Goodbye Dad

My Dad passed away over the weekend. May his lovely soul rest in peace.

I love you dad, my hero. I will see you when I see you....Till then, I will miss you loads

Personal responsibility

Its not unique to our community, we just do it a little better. Obama has had his say, Jesse Jackson has had his say about Obama’s say – Telling brothers how to behave. David Cameron, the leader of the UK’s main opposition party has also had his say.as. How dare a white broda tell us what to do? And then what?

Too many fathers are going missing, PERIOD. It should be of deep concern among many black folks, and shouldn’t really matter who the messenger is.




Kids are killing kids, kids are underachieving @ school, kids are hanging out in corners – up to no good, Sisters are so quick to turf out their guys, Guys are not behaving - we are topping all tables. Lets get real.

To Lester Holloway, editor of the New Nation, it is right to lecture black people about 'taking responsibility'. Lets not forget to credit and highlight the good ones...

Yardy’s responsibities



At a time when teachers are on strike, when Nigeria is literarily in Darkness, guess where our servant-leader is? Busy gallivanting in the UK - acting as if he is someone -even though the local media has hardly noticed his presence.

He is seeking military assistance to fight his people or the criminals that populate the Niger Delta while at the same time asking his spineless lapdog Jonathan Badluck to keep talking about some fictitious summit.



Finally, the Nigerian Independent Newspaper’s web site has something on Nigerians who live in luxury. I guess if you don’t make this list, and its not a forbes list, you are living in penury. And from the count, it means many of us.

Part I
Part II

Negatively in the news ….again!

Driving into work this morning with the radio tuned on to BBC 5 Live, our beloved country was headlining Victoria Derbyshire’s excellent show.

This time it was about an undercover BBC investigation that exposed how young African footballers are being conned out of thousands of dollars by Nigerian fraudsters. It was one of those familiar yet depressing tales, so click here for the rest of the gist. Once more the image of the country has been sold down…..(what image?).


Nduka Obaigbena (God bless him) has a vision that partying will clean up our battered image - Maybe I am being a bit unfair by using the word partying, but my drift is in check.

Whichever way, this is something he strongly believes in, so please stop calling him an a#*clown. He has been accused on other blogs as massaging his insatiable ego, but he is still sinking millions of his money into a project that might gives us Nigerians and himself 15 minutes of positive attention.

Some folks say he is just a front and not a financial giant, others say there is a bit of money laundering going on here – do we ever give up? I am directed to his quote - ‘I like to live modestly and discreetly’. Stop the hating!

I tried to catch up on the party/event last weekend. My cousin was hosting the Lagos leg and I always try to keep up with his work. It wasn’t on TV, so I tried the ThisDay online site. They had a sketchy report and my guess is that they must have sold the rights to cover the show to Ovation or some other news outlet.

I then tried Google News because some headline before the event read “Thisday Festival - 60 International Journalists Storm Country”, but guess what was mainly reported?

A brawl at Usher’s concert.

Two guys who seriously need to belt up

Gordon Brown
The Prime Minister of Great Britain. This out of favour PM was quoted recently as telling told journalists at the G8 summit in Japan that the UK would help Nigeria "deal with lawlessness" in the Niger Delta region. Lawlessness? Is this man, like his predecessors in the past, taking lessons from the Arewa mob? Mr Brown needs to focus on his declining fortunes. He has so many issues back home to deal with – knife crime, 10% tax fiasco, leading the most unpopular labour party in history, impending recession, record fuel prices, rising unemployment, road tax increases ….. where do I stop. Brown, swim or sink, call an election!



‘Rev’ Jesse Jackson
I may not be alone on this, but I have always wondered how ‘Rev’ Jackson attained such a high profile in American politics. I know Jackson was with Martin L. King in Memphis in 1968 when the civil rights leader was assassinated, but is that enough? The man has never come across to me as eloquent, and if I am honest, intelligent - but I know so many folks who see him as passionate, a guy who delivers inspirational speeches and a long-time campaigner for equal rights. Well, maybe.

By threatening to cut off Obama’s grapefruits’ he might have inadvertently done him a favour amongst white voters. That said, the man’s time has gone. His rhetoric has become ancient and monotonous. Personally I think he is now showing himself as a crude, prejudiced and self serving opportunist.



And finally Fox News, a network that lacks ethics – Airing an overheard conversation/off-air comments by a guest? But then..

Kevin Pietersen getting 100+ against South Africa (cricket) really sucks!

Lost Nationality

For those residing in the UK, you must have been under some sort of rock if the name Laura Robson means nothing to you. On Saturday she became the junior Wimbledon champion, by Sunday morning, 14-year-old Laura Robson was on the front pages of almost every single newspaper in this country. Not Venus Williams, who also won the more prestigious women's singles title on the same day, Laura Robson.

But that is half of the gist; the real fireworks seem bordered around her nationality. While the Brits, well the media in general are frantic to claim her as one of theirs, some others are not so sure.

According to Wikipedia, Laura was born in Australia to Australian parents. She and her family moved from Melbourne to Singapore with her father's work when she was eighteen months old, and then to England when she was six. How that makes her British sort of baffles me. However there is a consistent argument there; Lennox Lewis was never really considered English even though he spent the first 12 years of his life here. Some say there was more to it, but I wouldn’t even touch that.

Nationality is defined as the status of belonging to a particular nation by origin, birth, or naturalization. That is where the confusion is. We have three parameters –

Nationality (origin, birth, naturalization)
{
Return (my nationality);
}

Personally, I will stick with the one missing selection – lineage {Parental}. That defines it for me.

Laura in my opinion is Australian first/Last. Unlike her, I was born in this country and have spent more time here that any other place. I love this country and ‘may’ even die for it, but I still don’t consider myself English/British and never will. I don’t even consider two little boys who were also born here British. We are all NIGERIANS, albeit British passport holders.

Some say it’s a safe bet because the indigenous people will never consider me one of theirs in the first place. Others say it’s cool to enjoy the convenience of being a national of a supposedly advanced nation. To both I say – quite rightly so, but that isn’t why I take this stand. I just think it makes it easier, easier to define me and my descendants.

I once told my boys that any day they were good enough to play international football it would either be the Super Eagles or a search for another dad. The choice more seriously will be theirs. This is mine.