Sweden’s Failure At Transportation

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Sweden’s Failure At Transportation

By Adeola Aderounmu

Sweden is always trying to save the rest of the world from all unpleasant situations.  There are so many adventures that Sweden have undertaken since time immemorial. I remember a damaged pipeline off the American coast or where was again, Gulf of Mexico? Sweden was the country that succeeded in stopping the leakage and ending a potential environmental disaster.   

Sweden is everywhere. She goes to Africa doing all kinds of missions. She invades the Middle East and scoop souls to save or revive. Sweden builds abroad, with very fine architectures. She exports music, Spotify, Abba, Aviciii (RIP) and so many good things of life. No doubt she brings home the rewards of plundering.

But if you live in Stockholm especially along what we call the surface train lines (pendeltåget), Sweden would have at some point made your life hell on earth. There is a dilemma on this surface train line that I have witnessed for almost 2 decades. If a problem can persist for that long, and of there is no solution in sight, the most appropriate explanation is corruption. There must be some form of massive corruption that has made it impossible for Sweden and Stockholm to end “a simple” problem she would have solved if the problem was in another country.

In the winter every year and sometimes with temperatures as low as minus 21, the Stockholm surface train could suddenly be out of service throwing many passengers into confusion.  The pain is indescribable. The frustration, the anxiety and the uncertainties that occur every winter in Stockholm with respect to the failed surface train schedules should be studied. It may be a life shortener.

Let us be clear about a great nation that Sweden is. She has the longest underground tunnel network in the world. It has been described as the longest work of art made by man. That is very commendable. The fact is the network continues to grow because more interconnections have been proposed and some are near completions. The underground blue line has been extended and will reach a new length in the nearest future. The problems with the Swedish underground trains are not severe. They are no unusual and do not take time to clear.

It is even slightly mysterious that the underground network (that is under the earth) works better and more effective the surface network that is over the earth. Could it be that more focus is placed on something that is under the earth than something that is above it? Are they trying to tell us that the surface train is more exposed to drastic changes in weather? You must wonder why Sweden can take care of the underground train network better than the surface train network.

Nevertheless, with all the knowledge, experience and technical abilities in Sweden, the surface train network remains a disturbing shame to the country. This winter 2023 December, a lot of train travel times have been cancelled. Some trains have run on shorter wagons. There have been complains about the maintenance of the tracks. That really is shocking: that the tracks are not well maintained. What is serious accidents occur? The blaming game would start. Who does not know that prevention is better than cure?

The consequences of these annual anomalies may in fact constitute serious aspects of mental health imbalance for affected people. We must see beyond the frustrations on their faces. Failed train networks do more than causing lateness to work. People also often get late to getting their wards from schools. They miss other friends and family engagements or activities. What about the financial or economic loss to the county? Individuals lose time and money. The country loses time and money. When shorter wagons run, the crowd at the stations build up. In this cold weather, that is a means to increase the spread of communicable diseases.  A substantial part of the residents fear for terror attacks too. The crowd that builds up when trains stop working or are delayed are potential spots for attacks.

My suggestion to the Swedish Transport Corporation (Stockholm Local Traffic) is that they need to sit down and look at themselves in the faces and in the mirror. They need to get this system working by taking a holistic approach to problem solving in this sector. 

The tracks must be fixed and maintained as scheduled. Ten years over the schedule time is a clear indication of being irresponsible and taking our lives for granted. There will be winter every year. So why is every winter characterized by the same problems with the trains? I do not think there are newer problems with the trains than they were 10 years ago. Winter will come, there will be snow, it will be cold. Is there anything that the Stockholm Local Traffic does not know about winter? Winter should no longer be an excuse for poor train services. This is Sweden!

What is this thing about shortage of employees? Take measures to make the job of a train driver attractive and get more people employed. There are so many unemployed people in Stockholm, so we should not be having shortage of employees at all. No, we should not.

There is the story of failure of signal. I don’t think anybody knows what that means. It has become an acronym for “out of service” if you ask me. Can you please explain “signal fel” to us so we can proffer a solution?

The bottom line is that the Stockholm Local traffic lacks pre-emptiveness and the corporation is behaving like it is doing us a favour. We are paying for this extremely poor delivery of services which is why I maintain that the underlying cause of these problems is massive corruption within the Stockholm Local Traffic.

The corruption must be addressed in order to improve services. In my end of the train line, we have a 30-minute interval to deal with. If a train is cancelled, that is minimum of one hour waiting time. The interval must be improved going forward.

