Simple Things

October 26, 2014October 26, 2014 / Adeola / Leave a comment

The simplest things in life have become the most difficult to achieve or recover in Nigeria. In a society where self is the most pursued ambition, the concern for others become secondary or non-existent.

Simple Things

By Adeola Aderounmu

Adeola Aderounmu

The invention of the battery and electricity took place more than 200 years ago. When a country claims independence in 1960, it is natural to expect that a phenomenon already established should be easily sustained or adoptable.

This is an example of a simple thing.

Nigeria was/is not troubled with the task of discovering electricity; she just needs to produce and use it according to laid done principles. How hard is that?

It is too simple.

That the use of constant electricity is impossible in Nigeria 54 years after the so-called independence means that the handlers of Nigeria (both at the presidency and the state levels) are either brainless or heartlessly wicked.

Any other excuse (like pushing blames to institutions or persons after all these years) will be an act of self-delusion or complete senselessness.

There are so many simple things of life that remain elusive to / or were taken away from ordinary Nigerians. When they are available or affordable, they become like gold. Take education for instance.

Just ordinary simple things!

At a time when elementary school children were already going to schools with mobile phones in Europe and other places, it was used as a reference point in Nigeria. For example, people say, that lady with a cell. Some may say, the man whose mobile phone is always ringing during a church service.

In the year 2000 mobile phone was used to raise the statuses of Nigerians. Nonsense!

It was therefore a Nigerian miracle not performed in a church when Obasanjo opened the market for GSM applications in Nigeria. Some people still worship him for that without asking first what the heartless people and criminals heading the Ministry of Communications did with our land telephones.

Nowadays simple things are miracles in Nigeria.

Therefore in 2015 if Nigerians luckily arrived at the polls, they will be choosing among men and women according to the levels of non-performances, regions, tribes and religions.

Election is one of the simplest things I have seen.

In normal situations, people vote for candidates with dependable track records and people of mostly impeccable character (at the time of their entrances to public offices).

This is so simple, and the votes are counted!

Unfortunately for Nigerians, after many years of disorientation by both civilian and military governments, the majority have thrown away both their moral compasses and their sense of reasoning. This is sad because the institutions of governments at all levels have been bastardized. 54 years of social maladies!

Simple things became complicated and Nigerians reached a point of no return.

Hence, the amount of criminalities perpetrated since 1960 or 1999 or even in the last 4 years will not count substantially when people turn to the polls next year. Religions, regions and tribes will be more significant.

Nigerians won’t think about the men who truncated democracy albeit an imperfect, corrupt one. They have since allowed them to rope with ordinary politicians and made sure that both groups rape the country in similar manners.

Revolution is actually a simple act too.

It ranges from using mild but sustained, consistent, and purposeful civil disobedience to extremely violent measures in ensuring for example that public servants and politicians who have stolen from the national and state treasuries are made to face the music by force or they’ll run to exile.

It is a way to change things, mostly for the better. It is a way to seek changes until people understand that government is for service, not for stealing or enrichment.

Referendum is a product of a mild revolt and the subsequent outcomes always bring new awakening no matter what.

When the laws of a country are functional, the need for revolution is actually not necessary. A referendum will do. It is a simple thing.

It is a simple fact that the law system and the methods of justice in Nigeria represent ridicule for the African (black) race. There are so many looters in/out of government offices across Nigeria and they will decide the turn of things to come in 2015 if the people remain as they are-endorsing social maladies and accepting criminals as rulers, brothers, sisters and families.

Nigeria surprises me in how it held together despite all the atrocities of the politicians and the other categories of failed citizens entrusted with the policies that dictate the way of life and the value of it.

Nigerians shock me more than their country does.

How a people so diverse in cultures, languages and ways of life generally remain organized in corruption and sustenance of failed unitary governance must shock the most brilliant philosophical anthropologists.

Some votes will be counted, the rest will be adjusted by the electoral commission/commissioners according to the party that spend or spray the most looted currencies to the electoral commissions.

Nigeria will never be an ordinary country for as long it holds together. Unless a good change occurs, what may even follow Nigeria may be worse.

Many Nigerians lack the knowledge that simple ideas brought into actualizations can bring peace and prosperity to everybody. The wickedness and selfishness that reside in their hearts as a result of several years of absence of both sensible governance and patriotism speak volume.

Politics, pure criminal activities including armed robbery and religious frauds, are among the commonest methods to inexplicable wealth in Nigeria. Yet the popularity of these vices grows.

