Respect or Love?

Relationships start in many different ways. It could be a sudden burst of electricity or the slow burn of sustained familiarity. No matter how things start there is a whole industry built around telling us how to keep them going. When I was young the importance of respect was drilled into me as the key ingredient in all relationships. Respect for elders, those in authority, and the head of the household. The notion of romantic love was seen as something very insubstantial that was a byproduct of a decadent western civilisation. 

It is the test of time that truly determines whether a relationship is for real. And in any relationship you need to have both love and respect present. However, over time both of these change in a relationship. Very often that overwhelmingly passionate love that was there to start with gradually settles into affectionate caring. The feelings may remain the same but their spontaneity and expression become somewhat dulled. Over time there are a lot of things that can erode respect in a relationship. It could be male insecurity, a reversal  of fortunes, sexual dysfunction, irritating personal habits or infidelity. If these conditions persist it often opens the door to bickering and disagreements. 

A good relationship needs love to thrive but without respect a relationship has minimal hope of surviving.

360 Degrees of Love

Is it the heights to which I fly

Or my smile that's so very shy

That make you love me?

Is it the subtlety of my wit

Or the steel in my grit

That make you love me?

Is it the cynicism of my views

Or my tendency to be obtuse 

That make me unlovable?

Is it my Sundays spent at home

Or my disdain for all things chrome

That make me unlovable?

If I changed 

Would I still be me?

And if I stay the same

Will I truly be free?

How unlovable can I be

And yet still be loved?

How lovable is the me they see

To yet remain so unloved?

Some Advice About Advice

There are times I wonder whether we shouldn't subject people who helpfully volunteer to advise us to a lot more scrutiny. I would go so far as to suggest we should interview and evaluate the people we choose to offer us advice. It is quite a big job after all. Good advice can set us up for life; and bad advice can put us on the path to ruin. This is literally the case with financial advice. Similarly, in our day to day lives our success or failure can rest on taking the right advice. And it will serve us well if we exercise some caution with regards who we look to for advice. 

I remember a few years ago when I was about to do some traveling an uncle of mine who I had gone to notify decided to advise me of what to expect on my travels. He told me how it was going to be tough, probably like nothing I had experienced before. That's because conditions in Nigeria were so agreeable most Nigerians had become soft and lazy. He said this with a very pitying look in his eyes. He rounded up by giving me a hard stare and wishing me good luck if I still wanted to travel. My guess was this was his way of telling I was feckless and wouldn't really amount to much. Now I don't know whether he was wrong or right. But I do know I did not find his words either encouraging or inspiring. They didn't do me much good but I certainly never forgot them. Because while they may have been factually accurate they certainly weren't very supportive of me. But he had to have his say, so screw me; he thought. 

Nigeria being a very hierarchical society we are practically required to seek the counsel of elders. And then we're duty bound to abide by it. This can be a good thing, as a Yoruba proverb points out; "a child can never have as many rags as an elderly person". It is true that wisdom comes with age and experience. However it is true that not all aged people have actually devoted themselves to the pursuit of wisdom, nor have they experienced everything the world has to offer. So there are times you have to figure out when the 'advice' you're being given is really just so much hot air. 

As with these words I have written, all advice should be taken with a reasonable degree of scepticism. Who knows where the motivation for the advice truly comes from? Ultimately you must know what you want for anyone to capably guide and direct you. If you haven't figured out what your options are, there is a good chance that the good advice you get will only lead further down the path of confusion. 

Smuggling Africans into Europe

The smuggling of Africans across the Mediterranean into Europe has reached crisis levels. It has practically become an illegal industry. It is time governments in Africa take more responsibility for the problem. The amount if suffering and fatalities that are occurring during these illegal crossings is an indictment on the social and economic conditions in North and Sub-Saharan Africa. There needs to be greater cooperation by the African governments to handle Africans getting stranded at sea. This needs to be done alongside taken action to stop and prevent the human smuggling going on. The African Union and ECOWAS need to recognise the damage that this doing. The continent is losing valuable young lives to fruitless quest for the fantasy of a better life anywhere but home. 

