowing people of shady antecedents to have their way.
I HAVE often meditated on whether the Nigerian policemen are not the worst victims of unbridled official oversight. Their dirty appearance and indecorous attitude are enough to baffle any member of a civilized society. Commercial drivers describe policemen as vampires who suck their victims with merciless intensity.
The common man on the street sees policemen as people who have no respect for justice in their craze for filthy lucre.
In an attempt to decipher what is actually wrong with the country’s premier internal security force, I was so aghast by my discovery that I only have to advise those who want the heads of our policemen to cool their temper.

Excerpts from the Adventures of a Roving Journalist, articles by Philip Aragbada published Circa 1983

[Roving Journalist @RovingPhil]

MACABRE DANCE TO SODOM AND GOMORRAH

“While Genesis 19 (vs. 1-28) is filled with rebuke and caustic damnation for this human perversion, the Quran (Surah 29) describes it as an abomination.”

Whereas these biblical and Quranic verses, in the opinion of same-sex apologists, may look like mere religious narratives and dogma, the fact stands that religion is all about faith and dogma, which, of course, are far superior to logic, which is an intellectual exposition devoid of spirituality.
The argument of same-sex apologists that a sexual relationship between two adults is purely a private business is patently pretentious and will collapse irretrievably when exposed to the rigours of logic and morality.
It is generally accepted that human beings are guided by norms, values, and conventions that prevent them from falling into the animal kingdom, where incivility and relational anomie reign supreme. To allow the sexual perverts amongst us to have their way under the veil of human rights portends great danger to our religious and collective cultural values. It is an invitation to the incestuous, polyandrous, pedophiliac and those with bestial sexual orientation to troop to the streets to demand their "rights".
The transnational brouhaha that witnessed Presidential assent to the anti-gay bill, coupled with the subdued din of homosexuals and their apologists, could have been dismissed as a tea pot tempest but for the Episcopal and Pontifical intervention from Britain and the Vatican, which added spiritual tone to the touchy issue.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who also serves as the supreme Prelate of the Anglican Communion worldwide, formally appealed to President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria and his Ugandan counterpart, Yoweri Museveni, to rescind the anti-gay bills passed in their respective countries.
The man of God, who is battling with factious communions in Africa and the United States over
disagreement on gay ordination, must have unrobed his canonical scapular for secular consideration and sentimentalism. This should be so, as the Bible and the Quran are unambiguous about the damning consequences that await the practice of homosexuality.
While Genesis 19 (vs. 1-28) is filled with rebuke and caustic damnation for this human perversion, the Quran (Surah 29) describes it as an abomination. Whereas these biblical and Quranic verses, in the opinion of same-sex apologists, may look like mere religious narratives and dogmas, the fact stands that religion is all about faith and dogmas, which, of course, are far superior to logic, which is an intellectual exposition devoid of spirituality.

Excerpts from The Adventures of a Roving Journalist,
articles by Philip Aragbada published Circa 1984

[Roving Journalist @RovingPhil]

VICTORIA ISLAND AND MAROKO GHETTO
It’s a Tale of Two Cities

“VICTORIA Island is well known by many Nigerians. It is the international seat of business barons. Its exotic layout, with over-pampered green lawns and neatly trimmed flowers that usually stand as the ‘watchful sentries’, is a sight to behold.”

In fact, the “Victorian” edifices, which are the trademarks of success and elitism, add class to this select community. Besides the paradisiacal features of Victoria Island, however, is Maroko- A sprawling shanty. A bidonville. A classical ghetto which is worse than the Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya and the 17th-century American Harlem- but this slum with over half a million inhabitants, without light and pipe-borne water, is just about 100 meters from the ‘majestic’ Victoria Island. This is a sad and painful metaphor for socio- economic deprivation and class segregation”
The widening socio-economic gulf between the rich and the poor in Nigeria, portends a veritably frightening spectacle of a potentially virulent socio-economic crisis. This is a country where the wretched majority appears to have been systematically condemned to perpetual melancholy.

Excerpts from the Adventures of a Roving Journalist, articles by Philip Aragbada published Circa 1984.