The simplest things in life have become the most difficult to achieve or recover in Nigeria.

Where do you find a Nigerian politician who has not misappropriated public funds? It is therefore not a surprise that in 2015 every dick, tom and harry is venturing into politics-to become criminals accepted by the society.

Nigerian politics is also wasteful, probably the most expensive to run in the world.

A person who loots public funds and thereby living above his income and claim the grace of a god is a criminal except in Nigeria.

If you want to achieve holiness as a Nigerian even as the people you are supposed to serve are still living in penury, then visit Mecca or Jerusalem. The zombie people will even pray for you!

These things happen in Nigeria. People are praising a god or running after one god after stealing from the common wealth that is supposed to be used for developing the society and infrastructure in general.

The man who steals praises a god, the man who is robbed hopes on the same god. Both of them are stupid but the one who is robbed probably needs to be induced with a dose of cerebrum.

The bands of failed politicians ruling in Nigeria for example since 1999 have not been able to stabilized or improved electricity. They cannot account for the funds invested because the funds were mostly stolen or looted.

In several ways many things that are common sense, easy and simple have been thrown open as wild dramas in Nigeria.

A criminal becomes a state governor. Checked and move on!

A fraudulent person becomes the political godfather of a political party. Checked and no case!

A known convict is elevated in public life. He’s our son, checked!

A man who cannot explain the source of his wealth becomes the kingmaker and the most important socialite. Don’t jealous him, pray to god to give you same wealth!

These things, revealing simple facts but serious anomalies, should earn condemnations and they should spin the law into action. But they don’t in Nigeria. Useless law system!

These simple things that should arouse a revolution of minds, thoughts and actions have become seated as the standard and way of life.

Nigerians are hypocrites. They pretend to be united but they are far from it.

They are mostly divisive on simple matters that common sense can dictate. The dimension has become cancerous.

Simple things have become unhealthy debates on social networks taking on ethnic, religious and tribal dimensions. Reasons are clouded. Silly!

The future is bleak when criminals, sycophants and ass-lickers continue to cross carpet or leave Aso rock for governor’s offices and other appointments and vice versa.

The future is bleak when criminals flow from one section to another because the rest of the people remain silent or accomplices.

It is possible that more than 70% of Nigerians will live and die without experiencing the simple things that make life worth living.

They will not live with constant electricity and they will not live with constant flow of water in their homes. They will not live in standard apartments, flats or houses as these will remain the exclusive rights of the few, mostly rich.

They will not have basic education and their health statuses will be largely unchecked.

These simple things that elude Nigerians, these simple things that are easy to correct but remain ignored put a gigantic question mark on the mindfulness of the Nigerians.

The commonest (and probably also the most unacceptable question) to social critics is “what are the solutions?

How can we not know that the solutions to these problems are very simple?

People in public offices and positions of authorities should do the right thing or get booted by law or force or revolt!

How hard can it be to know that when a criminal or groups of criminals continue to have their ways that the problems (like lack of electricity, lack of clean water, lack of good roads, lack of proper public education) will persist?

How do we think? What are our views of public service?

What are our obligations to humanity and posterity?

But these simple things are complicated because many people are greedy and they will hide the truth just because of the things they hope to gain. They ignore their mindfulness.

In a society where self is the most pursued ambition, the concern for others become secondary or non-existent.

Nigeria will never get a magic dose. I know about the clamor for regional governments which may be a step in the right direction. Even secession is in the air.

How to take care of the simple things will be a concern no matter what type of dispensation that emerge in 2015.

The saddest thing will be a carry-over of the status quo.

aderounmu@gmail.com

The Dream

October 19, 2014February 22, 2023 / Adeola / 4 Comments

“To live long, love other people including your family as you love yourself. Don’t be greedy because that is the origin of sadness. Be careful to learn every day”

The Dream

By Adeola Aderounmu

Adeola Aderounmu

Olawale had a dream.

When he woke up, he had forgotten the dream. He was afraid because he had forgotten the dream. In his village, the people always say when you forget your dreams that the gods may have forsaken you.

Nobody knows if the postulation is superstitious or not. Some people thought it is a way of promoting spiritual awareness and consciousness of the unseen dimension or the supernatural world.

They say that dreams are the revelations of the things to come. They say that dreams are ways to remember their forefathers and it will be the way that their children will remember them.

Dreams can be the substantial evidence of reincarnation and the fulfilment of the wish to live forever.

