LAGOS DRIVING FOR NON-LAGOSIANS

 ‘If you can drive in lagos then you can drive anywhere’. if there is a saying that irked me the first time I heard it, it is that one. An unassuming sentence filled with a dose of condescension that irritated me.I don’t know if it’s the words put together to form that sentence that annoyed me or if it’s the self assured smirk of whoever it was that delivered the lines at the time of delivery that made me want to shout.  

It took me a while to see reasons with that statement… it took me much more longer to admit that I see reasons with that statement. And although I still resent people who say it, I am willing to tell you, especially if you have never driven or been driven in Lagos, how Lagos driving differs from driving in any other place, town, city, state or country. 

I Do- Nigerian law

It couldn't have been past 6am when I woke up on Saturday morning  to the incessant broadcast messages on blackberry advising and almost threatening me to support the #childnotbride cause that had over taken the nation like a bad case of hay fever... I had heard conversations about this earlier in the week and chucked it down to the joblessness of the members of the house of assembly looking for another sitting allowance, but Saturday's occupy BBM world was just the heights of it... it was a painful reminder that somewhere north of Nigeria, babies will be getting married off to men old enough to be their grand-dads if care is not taken.

The care to be taken it seems required me to change my display pictures on blackberry every 3 hours (which I was refusing to do) to show a child bride with wedding veil been grabbed and dragged to the alter by a potbellied man with a lecherous look on his face and all the other funny pics up for

Inadequate Father: THE SHADOW DAD

Previously on the series of Inadequate Fathers we talked about the BOUNDARY BUSTER DAD.  Kindly follow the link to read up

The last category of inadequate fathers is the SHADOW DAD. He is the father that is physically present but emotionally unavailable. That’s the kind most Nigerian Children had growing up. He is a shadow dad because of his own addictions…TV, work, friends, alcohol etc.

You wake up and see your dad, he drops you off at school and until you go back to bed at night he is nowhere to be found, so there is never an opportunity to connect with daddy.  The biggest conversation  most have with such dads are probably: ‘daddy they say we should buy text books’, ‘daddy my shoes are worn out and I need new ones’ Never is there an opportunity  for any intellectual or spiritual conversation with dad.

He is the father, for example,
who sits in front of the TV and the child would come in and the conversation would go thus:

Me and Attachments

I admit here today that I am the most cowardly and stupid person the world has ever seen when it comes to being attached to people and things and any fucking frigging thing you can think off.

This is not a rant, I am not ranting... I repeat this is NOT A RANT. I am here to tell you that the inability to walk off, or tear myself away from anything I hold dear, even when that thing I hold dear is no longer in my best interest, that inability to walk off, is a sickness. It is a disease...one that I'm suffering from, it is a curse, one that I need deliverance from, its a stronghold that needs to be broken and nailed to the cross.

If not how else can one describe holding on to a shut door and trying to make it open and sweating in the process and suffering when a similar door is widely open and beckoning for me to come in without effort???

How else can one explain holding on to friends that clearly don't want to be friends

How else can one explain moaning a pen that goes missing and refusing to write anything using another black pen for weeks on end

What else can I describe never ever ever ever wanting to discard anything? except i'm 100% sure it is going into the hands of a better owner. I don tire, I think its a curse...and I'm just a fool. Life was so much easier when I rarely cared about anyone or anything and could use and dump and reject people and things at the drop of the hat. Somewhere along the line I grew up and became cursed with a stupid foolish and useless conscience that wants to kill me. A conscience that wants to ruin me and bury me without a shirt on my back... what a fool!! I don't even need anyone to mess things up for me, I rain on my own fucking parades...what the hell?

This is not a rant... I swear I am not ranting.

Nutty J

The Inadequate Father- BOUNDARY BUSTER DAD

This is the father that busts the personal boundaries of his children through abuses. It could be physical abuse, emotional, verbal and even spiritual abuses. A few years back we heard so many stories coming from the Cross-river and Awka Ibom axis about children they were calling witches and wizards and throwing away...it got so bad that the government had to set up schools to take them in. Most of these children were taken to churches and were beaten and stoned and branded with hot irons and those doing it said they were beating the demons out of them...this is spiritual abuse, those children may reject God for life except for some divine intervention

A certain lady who is 49 years old has refused to get married and when investigations were made about this, it was discovered that her father busted her sexual boundaries by having sex with her from age 4 till she was 16. There is also psychological abuse whereby parents purposely withhold certain things in a bid to punish their children e.g. school fees, shelter etc. He busts the personal boundaries of his children.

The legacy such dads leave for their children are: