Olalekan Hapheatz

Football . Music . Politics . Art . More

[HRH banke oniru @HRH_bankeoniru]

Imagine living 115 feet up in the air!
The Korowai people of Papua build incredible towering treehouses entirely out of natural materials like bamboo and sago palm.

But why live so high up in the canopy? It is the ultimate survival strategy:
1, Security: High perches protect them from rival clans and flash floods.
2, Pest Control: It elevates them far above the swarms of jungle mosquitoes and dangerous wildlife.
3, Spiritual Protection: They believe it keeps them safe from earthbound evil spirits (laleo).

This engineering is genius, the indoor fire pits sit on suspended floor sections. If a fire gets out of control, they cut the rattan ropes to drop the hearth to the ground and save the home!

Would you ever spend a night up here? 👇

[Olalekan Hapheatz @hapheatz]

@meshkiey 😂🤣😂

[Olalekan Hapheatz @hapheatz]

No title, just vibes.✨

[Ayekooto @DeeOneAyekooto]

Cardinal Onaiyekan's Abuse of Clerical Privilege

By Temitope Ajayi

There is something fundamentally inappropriate about Cardinal John Onaiyekan granting a television interview to offer his own account and interpretation of what transpired during the private meeting between the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Nigeria and President Bola Tinubu. It is, in my view, an abuse of clerical privilege.

The bishops requested an audience with the president. He granted the audience graciously. They presented, as was their right, a catalogue of the country's economic, social, and security challenges as they saw them. Except for their grudging acknowledgement of the benefits of NELFUND, they were dismissive of the other great things done by the administration. The bishops were notably acerbic in their submission, but the president listened to them patiently and responded.

That should ordinarily have been where the matter rested. None of the issues raised by the bishops is beyond scrutiny or rebuttal. Their assessment is neither scripture nor an article of faith. It is a perspective, and perspectives can be challenged with facts and evidence.

President Tinubu did exactly that, responding point by point to the issues they raised. On the bishops' demand for the return of schools to their owners, the President was surprised that such an issue could be tabled before him, as it is a matter for the states to resolve, in line with our constitution. So, he asked the bishops to take the matter to the governors and reminded them he returned mission schools in Lagos State when he was governor.

The President argued that the bishops’ characterisation of the country's current condition was incomplete and, in several respects, inaccurate. He pointed to measurable progress on the economic, social, and security fronts. He did not pretend that Nigeria's problems had disappeared. He acknowledged that significant economic and security challenges remain. His point was that the country has emerged from "a dark tunnel", that his administration has laid the foundations for recovery and that the next phase is to ensure the greatest number of Nigerians feels the gains.

What the clerics often overlook in these interventions is that governing a country is fundamentally different from shepherding a church. In a democracy, every interest group, including the Catholic Church, has every right to demand more from government. That is part of democratic engagement.

But the president of a nation of more than 200 million people is required to make difficult choices every single day. Those choices involve competing interests, limited resources, and imperfect options. They will inevitably disappoint some constituencies. There is no president, whether Tinubu or whoever succeeds him, who can wave a magic wand and make Nigeria's accumulated problems disappear overnight.

It is easy to compile a list of national problems. It is far more difficult to acknowledge the disasters that have been averted. Whatever anyone thinks of President Tinubu's policies, it is impossible to ignore the fiscal crisis he inherited and the measures taken to pull the country away from the edge of a financial cliff. Even the bishops themselves should recognise that one tangible consequence has been the restoration of greater fiscal stability across many states.

Countless civil servants and pensioners who, for years, endured unpaid salaries and pensions are now receiving them more regularly. That was certainly not the reality in many states from around 2014. Even about four years ago, 27 state governments struggled to meet even their most basic obligations. Many of those civil servants and pensioners are themselves parishioners in Catholic churches. .....(1/2)

[Ex-Grammaton Cleric @OtunbaBrickz]

One sentence; You go just die for nothing, let me explain:

People always have this misunderstanding that a census means you have to count every single individual, but that’s not even remotely how a modern census works. No census counts every single person; it’s always an informed statistical estimate. The population numbers quoted by reputable organisations like the UN aren’t some wild conspiracy, and I’ll show you why.

