“A sucker [fool] is born every minute”. P.T. Barnum. If it takes God’s Own Country a whole minute to produce a dunce, then Nigerian mothers must be dropping them every second. At Unijankara, we are getting fed-up delivering lectures to Fellow Compatriots who refuse to learn street wisdom – which is our 100 level Course. Like the suckers they are, they fell for two stories, on the same subject, both for the marines.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, family was everything to us. Parents, siblings, family members, all came first in our lives. You couldn’t do without them. They were the first you turned to in adversity and in sharing of good news. The family had so much influence on the individual that you thought twice before you engaged in any act of misdemeanour, as a list of dos and don’ts had been drummed well into you right from childhood, and you were raised, to know that you must not do anything that would bring dishonour/disgrace to the family. You were loyal to your family and you chose your confidants from among the members.

On Monday, Tiger Woods reclaimed the number one spot in golf— a coveted position he had surrendered in early 2010. During his time in the wilderness, he had had to battle the demons that assailed him when he suffered a hip injury, a loss of form and a public demystification which ended in a costly divorce.

Chief Oluwole Awolowo was definitely not a saint. He never had a chance. He was expected to be a “rascal”, a word freely used beyond and beside its real meaning, way back in our grapple with the English language in Yorubaland.

In these parts, death is taken as seriously as life;sometime even more so. Indeed, in Africa the style in which you bury your dead especially one’s parents is a measure of your stature as a man or woman of means, and is a testament to how well (or not) the dead have raised their children. It’s a paradox.