Mugabe Falls, Zimbabwe Left Bruised

It has been reported that Robert Mugabe has suspended a retinue of bodyguards for not preventing him from taking a tumble last week.

While this sort of overbearing behaviour is not untypical of Mugabe it does show the mental frailty that is increasingly accompanying his physical frailties. Someone should inform him that the elderly are prone to falls. Mugabe has long been one if those leaders who is determined to rule on till death. And as is typical of these types of tyrants as they age and become enfeebled so does the country they claim to be serving.

Africa has a long history of rulers hanging on to power - Kaunda, Sese Seko, Gadaffi, Mubarak, Jawara, Boigny, Kenyatta, Nyerere, Bokassa; the list is endless. It also has a history of democratically elected rulers trying to make constitutional changes in order to extend their reigns - Obasanjo's third term manoeuvring and Goodluck Jonathan's six year term proposal of recent memory. In all of these cases the leaders have not distinguished themselves during their stewardship. So it is no surprise they were oblivious to the conventional wisdom that rather than increase stability, staying in power for life only tends to embed existing malaise and create more division. And when such rulers die or are removed from office the country is almost always left worse off. Succession becomes a problem, whether it's because of the instalment of an unwanted heir apparent or due to rival factions fighting for power. 

Mugabe has long since fallen from grace and his recent history of physical falls are just his body coming to terms with the infirmity that has plagued his mind for a long time now. Under his stewardship Zimbabwe has become one of the poorest countries in the world. That is the legacy his long reign will leave. In addition to the many hilarious memes his fall generated.

Nigeria Waits, A Little While Longer

After years of preparation Nigeria has had to postpone the 2015 elections for six weeks. And yet again the country's government has demonstrated that it couldn't organise a drinking session in a brewery. According to INEC concerns over security in the north east of the country have persuaded it that it would not be safe to go ahead with elections on February 14th. However sources close to the government have suggested that INEC just isn't fully prepared to organise the elections effectively. Whatever the reasons are this decision should have been made sooner to avoid the subsequent disruption that is likely to follow. 

It is clear that the postponement has been ordered from high up in the government. INEC doesn't have the remit or resources to determine security risks. That would be the responsibility of the Minister of Internal Affairs, the Inspector General of Police and the head of national security. I would have expected security during the elections to be top of the National Security Committee agenda for the past twelve months. It should thus have been apparent much sooner that security in the North East needed to be reinforced in order for elections to go ahead. It speaks to the endemic institutional inefficiency in the country that this was not done. 

It is impossible to ignore claims that INEC is still not fully prepared to hold the elections. Even the INEC chairman acknowledged that almost 40% of eligible voters still haven't received voters cards. It's further confirmation of the prevalence of inefficiency in the country that a simple task like issuing voters cards is beyond the means of a long standing national body. But it is very likely that fraud and financial misappropriation probably played a part in the lack of preparedness. It must have been apparent for some time that INEC did not have the distribution of voters cards in hand. One can only wonder why the Minister of Internal Affairs did not take appropriate action sooner. 

It is not entirely clear how much disruption this postponement will cause. Some universities have already shut down anticipating the conclusion of elections this weekend. It is unclear whether they will now remain closed till March. While it us unlikely that the security risks will be any less come March, one hopes that the elections will be able to go ahead with minimum disorder and violence.

Gunning for the Children

According to the National Rifle Association in America guns don't kill, people do. There has appeared to be an increase in reports of children shooting and killing. Makes one wonder whether, according to the NRA, that now makes these kids killers if it isn't the access to firearms that is to blame. Certainly it would appear that the persistent advocacy for carrying arms combined with a social glorification of gun violence is creating a curiosity about guns in children. The more it seems like not only the right but also the normal thing to carry arms the more we are likely to reduce awareness in children of the dangers of guns. How do you explain to a child who has just shot and killed someone how wrong it is without traumatising that child even more? And is it possible to tell the child everything will be alright when that child has just killed a person? Tragically it would appear that guns are destroying our communities in so many different ways.