The easiest real-world identifier that we are already well above 220 million is the current NIN data. NIMC has registered roughly 137 million unique NINs. That database is heavily skewed toward adults (especially 16/18+), but we can take it as a solid single source of truth because you basically can’t open a bank account, get a SIM, or access most formal services without it.

About 49% of those 137 million are women and Nigeria’s total fertility rate is still 4.8 children per woman (latest NDHS). Even if we take a conservative cut and assume only around 40% of the registered adult women are currently mothers and apply the 4.8 average, you quickly get in the region of 100–110 million children.

Add those kids back to the 137 million registered people and you’re already sitting around 240 million — without yet counting the older adults who never bothered with NIN, the large numbers of uneducated and unbanked people in rural areas. That pushes the total comfortably closer to 280–300 million than to anything under 220 million.

Let’s even say you don’t like the NIN number bcos the data isn’t 100% clean, we can cross-check with unique BVN numbers instead (currently about 68–69 million). Run the same rough logic as before: half women, conservative share of mothers, 4.8 fertility and you still land in the low-to-mid 230 millions before adding the missing rural, elderly groups, the numbers trend towards the same direction.

This is just an informed estimate based on the administrative data we have plus basic fertility and age-structure realities. A full census could produce way higher numbers. Still the numbers point clearly one way: we are a lot closer to 300 million than we are to 220 million.

So abeg, don’t die on that hill, you’ll just die for nothing.

[Olalekan Hapheatz @hapheatz]

@_Herworld__ Nigerian excellence! 🇳🇬💪🏾✅

[Taiwo Oyedele @taiwoyedele]

𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐝𝐢𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐮𝐛𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐲 𝐬𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐠𝐨? 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐲 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐜𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐬?

[Chukwuma Charles SOLUDO, CFR @CCSoludo]

PRESIDENT TINUBU IS INTENTIONALLY REBUILDING THE SOUTH EAST

I can’t contain my joy and that of my people regarding the great news from DIKESIMBA Anambra; DIKESIMBA NDIGBO, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR!

Certainly, President Tinubu has a date with history, and even more so with the Southeast. He continues to demonstrate his avowed commitment to orchestrating the reconstruction of the Southeast, thereby finally healing the wounds of the Civil War. There are several unprecedented, foundational infrastructural rebirths going on in the Southeast at the moment. We will celebrate the full list later….

But the news from him today is history in itself. I met the President on Wednesday, July 1. The next day, the Hon. Minister for Works and Infrastructure (our own ever-productive and beloved Sen. Dave Umahi) contacted me to send him the details of the roads we had repeatedly discussed. On Friday, July 3rd, I sent him the following two roads:

1. Otuocha–Anam–Abaji (Kogi), about 108km to be dualized; and
2. Oba–Nnewi–Uga–Ihube (Okigwe Junction), connecting Anambra/Imo to the Enugu–PH Road, which also passes through Abia, about 150km to be dualized.

Today, 15th July, I received a message from the Min. of Works that the President has graciously approved both roads for “design and procurement”! What can I say? These two roads constitute critical game-changers for the Southeast, South-South and North Central. The man who tamed the Atlantic Ocean in Lagos is certainly redefining politics, and the Southeast won’t be the same again! For me personally, this is why politics makes sense to me: working collaboratively and building alliances to achieve concrete results that improve the lives of the people.

Thank you, ASIWAJU! History will be kind to you!!

[Olalekan Hapheatz @hapheatz]

@keluokoye I like your mindset, well done!👏

[Onyeka Nwelue @onyekanwelue]

When I told Professor Wole Soyinka that my knee surgery cost about 39 million and that I had about 10 million to pay the hospital, he said: “Let me get to Lagos this Friday and see what I can send.”

I sent him the bank details of the hospital.

