Damién

See the humour in everything ;)
Greasing the wheels @thebookmarketng

[Nwanyi Ocha @nwanyi_ocha]

I want to be fair to @PeterPsquare . He is not wrong that French opens doors Igbo does not. He is not wrong that parents get to decide how they raise their own children. But I guess he underestimates the fact that he is not just any parent. P-Square is a name millions of Igbo people grew up admiring, their success made them proud to be who they are. People all over the world sang their songs using Igbo words. So when a voice like that says Igbo is not worth passing on, it does not land like one man’s private choice. It gives permission for a belief a lot of people were already quietly carrying, that English and French, in short anything foreign, sits above Igbo, that their native language is something to graduate out of rather than something to hold onto.

I am not Igbo. I am Swiss. But my husband made it clear from the beginning that our children would speak Igbo, and I have never once seen that as a burden or a complication. Our children speak Swiss German, English, and Igbo at home, German at school, and now French as well, since that is part of their school curriculum too. Five languages, and none of them fighting each other for space. That is the part people forget when they frame this as a choice. Children do not need to pick one language to be strong in. They can navigate several at once, easily.

It is adults who turn language into a competition. Children just absorb what is spoken to them and grow fluent in all of it.

A language is not only a tool for getting ahead. It is also a rooting tool, the place where love, memory, and belonging live. It is the specific way a grandmother scolds you and forgives you in the same breath. It is a joke that only works in the original. Lose the language, and you do not just lose a skill. You lose a room in your own house, one you can still visit as a guest but never quite live in again. That is what worries me most in this conversation. A child who cannot speak their father’s or mother’s language will, at some point, stand in that homeland and feel like a stranger. Not unwelcome, not unloved, just outside something that was supposed to be theirs by birth.

One day, my sons will be handed a kola nut, and in that moment, no one should have to do it for them. They should know how to receive it, how to speak over it, how to break it themselves, not pass it along to someone else because they never learned the words or the meaning behind them. That is such a small moment, and yet it says everything. It is the difference between being someone’s guest and being someone’s own.
So when I hear “Igbo is useless,” what I actually hear is a wound that has not healed.

From the outside, I have watched how often English or French get treated as the languages worth keeping, while Igbo gets treated as the one you can afford to let go of. That preference did not come from nowhere. It is a colonial hierarchy that convinced generations of people that closeness to their own culture was a limitation rather than a foundation. I don’t say this to shame anyone, least of all a man raising his own family the best way he knows how. I say it because the people who shape how we see ourselves carry a weight beyond their own households, whether they asked for it or not.

My hope is simple. That we stop treating our children’s languages as a competition with only one winner. That we let them have both the world and their roots, and trust that they are capable of holding both without ever having to choose.

[Alex Onyia @winexviv]

I will be running another experiment.

The top 40 students in Enugu from the last Olympiad will engage in a 3-week bootcamp to learn some critical skills with precision.

They will learn how to build drones from the ground up, auto mechanics, precision welding, electrical work, and basic programming.

Some experts will fly into Enugu for the period to train them on these skills. It will run from August 10 to August 30.

If this works as planned, then it will give us stronger validation for the skill development program we are currently designing.

Don’t be tired of my experiments. Whatever works, we scale quickly.

[David Hundeyin @DavidHundeyin]

Everyone else has their struggle and nobody asks them to dilute it so that other people can feel included. There are West Asian struggles, South Asian struggles, Pacific Islander struggles, East Asian struggles, Latin American struggles, Balkan struggles, Australian aboriginal struggles, Native American struggles and Central Asian struggles.

They are all allowed to exist and breathe independently. Nobody ever accused those struggles of taking anything away from a wider socialist struggle.

Only when it comes to the African struggle must we be constantly lectured about why we must accommodate this or that group of virulently anti-black people in our African struggle, or else we will split this or that movement - allowances that literally nobody in the history of the planet has ever made for us.

Look, we know that there is a global anti-imperial struggle that links all our struggles, and we know the shared history we have with the likes of Cuba, Palestine, China, Russia etc. Nobody is going to make us stop collaborating with those whose partnerships have been mutually beneficial.

But nobody is going to convince me that I should not focus on creating the same moat and ringfence that everybody else enjoys. Everyone else on earth has nationalism as an intrinsic feature of their struggle without anyone making faces at them for it - why is it Africa that must dissolve itself into some formless global "working class" kumbaya fantasy that clearly nobody else subscribes to? Why must we be the test subjects for what nobody else is willing to do?

Why are black people always held to ideological standards that nobody else is held to? Why didn't Mao or Lenin organise their revolutions around this amorphous "global proletariat"? Why did they build strong nation states instead? Who dropped a nuclear bomb on Japan? Was it the "capitalist ruling class" that developed the bomb and flew the plane to drop it over Hiroshima, or did it use the air force of the United States Military to do that? Why does it need the apparatus of a nation state to impose its will on the world?