It is like that. Our departed parents and grandparents come to us and we go to them in our dreams. Olawale remembered one of his father’s postulations.

Therefore the gift of dream and the gift of memory are cherished among the dwellers.

In this village, you will never tell anyone about your dreams if you don’t remember them.

By following their dreams many people have accomplished outstanding feats. Many have found a way to move on with their lives, away from the points of hopelessness.

Olawale had forgotten some of his dreams before. It is not unusual for people to forget dreams. This is because the transition between night and day in our sleep is endless.

No one knows what breaks the transition for the people who return to day with consciousness.

It was in this village that people first ask if another person has woken up on the wrong side of the bed.

They think that the people who are angry in the mornings are those who woke up on the wrong side of the bed. They think that you lack spiritual guidance if you forget your dreams and that could be one of the sources of your anger.

Nobody is perfect and no mortal will always remember all their dreams. If they do, they will transform to gods and there will be too many gods for human needs and desires.

Olawale was also sad.

So for 7 days he almost didn’t speak to anyone. He only replied and gave short answers when people spoke to him.

His parents didn’t hear from him as much as they would have wanted. When he is returning from work, he usually pays them a visit on his way home. When he had gone home on another route, he calls them from a local telephone kiosk.

But this week is different because he felt inadequate for forgetting yet another dream.

On the 8th day he decided to leave the house and go for a long walk in the forest. He wanted to clear his mind.

After walking for just 15 minutes he was very tired. He was tired because he had also not been eating very well since the day he forgot his last dream.

So he said to himself, I will rest.

Then he sat down on a big stone. He rested. But he fell asleep on the stone.

He rolled off the stone and fell down on the other side of it. He was shaking. He did not know when he fell asleep. Now he was awake and the big stone was above him.

As he was about to stand up, he saw a bag under the stone. But he was afraid because he didn’t know how the bag got there. He was more afraid for what could be the content of the bag.

As he was pondering about where he was and how a bag could have landed under a big stone in the forest, his “forgotten” dream came back to him like a flash.

Eight days ago, he had dreamt that he became a very rich man during his middle-age. So he was upset when he forgot the dream because he had a feeling it was something positive.

Now he remembered his dream and he saw a mysterious bag.

He started to ponder about the meaning of his dream. He was still afraid. He was not sure what could be inside the bag and he was alone in the forest.

How can a bag lie under the stone in the forest where nobody lives? He pondered.

He took the bag from under the stone and was surprised that such a big bag felt to light when he took it up. He opened it and found nothing but a letter inside the bag.

Dear son,

To be happy, you need to find the things that you like. Do them and you’ll be happy.

To be well, eat fresh food that you cook yourself.

When you get married, take care of your wife and children.

Don’t let the sun go down on your anger or frustrations.

Instead take a walk for life, for health.

Be of kind heart and show appreciation for the things you have.

Work hard and don’t forget to spend from your savings.

Contentment, not material richness, is the secret of happiness.

To live long, love other people including your family as you love yourself.

Don’t be greedy because that is the origin of sadness.

These are some of the simple lessons of life.

But be careful to learn every day.

The lessons you learn will guide you. They’ll enrich you.

When the alarm went on Olawale woke up and realised that he had been asleep for 3 hours. He was sweating, so he took a cold shower and spent the evening reflecting about his dream.

In it he learnt about some of the simple secrets of life in a letter that he found in a bag in the forest.

aderounmu@gmail.com

Why Men Should Cook

October 12, 2014October 12, 2014 / Adeola / 2 Comments

Cooking can be a form of relaxation. It is surely art. A nation or a country can be built on well laid foundations that start from the family.

Why Men Should Cook

By Adeola Aderounmu

Time in the kitchen is time well spent

A nation or a country can be built on well laid foundations that start from the family. I have argued for parental leave for both mothers and fathers in Nigeria.

Unfortunately there has not been any progress in that area. The typical Nigerian life is driven by harsh economic realities and unpredictable socio-political circumstances.

In one of the most complicated situations in the world, the influence of culture and religion in Nigeria provide for a lot of arguments and discussions on the roles of men in different functional and complicated family situations.

All the men in my nuclear family are great cooks. How is that possible?

The credit goes to our mother who complemented our education effectively on the home front. In Western Nigerian secondary schools (during my time) boys are encouraged to choose Agricultural Science and the girls Home Economics.