By Monday, he messaged me: “Receivng no notification from you, I asked my bank for confirmation that the money has been sent. Forwarding separately the affirmation documents from the bank in case you need to track the funds. Bank document attached in case you need to track the remittance. I just wish to ensure it's landed in the right place.”

When I reached out to the hospital, they confirmed they had received the complete money.

What could I have done without him?

[Bola Ahmed Tinubu @officialABAT]

Tonight, our nation has reason to give thanks.

The children and teachers abducted by Ansaru terrorists in Oyo State have been rescued by our security forces, alive and unharmed. No ransom was paid. No concession was made.

I salute every officer and operative whose courage, discipline, and professionalism made this possible.

To those who seek to spread fear through terror, know that the Nigerian state will pursue you relentlessly. We will protect our people, defend our communities, and never relent until peace and security prevail across our country.

BOLA AHMED TINUBU
President & Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces
Federal Republic of Nigeria

[Fisayo Ademuwagun @Tolu_7085]

I'm a web developer. I build websites landing pages, full platforms with databases, admin dashboards, payment integration, from scratch. If you need a website that actually works and looks professional, not just template junk, I'm your guy. DM me. 🤜🙏

[Olalekan Hapheatz @hapheatz]

💯

[Olalekan Hapheatz @hapheatz]

@theprettyarike Happy birthday Arike owan!

[The Godfather JP @AyoOyalowo]

We need to shine more light on the positive impact of government instead of focusing on rubbish. Last week, I was in a restaurant at Jabi mall and the girl attending to me looks too young, so I had to engage her in a conversation.

During our discussion I discovered she was just 19 and when I asked why she wasn’t in school, she told me her parents couldn’t afford to send her to the university.

I told her about @NELFUND and she has NEVER heard of it. She already wrote JAMB, so I quickly called @TheresaTekenah and asked her to help me put her through and when her colleague saw what was happening, she became interested in the conversation and also informed me that she needed such assistance too. So Theresa spoke to them on my phone and exchanged numbers with them to enable her follow up

Apparently, there are a lot of people out there who have no idea what the government is doing, meanwhile the radio and TV stations are daily focused on negative stuff. All the radios stations have daily call-in programming where all they do is to abuse the government. The TV stations too and so called influencers are all focused on attacking the government but NOBODY is interested in helping to point our youths to positive policies that can benefit them?

Anyway, that is about my experience last week. Thanks to @TheresaTekenah that I have handed those young girls to. I hope they can now fulfill their dreams of going to the University soon.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Most male lions never live to see their tenth birthday. The ones who win a pride usually keep it for two to four years. Then a younger, bigger group of males shows up and pushes them out. And a lion who loses his land rarely dies quietly. He starves, or the rivals who replaced him kill him, or hyenas run him down.

Scarface held his ground in Kenya's Maasai Mara for close to a decade. When he died in June 2021, it was of old age, at around 14, lying in the grass.

He didn't do it alone. For a male lion, survival comes down to numbers, and Scarface had three brothers: Morani, Sikio, and Hunter. People called them the Four Musketeers. In 2012 the four of them took over the Marsh Pride, the lions the BBC had made famous years before. Four males hunting and fighting together is close to unbeatable. It let them hold a wide stretch of land along the Mara River and hold off the younger males who kept trying to take it.

The scar came from that life. He tore up his right eye in a fight over territory, and it never fully healed. It split open more than once, and vets had to treat it so it wouldn't get infected. That torn-up face made him one of the most photographed lions on earth. Guides could pick him out from across the plain.

You've probably seen the stats that get posted with his photos: 400 hyenas killed, 130 rival lions beaten, never once defeated. None of it is on record. The people who tracked him for years say those numbers are made up. He was a hard fighter, but the giant kill counts are just a story.

By the end, the brotherhood was gone. Two of his brothers had died, and the group that kept them all safe had fallen apart. Scarface spent his last months mostly alone, thin, limping on old wounds, slowly losing the ground he'd held for years.