Why is this "capitalist ruling class" never able to impose its will anywhere except where it controls the levers of the state? Why have the only successful attempts to oppose this "capitalist ruling class" taken place through a powerful, well organised nation state acting in opposition? Why has all the world's "working class solidarity" not been able to stop innocent Palestinians from being exploded into bits with their families, but it is the IRGC and the well organised, industrial nation-state of Iran that has been able to stop a similar fate from befalling Iranian people?

If nationalism is just a bourgeiosie idea to serve local elites, then why does the "capitalist ruling class" invest billions of dollars every year on secessionist movements and rebel armies aiming to break up nation-states? If African nationalism represents a less important goal than this hypothetical global socialist utopia, then why do the powerful states controlled by the "capitalist ruling class" work so hard to kill or silence every single notable person who pushes African nationalism?

Why did they kill Patrice Lumumba? Why was Kwame Nkrumah overthrown after several failed attempts on his life? Why have there been multiple French-backed attempts on Ibrahim Traore's life? Why did they ignore Gadaffi for decades but the minute he paid for Africa's first communications satellite and put down Libyan state money to fund African replacements for the IMF and World Bank, plus gold reserves to back a continental currency - the things needed to unite Africa into a sovereign, continental nation-state - they immediately rushed every asset they had into Libya and didn't stop until they had him on video being anally raped with a knife on CNN? Why did they take down African Stream?

The STATE is the biggest asset and weapon that can be wielded by any group of people. If you have a state that is organised enough, you can go from a small island in the Atlantic to an empire covering two-thirds of the world. If you have a state that is organised enough, you can resist that empire and its successor, and prevent your people from becoming imperial roadkill. The entire reason why Africa is in its current situation is precisely because it has NO STATE, and its ability to create one is being actively sabotaged on a daily and ongoing basis, including through funding ideological subversion to convince Africans that there is an alternative to developing serious state capacity, either through Frank Zanu/Magatte Wade-style capitalism-raises-the-dead nonsense, or through woolly-headed Supermarxist trash.

Anybody who tells me as an African that I should devote my energy to chasing some formless, utopian "global proletariat revolution" instead of building a pragmatic, Chinese/Russian/Iranian/North Korean-style political revolution that births an industrial African state with the power to feed and defend itself, is just as useless to me as Magatte Wade telling me that the solution to my problems is to sell part of my country to Peter Thiel and gratefully let the new sovereign Epstein Island douse me with its hot, steaming American capitalism.

I will focus on Pan-Africanism and sovereignism. Africa will always come first for me before any of your other -isms. Anyone who doesn't like it, that's too bad. I didn't write the rules and I'm simply doing the same thing everybody else on this planet does - looking out for me and my own first. I'm not interested in being percecived as morally 'better' than anybody. That 'better' shit is what got my ancestors colonised and that's why I'm a black West African who speaks English and answers to "David" today. We don't repeat our ancestors' mistakes here.

In the everlasting words of Fela Kuti, TEACHER DON'T TEACH ME NONSENSE.

[Alex Onyia @winexviv]

I've spent the last several months researching, travelling, and studying why countries like Singapore, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Canada and Finland built some of the world's best public education systems.

One thing became clear:

Nigeria doesn't just have an education problem. We have a school management problem.

Today, I'm releasing a white paper that proposes a new way to transform our public schools, keeping them publicly owned while introducing world-class management and accountability.

This isn't about politics.

It's about giving every Nigerian child the opportunity to attend a world-class public school.

I hope this sparks one of the most important conversations our country has had about education.

Read it. Criticise it. Improve it. Share it.

If we get education right, we change Nigeria.

Here is the link https://t.co/EViU52FKFi

[Julie Varughese @julievarughese]

Check out this piece I produced for @Spearhead_Af with @barrahart's sharp script editing and voice

[Ada @ada4amaka]

Israel is their Christian Branch,
Saudi Arabia is their Islamic branch,
Both are run by the Imperialist to serve the same purpose...

[Sy Marcus Herve Traore @marcus_herve]

🛑🇧🇫- @CapitaineIb226 talks about how his grandmother was tortured during French colonial penetration. They wiped out almost all the men of her village and they were forbidden to bear children. It was after independence that his grandma was able to have two kids almost in her menopause.

That’s why Captain doesn’t understand why in spite of all the evil the colonizers did to our people, some Africans still love their oppressors.

In other parts of his speech, he talked about the syndrome of Stockholm that many need to heal from. That’s why Captain is saying that all those Africans who love and worship their oppressors more than themselves, that we must fight them without any qualms.

[AfiaTvOfficial @AfiaTvOfficial]

Massive congrats to Chimdiebube Onwubiko, for winning a Silver Medal in the Science Category (Grades 9-11) at the International STEM Olympiad in Rome, Italy!

Competing on the world stage and bringing home silver, we are incredibly proud!

