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PER ARDUA AD ASTRA

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Air travel is such a kaleidoscope of experiences, serving a flavourful dish with a potpourri of pyscho-social condiments - some spicily educative, some saltily annoying, and others so blandly humbling that it evokes nothing but acceptance. First, we all need to agree that air travel is one of the greatest proofs of the limitlessness of the human spirit. An airplane remains one of the inventions which pushed human advancement to the next frontier, cutting down travel time across the planet, leading to easier and better collaboration, and of course facilitating the growth of the global economy. Interestingly, the ease with which humans readily trust aircrafts to always take us home is a successful psycho-social experiment which should never be taken for granted. For context, we are expected to always look right, look left, and look right again before crossing a road, and for wider roads, we basically mount pedestrian bridges to help us cross, yet this requires less than a minute; but we ...
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COVID-19 - THE HARD TRUTHS FROM THESE TRYING TIMES

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If someone were to tell me in December 2019 that there would be an occurrence in 2020 which would lead to a near collapse of the financial markets, nearly wipe out the global transportation and tourism industry, put almost all the nations of the world on self-imposed lockdown, I mean basically ground the entire world, I would have simply taken the person for a clown, and if they were to insist on keeping their position, I would have recommended a psychiatric evaluation. Such was the strength of my faith and belief in the social, mental, scientific, and technological evolution of humankind that I could not foresee all of us abandoning life as we know it and scampering for shelter far away from other humans as much as possible. Let us face it, the world will never be the same again, even after we have been able to arrest the Covid-19 pandemic, but then, why should it remain the same? The current situation has brought to the fore the indispensability of many of the issues essen...
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THE DANGEROUS NECESSITY OF SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER

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Let's start this trying to tackle some misconception - did Ganduje have the power to dethrone Emir Sanusi? Yes, he does. Governors have the right to remove First Class Traditional Rulers, and for those Traditional Rulers who are “unlucky” to be below First Class, they are on the stool at the whim and caprices of the LGA Chairperson, and they could be removed by the Chairperson at any time. To quote Abubakar Rimi, a former Governor of Kano State, "A traditional ruler is a public officer holding a public office, who is being paid by public funds, and whose appointment is at the pleasure of the state governor and who can be dismissed, removed, interdicted, suspended, if he commits an offence” This can be summarized as Elected Officials give the "staff of office" to Traditional Rulers, they can as well collect them back when they wish. And of course, many kings have been deposed by the Government across our history, from the colonial days, all through our post-indep...
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THE TRAGEDY OF ILLUSORY REALITY

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Compliments of the Season from your favorite absconder from the creative duty of writing. I wrote on this blog just once last year, I actually managed to match my personal record of laziness set the previous year. This is not a record I am proud of, and this year, I have determined to pummel procrastination into submission and write as much as I can. So help me God. And for those of you who dropped some friends last year, I hope you have not started picking up some new ones already this year, just to come and disturb us at the end of the year with news that you will be dropping them again. With the usual apologies, resolutions, and subs out of the way, let me get to the reason why I am here very early this year (aside pummeling procrastination) – I think reality is being replaced with illusion, so I need to find out if I am the odd one out still living here while others have migrated to an alternate world where white is black, and red is green. The reality, where we take every...
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…OF VULNERABILITY AND THE ILLUSION OF ELEVATION

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Since the last time I wrote here, some things have changed… Not such big changes, but big enough to make me become more introspective and less happy. I mean Life is TOUGH, at least I can speak for here in Nigeria where I live. The first change is that I changed my job (Again???). Yeah, again. I finally left Telecommunications, I am now in Renewable Energy, Solar Energy to be precise, and while it is financially rewarding and interesting, it is also saddening because I get to come in contact with the real Vulnerables of the world, and that could be depressing, especially when you consider how minute your impact is compared to what they require to get uplifted out of their dire status. The second change is that I have gone on and become a more open person who now interacts more with strangers and virtual friends, and what I see every day is that basically, no one has it together. We are all just trying to be happy, because happiness is such a fleeting state that you will defi...
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…OF A NIGERIAN YOUTH AND THE QUANDARY OF ETERNAL OPTIMISM

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This is the month of May, today is the 29 th , and the appropriate greeting as a Nigerian is “Happy Democracy Day”, but I guess saying “Happy New Year” is not out of place, since I was here last in the year 2016. Yes, I know, I have promised I will not disappear several times and I actually did disappear, but if you know me very well, you know I usually keep my promises, and it is because I try so hard to keep most of my promises that I have not been able to keep this one – you know, promises like never let the family lack, never let my day-job suffer, never let stress send me to the hospital, never pass up an opportunity to network in real life, etc. So, here I am again confused as to what to write about, not as much what to write about, but what to write about it – I want to write about the future of those of us Nigerians forty years and below-  should I join the others and continue to wail and rail against the our present sad situation, or should I, like an eternal optimist...
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RIVERS OF BABYLON

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It started out as a song playing in my subconscious, then I started humming it around the house and the office, then I started playing it out loud through my phone, and I had to go post the lyrics on Facebook, and now it is at the top of my “most played” playlist. I am referring to the popular Boney M song “Rivers of Babylon” which has taken over my life in the last two weeks. As someone who likes looking for Order within Chaos , and someone who considers rationalizing phenomena as important and as necessary as breathing is to continuous existence, I have been trying to understand why this song has suddenly taken over my life at this point in time. Like all Researchers worth the title would do, I decided to start from the beginning. Boney M, I am sure have rights to the song, but the original writer of the lyrics is King David aka The Psalmist, the man whose favoured instrument was the Harp, and who has one hundred and fifty curated singles to his credit among which are the pop...
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