By Yetunde Arebi

Hi!

Today, I just want to share with you some of the interesting stuff I recently came across. They are all so on-point, I just couldn’t resist. Maybe you will also like to chip in something on what they have to say. Will watch out for your responses. Do have a wonderful weekend!

Re: Women who tend to carcass

Dear Yetunde,

Love

Thanks for this article on Uncle Rufus and Mummy Laide. It is as if the story is about my father. He married seven wives while he was alive and did not take care of us the 18 products of his relationships. Instead, he spent his money on clothes, musicians and more women. My mother, like most of the other mothers took care of themselves and their children.

Many of them were forced to move out to take care of their children as single parents. The two wives who lived to old age in his house, probably did so because they had no other place to go when the others were leaving one after the other. Till today, we still ask our mother what she saw back then in a man who already had six wives and 14 children.

By the time old age crept in on him, he had no loving and loyal wife to care for him and no money to attract any young woman into his bed. When he fell ill with stroke, the two wives quickly left under the pretence of going to their children’s homes for Omugo. But everyone knew that the women did not want to stay around to clean up after him. He was left at the mercy of relatives and friends who did very little for him. At the end, his brother called a meeting of all his children and they decided that we should either hire someone to care for him or one of the children should volunteer to return home to do so.

I was young and still in school, so I had no money to contribute. But even the older ones who were working and had families of their own, refused to contribute money for his keep. Eventually, they agreed that the first child, a woman already widowed, should return to care for him. He died shortly after. I know that if he had invested in his family, he would have lived longer and better. One would think that the mistakes of past generations would serve as lesson and guide for the younger generation. Unfortunately, this is not so, in most cases.

African men, Nigerian men and indeed, polygamous men do not seem to learn anything. Most of them only have their eyes set on the moment without thinking and planning for their old age. While they are young, agile and active, they allow their over bloated ego and libido take over their reasoning faculties. They jump from one woman to another for flimsy excuses. They forget that they even though these women might genuinely love them, love needs to be nurtured, pampered and protected if it will last them a lifetime. That a man offers marriage and children to a woman does not automatically accord him her love and devotion. The way he treats her and her children will earn him that.

Many men who have money and cannot keep a decent relationship together in their youth, believe that their money will bail them out in their old age. They marry women old enough to pass for their grandchildren and expect them to be faithful to the money and status they are offering them. The women either cheat on them under their korokoro eyes, or hasten them off to their deaths to gain their freedom as well as loot.

Josephine

So who is the hater?

Every other day when I check my social media updates, I must see at least one post about haters. It usually goes something like “no time for haters”, “enemies who pretend to be friends are the worst”, “they laugh with you in your front but talk about you at your back”, “enemies of progress”, “they cannot handle my awesomeness”, “jealous bitches”, “women are their worst enemies”, “screw friends, family all the way”, “it is a new year, I don’t want negative people around me”, “it’s time to get rid of fake friends”…blah blah blah.

Yeah, we get it. You are that awesome person everyone else is jealous of and wants to bring down. Your life is so interesting such that what everyone else wants to do is just talk about it. In your own little world, you are that celebrity with fans and antis. Get off your superiority complex please! Nobody really cares about what drama goes on in your life. We’ve all got problems to deal with and we’ve all got people who don’t necessarily want the best for us. But you don’t see us going on rants on social media like 14-year-olds.

Or maybe it’s just my guilty conscience talking. There is this friend of mine who hurt me badly some time ago. Imagine travelling miles and spending a lot of money just to go show support for someone only to be treated like crap on getting there. My pride did not let me cry on top of the matter. I was going to let it go. In fact, I did not make any comment about it. No BBM, Twitter or Facebook rant. Only for me to see updates from the said friend about enemies and haters some months later. In my mind I was like “Oloun mu e, you deserve all the haters you can get”.  Her updates were clearly not for me but I was still angry. Suddenly, everybody has haters and everyone else is a hater. I could not stop wondering though. Does this one even have the moral justification to call out haters? I mean, she is the hater and I am the hated, duh!

Bill Gates is not calling out haters. Dangote is not calling out haters. You must be really delusional to think you even have haters. If you have so many haters, maybe you need to check yourself. I did my own share of hating on haters too but I’ve long outgrown it.  It’s like there is some sort of unspoken competition to see who has the most haters. If everyone is hated, who exactly is the hater then? We all need to grow up and that trend needs to go forever. Sh.t is getting really old. Rant over. *drops mic*

Osebi Adeniran

Before you cast a stone

What do you know about discrimination and who are you to play judge over someone for discriminating against another? Before you answer, read on and then when you’re done answer truthfully, if you still can. In recent times, many a story of colour-based discrimination has been reported. People of colour especially in the United States have complained and joined their voices together against racist comments and behaviours meted out to them by their white counterparts. Many have raised awareness and condemned this issue, even using hash tags such as ‘black lives matter’ on social media platforms to support their outcry against such discrimination.

In South Africa, xenophobic actions against non-indigenes; was and still is a problem, though a little less pronounced. In our very own dear country, Nigeria, many have complained about tribalism and discrimination displayed in diverse forms such as when seeking employment. What about complaints against the President, stating that his appointments have only favoured those from the North and that, other parts of the country have been side-lined? Let us not forget also, the gender discrimination faced by females all over the world.

These are facts, undeniably. However, let us consider a few scenarios without being biased; if you’re a black person and you encounter a white man, the first thought that comes to your mind would likely be along these lines; “what is this white man doing here? Or “they come to our country and still act like they’re better than us”. Again, let’s say you’re a black person and find yourself in a position that affords you the privilege to interview two people for a job, one white and one black. Irrespective of performance, who do you offer the job?

Or let’s say one speaks your language and the other doesn’t, who gets the job? If a white man walks into a bar full of coloured people, what is their reaction? How do they perceive him? Let’s bring it closer to home; a Yoruba man’s daughter falls in love with an Igbo man and all hell breaks loose because they are not of the same tribe. An Igbo man’s son finds a woman he wants to marry; and there is trouble because they might both be of the Igbo tribe, but they are from different states and have different cultures and traditions.

A young Hausa girl has a friend from the South and her mother says to cut off or be wary of her friend because she’s heard stories about people from “that place”. A woman slaps a random man in anger and he’s told to let it go because she’s a woman, then a man slaps a woman and he’s said to be abusive. Complicated isn’t it? We live in a world of hypocrisy and we face these issues everyday but truth be told, no one can be forced to believe or refrain from having a mind-set of discrimination, whatever form it may take.

The choice is always yours and the ball is always in your court to decide whether to contribute to the furtherance of discrimination, to positively engage in curbing this menace by the choices you make or to sit on the fence, hoping that someone somewhere would do something about it. I do not exempt myself from this; however, I ask, do you find yourself discriminating against others for whatever reasons even in the most subtle way?

Do you judge people in your heart or by your words and actions, and then get mad when someone else tries to play judge over you or a loved one? You answer honestly and I’ll answer honestly; then say truthfully if you’re worthy to cast a stone on anyone for being discriminatory. If you are part of the problem, then judge no one. Look in the mirror and change your perspective, be faultless by all standards, then cast a stone and you would be right to do so.

Chinazo Okaro