Then he walked. In his final days he covered more than 15 miles, heading back toward the corner of the Mara where he was born. Photographers watched three young males come near him at the end. They didn't attack. They let the old lion lie down. He died there, quiet and undisturbed, in the place he started.

A wild male lion dying peacefully of old age is one of the rarest ways to go in the wild. Almost none of them get it. Scarface did.

[Die Hard @jassjegs]

As a Nigerian. Have you ever been to Cheku-Talia? Try check the map of Lake Chad and see where that small town is located.

That should be the longest travel within Nigeria.

I was deployed there for 9 Months and that's the longest 9 months of my life.

I don't care /1

[Sunday Dare,CON @SundayDareSD]

Right of Reply:
THE UNFILTERED MIND OF ABIMBOLA ADELAKUN.

“ She wants the skyscraper without the foundation”.

​There is a particular brand of intellectual vanity that blossoms in the sterile, air-conditioned comfort of diaspora academia. It is a posture of superiority that masquerades as empathy while harbouring a profound, almost visceral disdain for the very people it claims to champion. Abimbola Adelakun, a regular purveyor of this cynicism, has once again treated the Nigerian public to a masterclass in this elitist arrogance.

In her latest broadside, she attempts to dissect the “unexamined life,” yet in doing so, she reveals nothing but the breathtakingly shallow, unfiltered mind of the professional critic, a mind that is as divorced from the grit of the Nigerian reality as it is obsessed with the sound of its own polemics.
​Adelakun’s prose is a performative act of scourging. She writes not to illuminate, but to diminish.

To her, the Nigerian woman frying akara by the roadside is not a person of agency or a symbol of resilience; she is a sordid prop in a narrative of state failure. She looks at the sweat of a mother’s brow and sees only a failure of national imagination. It is a putative approach to discourse: if a solution is not perfect, if it does not immediately transform a developing nation into an industrialized utopia, then it is not merely insufficient, it is a crime.

​What is most scathing about Adelakun’s position is its inherent dishonesty regarding the nature of progress. She mocks the "day of small beginnings," dismissing the micro-economic activities that have sustained millions as "petty" and "subsistence" farming masquerading as enterprise.

One must ask: what is the alternative? Does she propose that these millions of women, while waiting for the elusive, fully-industrialized Nigerian miracle she demands, simply fold their arms and starve? Her critique of the "ladder" is a prime example of the intellectual trap she sets for herself. She frames the pursuit of micro-capital as an attempt to "trap the poor." This is the ultimate elitist fallacy.

It assumes that those who start small are doomed to stay small, and that any effort to help them grow is a cynical ploy. It is a rejection of the fundamental history of commerce. Wealth, in every corner of the globe, has always been a ladder. It is built rung by rung. To suggest that a small grant or the act of trading is "unproductive" is to display a profound ignorance of how capital multiplies. It is the language of those who have never had to build anything from nothing, yet feel entitled to judge those who do.

​Adelakun’s piece is rife with the pillaging of history to suit a predetermined outcome. She attempts to invalidate the progress of my generation by claiming it was achieved in a "functioning Nigeria." This is a convenient revisionism. Every generation has had its monsters; every generation has faced its demons. The difference is that while she chooses to dwell in the darkness of what has been lost, millions of Nigerians are choosing to build in the light of what is possible.

​She attacks my own journey, as if the story of a mother selling goods in Jos is somehow negated because I now serve in government. She demands to know why that mother did not become a multi-billionaire, as if the purpose of every small enterprise is to reach the scale of a global conglomerate, and as if a child rising from humble origins to contribute to their nation’s leadership is not the very definition of success. Her resentment is palpable. She is not interested in the "dignity of the labourer", a phrase she borrows and strips of its meaning, but in the humiliation of anyone who dares to suggest that the Nigerian spirit is not yet defeated. Adelakun sneers at the informal sector as a sign of poverty, oblivious to the fact that it is the engine room of global resilience.