I understand that politics too have a role to play in all these poor service deliveries. Talk to the concerned politicians about your needs and bring the citizens on your side to improve train services. Stop further increase in the prices of train tickets because the quality of service delivery have declined in the last 2 decades.

Don’t forget: update your tracks to prevent accidents or derailing.

One can be proud of Sweden in many ways, but in the Stockholm transport system, shame is what I feel. Fear is what I breathe when expecting visitors and never knowing if they will arrive or travel back in peace.

Sweden is everywhere. But I don’t see Sweden in the Stockholm Local Traffic.

aderounmu@gmail.com

Economic Hardship-A 21st Century Survival Of the Fittest

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Finding a balance between our aspirations, our quests for economic independence and the unpredictable twists of life, in my opinion, have reignited the old theory of survival of the fittest in our modern history and existence.

A 21st Century Survival Of the Fittest

Adeola Aderounmu, Sweden.

The cascades of events since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine have not been palatable, globally. The astronomical increase in the prices of food, the astronomical increase in the interest rates charged on mortgage, the increase in the cost of all forms of transportation and the overall rise in the cost of living have very devastating consequences on human mental health, and in fact on our existentiality. The unbelievable and unbearable increase in the cost of living definitely have effects on our social interactions. Indeed, it redefines our thoughts about the essence of life/living.

The balance between our aspirations, our quests for economic independence and the unpredictable twists of life, in my opinion, have reignited the old theory of survival of the fittest in our modern history and existence. Nowadays, if you cannot survive, you are doomed. You are on your own. Now we know how it was when Darwin proposed survival of the fittest. We now understand how environmental factors selected the organisms that were on the right side of the survival curve.

It would be too abstract to write about this essay without using some personal reflections and experiences. When you hear for the first time how the rate of suicide in Europe is high, you would find it absurd as a typical African. But after accumulating experiences and participating in the European (western) life, it would no longer shock you to even see African settlers in Europe adding to the suicide pool in Europe. I could also do this essay from the living in Africa perspective. Even if not well documented, I known that suicide rate in Nigeria has also escalated. It is harder to live during this Era, or maybe this is what all adults above the middle age realize when they get there.

I read about a couple here in Sweden who seek divorce and they must sell their house. But under the present economic hardship in Europe, they will be unable to pay off the loan on the house after selling it. Neither of them has the economic capability to keep the house. This is how the life in Europe have destroyed the well-being of people. No matter how hard you work, you always feel like you are inadequate financially, the fear of your economic instability can drive you insane. You may even question your existence because of your inadequacies.

Among other consequences is high rate of death from high blood pressure/hypertension. It is very hard to cross the middle age in Europe without suffering from high blood pressure. The credit system, the loan system and the mortgage system give you a false array of economic stability, until something very serious goes wrong or you get to a moment that you realized that you didn’t really get it all figured out before you went for it. A war is something seriously gone wrong. Economic downturn is something very serious. High interest rate is something very serious. Sudden unemployment, incapacitation and other things that can turn our lives upside down are serious occurrences.

Who profits from our miseries? Where do all the sudden increase in rents and interest rates end up?  We work the same hours, we put in the same efforts as when the economy was good as when it turned bad. From a lame man point of view, my take is that the global work force if feeding the greed of the insatiable. The global work force must pay the price for the capitalism-based world economy.

Forgive my ignorance, I cannot understand why my bank should get richer at my expense if there was no one behind the scenes. For that is exactly what it is when the bank’s interest rates dip holes in my savings. They know they will come for our savings; so they told us to save for the rainy days. Then they make the rain fall in many ways: war, inflations, high interest rate, high cost of living and general instability in the world order.

As it is, we are fighting for our lives and no one cares if we survive or die under these strangulations. As it we have not had enough, they set Gaza on fire to distract us from our goals to survive. They make life more meaningless, so we could pity ourselves and at best compare our difficult lives with those who are massacred in Gaza and Ukraine. Head or tail, global citizens are at the receiving end. They are fighting to survive either economic hardships or a permanent state of war.

I hope what I’m trying to say here made some sense.  I’ll leave it as it is.

aderounmu@gmail.com

Disrespecting Magdalena Andersson, Former Swedish PM

/ Adeola / 2 Comments

The stand of women should not be demarcated by their political parties or political views. Men are a common evil that women have to face or confront in solidarity.

Disrespecting Magdalena Andersson, Former Swedish PM

By Adeola Aderounmu, Sweden.