[AfiaTvOfficial @AfiaTvOfficial]

Huge congrats to the supervisors & record-breaking Math teachers recognized at the International STEM Olympiad Award Ceremony in Vatican City, Rome!

Shoutout to @therightanglee , Anthony Iwegbu, @winexviv, and our @nathalie_ukwu & Samuel Chibuzor.

[AfiaTvOfficial @AfiaTvOfficial]

Massive congratulations to Chimdiebube Onwubiko and Don-Anele Munachimso for winning GOLD MEDALS in the Mathematics Category (Grades 9–11) at the International STEM Olympiad in Rome, Italy!

Out-calculating the world to conquer the global stage!

[Alex Onyia @winexviv]

Onyedikachi Egejurum got a Gold.

He is the best in Mathematics in the world Primary Category.

This is the beginning of greatness for the country.

[Alex Onyia @winexviv]

More good news.

Don Anele Munachimso also won gold in Science.

He is the best in world science.

Remember, he is the best in IGCSE Chemistry in Nigeria.

The investment is worth it.

[Alex Onyia @winexviv]

The wait is over.

We have 2 golds: Chimdiebube Onwubiko and Don Anele Munachimso.

We are the best in the world!

Egejurum Onyedikachi’s name was omitted. He should have a gold.

[Alex Onyia @winexviv]

The award ceremony for the International STEM Olympiad is about to commence.

Children from all participating countries are here.

I hope our children come out victorious.

[​𝐥𝐲𝐫𝐚 @sunnkssdseraph]

I literally cried when my therapist said "toxic family members rarely apologize. They would rather carry their denial to the grave than face the damage they've caused..in their minds, the pain they created was somehow your fault. Sometimes healing means accepting the apology you'l never get."

[​𝐥𝐲𝐫𝐚 @sunnkssdseraph]

One of the best things my therapist ever told me was if you struggle to know what you actually want, what you like, or who you are, it might be because you spent years being who everyone else needed you to be.

[Max The Airbnb Guy🏡 @Maxtheairbnbguy]

Anthony Bourdain was proof of this. He was a man who started as a chef with a sharp tongue and a cynical worldview, but he spent his life traveling and evolved into one of the most empathetic cultural explorers of our time . He didn't just sample food; he sat with people, listened to their stories, and reminded the world that we are all just trying to find meaning and a good meal. He understood that the more you see, the less you assume.

Bourdain's life is a reminder that the world is too big and complex to fit into one rigid box. When you've seen the countless ways people live, love, eat, and mourn, you realize that 'normal' is just a word for what you've happened to experience. Tolerance isn't about being nice; it's about having the perspective to realize that your way is just one of many valid ways to be human .

His passing left a void, but his legacy is a challenge to all of us: to get out of our own heads and into the world . I love. God bless and rest his soul 🏳️🕊️🙏

[scarlett🪾 @hollowandholy]

I’ve never met someone who’s genuinely happy with their life, comfortable with themselves, and at peace with their surroundings go out of their way to be rude. more often than not, that kind of behaviour comes from people who are deeply unhappy and project their pain onto others. once you realise that, it becomes much easier not to take it personally.

[Elnathan John @elnathan_john]

So many Nigerian books are lost in time, and it is sad. That is what happens when education in general is in shambles and there is such aggressive incuriosity, even among people whose job it is to study books and literature.

I think often of the generation of Nigerian writers who fell into the black hole of Nigerian literature between the 1980s and the early 2000s, no thanks to the death of serious local publishing, and to military dictatorships that starved education and culture of any real support (as well as and IMF-era austerity).

People like Zaynab Alkali, Festus Iyayi, Vincent Egbuson, T. Obinkaram Echewa and even Chuma Nwokolo. They were the unluckiest of the lot, writing before the internet made global attention possible and before Nigerian writing came off life support through international exposure rather than local consumption. Iyayi, for example who won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1988 and was killed in a road crash in 2013, deserves to be far better remembered in Nigeria than he is. And I always talk about Chuma Nwokolo who is one of Nigeria's foremost and most prolific humorists, and it remains a puzzle to me why he does not command the attention his body of work has earned him.

The luckiest generation struck gold with the internet after the 2000s and became known almost overnight across the continent, in Europe, and in the US, where international prizes and journals let them bypass a dying local literary infrastructure entirely. Then came publishers like Kachifo/ Farafina and Cassava Republic, who began to infuse real life back into the local scene from the mid-2000s (one could argue that they were largely riding the wave of writers like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who achieved incredible international success and things like Caine Prize-driven international attention rather than overwhelming local demand).

Unfortunately, we are back to where, even though the whole world is now connected, the local literary scene is struggling again, publishers swimming against a tide of economic collapse, in a country where young people have learned that no one cares what you know or how much you have read, only whether you have money to buy basic human dignity.

[Damién @bulkydamien]

@yeankhar Take it easy naw 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