As I recall now it seemed that the society also played a biased role in determining the roles of men and women. Therefore it appeared that unless the boys took great interest in cooking or their parents especially mothers taught them at home, they always ended up unable to cook.

Many are quick to emphasize that it is the role or even the “job” of women to cook. In traditional African settings that is largely true. The last statement can be expanded even as a topic for an academic dissertation based on the settings of the traditional African societies and the division of labor amongst the men, women and children.

It has always been imperative that women are able to cook, I may state.

My arguments in this essay are towards the men. I think that the men should be able to cook as much as the women. There are many examples of men who are better cook than their wives or the women in their lives.

These arguments are based on the realities of a changing world that cannot be locked up in the past.

Why should men cook? I will draw mostly from personal experiences.

Cooking as I have found out can be a form of relaxation. A wrong notion might be that a man needs a cold bottle of beer after a stressful day at work.

Cooking can relax the mind and body

If your kitchen is tidy it is one of the best places to retire to after a hard day’s work. It is a place where you can either throw away your disappointments or show your happiness for the day.

Under any of these circumstances above there should be no hindrance to showing love and care to your children or to your visitors or friends depending on the company you keep after work.

Cooking is art. By systematically creating a piece of meal or a nice, tasty diet from essential raw materials, you might forget or relish about how the day has been and cherish the moment when your children, friends or family enjoy the products your serve to them.

A man should cook to ease the strain on the family.

The children should not suffer or eat junk food simply because their mother is working late one day a week. They should not bear the brunt of their mother visiting a friend during the week or attending a ceremony on Saturday.

If the man is at home, he should be able to stand up to the responsibility of keeping the family going and cooking should be the least of his worries.

There will always be situations when the man is alone with the children at home. That time should not be the time to put up the “I don’t care attitude”. It should not be the time to insult the mother of the children simply because she is held up with another activity.

Some men will never accept that they neglected the obligation of learning how to cook when they were growing up.

Men don’t cook in my family is an outdated expression. When I went to the university I always ate from mama-put is the outburst of a lazy mind. Wake up and look around you. Face the reality of your time and brace up for the era you live in!

Many students can cook despite the fact that they ate at Mama-put and other decent restaurant-which one is your own?

Cooking helps the women to appreciate and boast positively about their men. They feel a sense of gender equality without struggling to achieve it. In a functional family this can promote sexual attraction and help the family to stay psychologically healthy.

Pie: cooking is a form of art

I do not mean that cooking prevent separation or divorce. It is just one of the ingredients that help as long as the relationship exists.

When both men and women take turns in the kitchen especially when the turns are not based on a schedule, it helps the children to understand that they are required to also take responsibilities for many things in their lives.

The act of pushing blames or looking for excuses start from the family and children learn too quickly from their immediate environment.

Cooking helps children to learn in diverse ways. Science, art, creativity and mathematics are all embodied into cooking.

In Nigeria I can recall that we learned how to cook using a lot of estimations in our judgments of what is required or needed.

Now when I cook sometimes with instructions and using units like “deciliter” or other measurements-I appreciate the level of my mother’s mathematics. It is almost unbelievable what our mothers did!

I know some men take to cooking as a hobby. This means that, by looking or by some sort of interest they just got going at cooking and found it easy and lovable.

I am sure this category of men have found cooking as a useful hobby at those times they are alone as bachelors or married men whose wives are away for certain reasons. They are able to step-up and take charge of the kitchen.

Turning this hobby into a responsibility will be useful on the long run.

From the foregoing, the ability to cook can also help men (and women) to live independently if they choose to be single.

In my family the time between the secondary school leaving year and the university admission year was reserved for intensive course in cooking with my mother. Invariably that was the time you take over the responsibility of cooking for the others in the family who are at home or getting back from work.

Long before that time, it was recommended to be an observer as mama dished out orisirisi from different pots on our stove that was powered by the kerosene.

Growing up in my family back in Nigeria, I know that both boys and girls have equal abilities in the kitchen. I mean a balance of culinary skills. What may vary is the creativity that we add as we went our separate ways.

The documentation of my days at Jaja and Mariere Halls of the University of Lagos cannot be complete without the flavor and aroma the boys in the halls added to the hostels every day.

Later on I met a friend (names withheld) who told me that he could hardly make a cup of tea. He was actually not joking that he cannot even fry an egg. He frequents my room at the College of Medicine in Idiaraba and I always try to show him how I cook. His case was hopeless. He is still my friend today.