In the spate of 1 week or so, both the prime minister of Sweden-Ulf Kristersson and the head of the Swedish Democrats-Jimmie Åkerson have verbally attacked the former female Prime Minister of Sweden, Magdalena Andersson.

Magdalena Andersson, former (& first female) Swedish PM.

These attacks are vicious and malicious.

In 2023 when one would think that women have come a long way in Sweden and made giant strides in all facets of lives. Sadly, in the field of politics, the story about women persecution leaves a lot more to desire for the role of women in modern Swedish politics.

One of the most prominent politicians that got my attention when I came to Sweden was Anna Lindh. She was the Foreign Minister and a prospective candidate to become the prime minister on the platform of the Social Democrats before she was stabbed right in the center of Stockholm. She died of her wounds a few hours later. She was campaigning for YES vote to “Euro” in place of the Swedish “Crowns”.

There is a Mona Sahlin who was prosecuted and shoved out of politics. Every tiny error she made was put under the microscope. She retired to a private life.

Earlier in the week, the Swedish prime minister coined a new phrase to describe Magdalena Andersson. He described the political party headed by M. Andersson as being “terror-romantic”. Before the week ended, Jimmie Åkersson also accused M. Andersson of promoting Islamism in Sweden and said that the only way she could get support to win elections was to promote Islamism or terrorism. The vicious attacks on Magdalena therefore seem to be calculated and deliberate.

The tactics used by men to cage women is through direct intimidation. They also degrade the statuses of women in many spheres of life. Politics seems to be the most pronounced area of attack.

I remember several years ago an article I wrote about how women can stand up for each other, for one another. The humiliation of Magdalena Andersson is not a Magdalena Andersson’s personal problem. The women in the Moderate party of the Swedish Prime Minister, the women in the Swedish Democrats party of Jimmie Åkersson have as much responsibility as Magdalena Andersson and all the women in Sweden generally to stand up against the vicious attack on women.

The stand of women should not be demarcated by their political parties. Men are a common evil that women have to face in solidarity.

Swedish PM, Ulf Kristersson.

Jimmie Åkersson, SD

Both Ulf Christensson and Jimmie Åkersson could have made their points in other ways. Their use of language in debates and speeches surely need to improve. The Prime Minister need to develop more social skills and he need to work on his communication problems. In recent days, his mistakes, body language and choice of words have been a cause of concern.

aderounmu@gmail.com

Living In Denial (2): The Absence Of Truth

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By Adeola Aderounmu

Look at the headline of this Vanguard Newspaper dated October 21, 2023. I did not read the content. If you have time, you could read it. The headline is enough for me to know that stupidity is dangerously widely spread in Nigeria

I have no idea that a country called Nigeria is still fighting corruption. Really? Are you mad?

I don’t even know where to start my analyses. I don’t even know what to write. Nigeria is fighting corruption? Which Nigeria?

If Nigeria is fighting corruption, there will be no government in Nigeria. Tinubu would be in prison by now for all the forgeries and several other offences he has committed in Nigeria and abroad. Atiku and Obasanjo would still be eating beans in Kirikiri for that 8 years of looting and destruction of lives and property.

APC, PDP and Labour Party would not be in existence if Nigeria is fighting corruption and more than 99% of the politicians and a large chunk of the key players in both private and public institutions would be in prison or exile.

The criminals are even planning to buy or they may have even bought SUVs. If this was another country, it would have been ungovernable by now because the common, hungry, homeless, jobless, noble people (some of whom are working hard but living in poverty) would have stormed the streets and earned their freedom. In a country where the above can happen, it only means the rest of the populations are slaves.

What kind of foolish headline is that ni to ri Olohun?

Please o, Vanguard, stop that type of headline. You can write about what is going on in Nigeria and anywhere in the world. But please stop using Nigeria and “fight corruption” in the same sentence. Just stop it!

Nigeria itself is “corruption” founded by some British gangsters for the orgy of the Royals in Britain. The expired colony is now sustained by the erections of the political thieves and elites in Nigeria. The only legitimate fight is to dismantle the corrupt entity and allow the entrapped Nations like Biafra and Yoruba Kingdom to find their way out and pursue peace, harmony and progress in their respective nationalities.

Back soon!

AAA

Living in Denial (1). The Absence Of Freedom

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Living in Denial. The Absence Of Freedom
BY Adeola Aderounmu

In 2007 I compiled my articles and published them as a collection titled “The Entrapment Of A Nation”. The title suggested that I wrapped Nigeria (which itself consisted of several disjointed nations) as a nation. The suitability of the title apart, what is obvious is that the geographical area occupied by the people called Nigerians is largely entrapped. The journey into this entrapment happened systematically.

The nations entrapped within Nigeria first lost their identities and dignities due to exposure to foreign merchants. These merchants later metamorphosed to slave masters and religious masters. Despite the declaration of independence in 1960, Nigeria remains largely in the hands of neocolonialists and heartless tropical gangsters disguised either as democrats or soldiers under varying dispensations.

As nationals of the entrapped nations within Nigeria, we cannot cry forever over our disrupted civilization. We cannot cry forever for all the stolen knowledge that came out of Africa and converted to European knowledge. No, we cannot.

As a blogger my responses to events in Nigeria nowadays (2023) are very slow. There is a reason for that. I refused to be reactive, and I do not jump on the bandwagon. For over 2 decades, I have blogged about Nigeria, first as a believer in the project Nigeria, then as a convert, fiercely advocating not just for the dismantling of the Nigerian project, but a soul-searching journey into the meaning/essence of life and how to live and let’s live.

It is such that there is nothing I’ll write now that I’d not written before in the last 10-20 years on this blog or some Nigerian newspapers as a freelance columnist.

Two recent things caught my attention. One is the criminal record of Tinubu. They are super obvious to the point where both the weaklings and oppositions in the Nigerian political space are using the criminal records as wind-sail to unseat him. But ask yourself: how did a criminal like Tinubu become the (s)elected president in the first place? What kind of useless, stupid and senseless political parties elevate and reward criminality? The kind that is based on laughable unitary system that is practiced only in Nigeria. You must be a criminal to participate or engage in a unitary system of government. I cannot forget that on countless occasions, I advocated for the end of the reign of Buhari. It’s the same pattern, Buhari is a dunce, a nonentity and a tyrant that was allowed to reign for 8 years. EIGHT YEARS!!!

The posterity of the nations entrapped in Nigeria is on a permanent pause for as long as Nigeria exists. This leaves a question mark on all the discussions about Nigerian politics. It is a huge mark on the collective mental states of Nigerians. You cannot engage in a unitary system of government and complain of its outcome. You cannot plant cassava and harvest cocoa.

Moreover, there is no single soul trying to unseat Tinubu that does not have his or her own criminal tendencies. As a matter of fact, the chief seeker Atiku Abubakar is in the same league as Tinubu as active Nigerian criminals masquerading as politicians. The ills of Nigeria are huge and obvious. My argument has always been that Nigerians put evil people on the scale and choose between the lesser and the greater one. Doing this in a unitary system of government rewards nepotism, laziness, ineptitude and slave mentality.

The second thing that caught my attention, but no reaction until now, is the untimely death of the artist called Mohbad. I have no inkling of who he was when he was alive and everything I know about him now are from headlines that I stumbled upon. Whatever led to the untimely death of this promising young star is, once again, one of the several symptoms of a rotten system where the rule of men is mostly above the rule of law. There are now uncountable members of the jury who are making their own judgements of the matter. It’s a mess. May his troubled earthly soul find peace with the ancestors.

When all the noise is over, who will see over the sanity of the music industry in an undesirable unitary system of government? What can be done for the music industry in the Yoruba Country? How can the Igbo nation regulate and make money from her music industry? How can the music industry add value of the economy of the Arewa Kingdom? These are the questions for the future of the nations that today remained entrapped in Nigeria. There is a lot to be gained from drawing the carpets under the feet of the politicians that are keeping the rest of the population in bondage.

I remember my essays on Nigeria at 50. I asked then, what is there to celebrate”? who could have thought that 13 years later, Nigeria and Nigerians are still sailing like there is another life. This is the life. The fourth generation of it is on the waste lane as well. Hoping that things will get better for all was the bad dream that our grandparents passed to our parents and we have passed it to our children, in a stupidly active manner. Hoping against hope is now in our genotypes. It is a very deep mess. Almost incurable.

Nigeria is now 63. Rather than seek freedom for the different nationalities entrapped in Nigeria, majority are praying. It’s like believing that Satan exist and praying that Satan should repent so that Jesus can excel. We are so messed up in our mentalities.

Avicii said “Wake me up when it’s all over”. If you ever get to find out the meaning of this phrase, when the morning comes, you’ll be the first to gather men and women to seek for your freedom. The opportunity cost is the demise of Nigeria. Nobody will wake you up when it’s all over, deep people rest, permanently.

aderounmu@gmail.com