When I have had visitors at our home in Stockholm, some people were unable to hide their shock as to the long time I spent in the kitchen. I cook and I tidy up after cooking. Then I tell them why men should cook and tidy up. I hope some women are not fighting their men based on my kitchen behavior.

I do not believe it is the role of women to always do the cooking or tidy up. My mother would chase me out of the kitchen if I start to cook when the kitchen is dirty. In some extreme cases that I remember, she will put out the fire from the stove and I have to take it from the beginning.

There is a time to add the salt and there is a time to slice the onions. No stones in the beans or you’ll eat all the beans yourself. The rice cannot stick together and the tomato sauce must be well fried. Oh Mamma!

Today I appreciate those teachings more than ever before. You will never see me in a dirty kitchen. I can get ill in a dirty kitchen and that is not an exaggeration. It is not a function of wealth but common sense and lessons about hygiene well taken from my mother.

In Nigeria, many families will probably be unable to synchronize their meal times but with proper planning breakfast and dinner at home should be a possibility. Depending on the weekend schedules, families should strive to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner together.

People should stop giving excuses on why they cannot cook or eat with their family.

Like many other issues affecting the upbringing of children, many men will continue to blame it on “lack of time”.

There will never be enough time for what a man wants to do in his lifetime. The same is true for women. People should be taught how to manage their time using the family (spouse and children) as the starting point.

Parents should help their children to acquire cooking skills at home. Bring the children into a safe and tidy kitchen and show them how to cook.

It will be a long walk for the Nigerian society but it is achievable across all the regions if sensible and capable people take over control of the politics and the economy across all the various regions.

Nothing is impossible when there is a sincere roadmap that is not left in the hands of idiots and complete nonentities who are driven by selfish interests and absolute greed.

In Nigeria, it is imperative that the different regions are allowed to re-emerge.

There is a lot in the identities of each ethnic group that are submerged and lost in the name of unitary government that shows lack of respect to individuals and folk-group.

People should be allowed to tap into their cultural and traditional family values. They should be taught how to plan their homes appropriately with respect to family size and responsibilities.

It is time to lift the positive values within the family through regional adaptive education and merge them with the demands of a global village.

Properly educated children will build strong families and dependable communities. They will form the backbones of viable regions across Nigeria. The future can be bright and better.

My late mother’s teachings at home and an adaptive, undiluted education in Western Nigeria fit perfectly into a functional life at home and across the world.

The Cost Of Freedom

October 5, 2014 / Adeola / 1 Comment

Unless a country or a group of people are willingly to genuinely give their today in the name of true freedom, their children will never be free tomorrow.

The Cost Of Freedom

Which Way Nigeria?

By Adeola Aderounmu

Nigeria’s 54th year as a so-called independent country was marked in several ways. One headline that caught my attention was the one that stated that poverty in Nigeria has been reduced by 50%.

The headline is first class fraud.

Statistics was one of my favourite subjects during my first and second degrees at the University of Lagos. It is one of those subjects that I really felt comfortable doing. At Idiaraba it was Medical Statistics and oh, how I enjoyed every bit of it and the lecturer was awesome.

Poverty may have been reduced by 50%, it depends on the sample size or the part of the population where you draw your samples from.

So I can conclude that if we take the population of the follow-follow people flocking Aso Rock since the inception of Jonathan’s administration, he has successfully tackled the poverty among 50% of the ass-lickers including the expanding society of Aso Rock Bull Dogs.

If I cast my dragnets at the places that I know like Oshodi, Ojuelegba or Okokomaiko, my data will produce a result that will make nonsense of the results produced by some drunkards in Aso Rock. More than 90% of the people will be below poverty level and living on less than N500 a day.

For more than ever before majority of Nigerians groan under an increasingly senseless and insensitive government. Increasing the death rate and lowering the life expectancy of a population does not mean that poverty has been reduced.

In several essays I have depicted the nature, spread and characteristics of poverty in Nigeria as one of the worst hidden tragedies in the world. I have also been very quick to dismiss the claims of the few people who escaped the threshold of poverty sometimes through luck or unmerited opportunities that their situations cannot be used as the yardstick.

The title of this essay came as a result of my feelings in recent months. I’ll approach it.

I do know, and convincingly too that there are a few people in Sweden who have cultivated the habits of reading my articles, not because they want to be “my readers” but because they “enjoy” this culture of gossiping about “what did he write this week”?

I am happy for them, that they found a weekly delight.

I’ll keep them in the dark by not defining their range but amongst them are people who need to understand though that I have the right to my views about Nigeria no matter what they think or feel.

I cannot help those who found out too late that they had been talking to someone who has been writing about Nigeria since 2001.

One of my pictures on Facebook must have tilted the table over. I had a T-shirt with the inscription Oduduwa republic on my mind. It is one of my ideas of freedom. The image must have gone viral among some folks. I am still happy for them and I hope they get a pat on the back when they make their reports.

I wonder how much shock my Swedish-Nigerian readers suffered in the last 4 weeks when I had written stories about love. I will choose love any day over a failed country under the bondage of crazy and deaf rulers.

The love stories came to me after a recent trip to Finland. I think my ancestors love nature and they prefer the solitude of a calm sea to bring me teachings and guidance.

Today I wanted to write a story about “The Dreamer Boy” but I thought some people will like to know if I am still in tune with Nigeria and how the drunkards have reduced poverty by 50%.

What is more interesting than this blatant lie is the growth and spread of individuals, groups and associations that are intensifying their doubts about their continuous recognitions as Nigerians.

They are weighing the options of bailing out of a jaga-jaga Nigeria. There are many t-shirts nowadays with a lot of messages and one boy even tore his green passport and posted it on YouTube.

I have a lot of reflections on this emerging trend especially among “Nigerians” who are far away from their regions in Nigeria, based mostly in Europe, Asia and America.

For the Nigeria we have today became a total mess as a result of our collective failures as citizens and participants or onlookers in the successive corrupt and useless governments in Nigeria over the years and even to this day in October 2014.

The Nigeria of today was not the dream of the men and women who fought collectively to wrestle the country from the colonialists.

The reason we write or recite or even highlights repeatedly our failures as a country is because some people need the education at some point on what has happened and what we expected. Where Nigeria is today on the scale of human development and quality of life is a complete disgrace to the intellectual abilities of the African race.

One failed government blames the other and the cycle of idiocy rotates as nobody tackles the menaces of corruption, federal character (yes, it is a menace), nepotism and tribalism.

It was the greed in Nigerians and the corruption in their veins that exposed the madness of the colonialists who married different nations into one entity. “Irreconcilable differences” is an expression made in Nigeria. The crazy rulers destroyed the institutions of governance and many crazy people in government stole for themselves, their friends and their unborn generations-even to this day.

Since the mid-1960s, no government has made efforts to return power and freedom to the regions just the way it was when education, health and technological developments were functional until greed and outright stupidity reared their ugly heads.

The process of divide and rule, looting and total disregard for the rules of law continued and reached a new dimension since the inception of pseudo-democracy in 1999.

For Nigeria I have oscillated between hope and hopelessness and my understanding of statistics says it is time to try something else.

I am all for the freedom and the emancipation of the people who are currently enslaved in Nigeria.

It is imperative to define the modalities and the cost of freedom so that the sycophants and the major players of today do not ruin the future of our children and grandchildren the same way they ruined our parents lives and displaced us to different places around the globe.

I wish that all the groups and associations around the world will emerge from their clandestine positions and start to talk openly. The Scottish people just had a vote. The outcome was not as important as the action they took but it will define the things to come in the future. Their children will grow up feeling more secured.

It is old fashioned to seek freedom in the dark rooms. It is very primitive to seek independence through confidential emails or social media closed groups.

If you want something, make it open, make it plain. Go for it and carry the people who need the change along.

Healthy debates, open groups, open discussions and other form of transparent dealings may help to check some of my personal fears regarding the stakeholders in all these clandestine groups scattered around the world.

What is the cost of freedom?

The cost of freedom lies in service to humanity. It is not looting the treasury and telling stupid lies about security and poverty.

The cost of freedom in public service lies in willingness to die at the altar of truth. It is not in building houses of gold on the polluted land across Nigeria.

The cost of freedom is the deprivation that comes with the belief that humanity comes before self.

The cost of freedom will be correlated to conventional free thinking and explorative mindedness.

It will not be locked to dying for the sake of acquiring virgins in an imaginary place. It will not have anything to do with deadly assembly at the feet of gangster mortals called prophets. The cost of freedom will rid a nation of the defenders of evil.

Unless a country or a group of people are willingly to genuinely give their today in the name of true freedom, their children will never be free tomorrow.

For the nations entangled in Nigeria these sacrifices are non-negotiable. Along with the irrepressible truth, they will be the ultimate cost of freedom.

aderounmu@gmail.com