KUTI sOfUmAdE - K u T e R o

VinFast's electric cars have been dogged by poor reviews, and it’s on pace to make fewer sales this year than General Motors does in a week. But none of that matters in the feverish world of S**C deals.

The Vietnamese automaker’s shares surged 255% Tuesday when it debuted on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, pushing the company’s market capitalization above that of industry giants GM and Mercedes-Benz.

It also added $39 billion to the net worth of chairman Pham Nhat Vuong, whose fortune now stands at $44.3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Whether the firm can hold on to the gains remains to be seen.

📷: Linh Pham/Bloombergbusiness

Always remember that, there's a guy currently sweating it out on a queue, to the fuel station somewhere around the intersection of Oshodi and Mushin, where a litre of petrol is at least N570
...this same guy, who knows what exact step the marquee footballer in far away Europe, who refused a total transfer sum in the neighbourhood of a billion euros MUST DO NEXT to continue to succeed in his career

Always remember also, that the cure for MADNESS IS MORE MADNESS

Then, more madness!!!!!

[Specialists & Madmen]

You would think that a vastly successful movie industry was concentric with massive well-structured economies....
...until, you considered Nigeria.
Hollywood (United States)
Nollywood (Nigeria)
Bollywood (India)
Chinawood (China)
Nihon eiga (Japan)
Hallyuwood (South Korea)
Cinecittà (Italy)
Gaulywood (France)

[Anomaly]

Children in well built homes across Nigeria with elevators so well maintained they run like clock work, will never understand why a medical doctor would die in a faulty elevator inside her hospital.

Children in other homes across Nigeria where staircases, the siblings of elevators, are a discomfort due to nasty engineering, will never quite understand why a medical doctor would die in a faulty elevator inside her hospital, either

Children in homes across Nigeria, bungalows practically, without need for staircases, would require both knowledge and imagination to understand elevators

Children across Nigeria, who are not in homes....but, are on the streets, under the bridges, in uncompleted shelters, in shanties....do not really "understand" elevators, medical doctor or hospital

The future of any civilization is best examined by the SLEEPING CONDITIONS of its children.

That there are 20 million out-of-school children in a society points to far more poorer sleeping conditions in that society.

And those far more poorer sleeping conditions can be deduced from our 133 million+ multidimensionally poor count

It should even be more, per sleeping conditions

There'd be far little, dwindling hope, if you were to measure hope by cotton quality and fabric colour

The scarcity of good cotton quality and colour white, the badges of hospitable living conditions, throw many societies tumbling down the hopelessness ladder.

The bed, therefore, may be the best determinant of HOPE!!!!!

[BEDlam of Underdevelopment]

"THIS CULTURE OF ANYHOWNESS IS DEATH"

Kutero, I thought you took time off making posts?

Yes. I did.

But, when you consider that, only about 1% of Nigerian families could afford to train a ward with N18million university tuition for a six-year course (other costs excluded)...
...a tuition now adjusted to inflation to imply N39million for the same duration, in a private university on the average nowadays in ofcourse, Nigeria
...you can at least reverse a decision not to post and lend a voice of ashes and tears
...to then mourn the realities of the 99% living dead in your society

In 2017, a cleaner at an hotel had been awarded N10.3million in damages by the National Industrial Court against his employers, the operators of the hotel

He had sustained a permanent ankle injury sometimes in 2013 on the property's poorly maintained elevator. An elevator so poorly maintained that court documents had it that the management of the hotel encouraged workers to continue using the elevator so as to not alert unsuspecting guests to its poor state

Only about one year after this Industrial Court judgement, another elevator would begin to show wear and tear in another property....this time around, the Odan, Lagos-island General Hospital

Until that elevator not only severely injured a medical doctor, but, took her life yesterday as it plunged from the 10th floor with her, unfortunately in it...nothing concrete had been done for 5 years to address the poor state of that elevator

Five years.

Five years in a country where political term in office is every four years.

When another young medical doctor fell to the bullets of terrorists on the Abuja-Kaduna rail attack, you would think you could at least avoid anything to do with the known insecure flashpoints of our vast motherland...and increase your chance at life

But, this was in Lagos.

In the buildings of a government owned hospital complex....not on the now closed desperately blood seeking Ijora bridge or the shamelessly maintained Third Mainland bridge

She was at work. In about two weeks, had that elevator held on a little longer...having held on for 5 years of ignored maintenance protestations...that dear young woman would have missed the ghastly opportunity to become, yet, another mere statistics of underdevelopment and civil service brigandage

Her internship tenure was wrapping up in only two weeks time at the hospital.

But, then, if the elevator was not attended to, it would only mean someone in the premises must occupy the musical chair of death that, that hospital's management superintends, naturally

It would have to be someone, at least.

If a doctor could plunge to her death in an elevator within an hospital complex in Lagos....what in Hell do you think would be happening to co**ses in morgues managed by hospitals?

Have you heard about second-hand, third-hand and even, tenth-hand deaths?

In the leprous hands of a debased, deranged society?

If someone whose school tuition alone was shy of N20million could not navigate the death valleys of our underdevelopment...
....given her relative privileges
...what chances do the rest 99% have
...this 99% that are burdened by N200k an annum, university tuition?

How would anyone within this debilitating 99% demography approach the information that, whilst a doctor could die at work, plunged from 10th floor in a badly maintained elevator in Lagos...
...there are 57 elevators in the Burj Khalifa in Dubai serving more than 120 floors to the observation deck...
...since 2010 ???

Imagine if you were to somehow replace the leadership in the UAE with Nigerians...
...and leaving them to look after human lives in 57 elevators over 120 floors in 13 years

Pogrom. Pogrom. Pogrom
Massacre. Massacre. Massacre.

*Rhapsody Of Realities.*

*Wednesday, August 2nd, 2023.*

*Discretion And Sound Judgment.*

*Rev. Dr. Chris Oyakhilome.*

*_The Entrance Of Thy Words Giveth Light; It Giveth Understanding Unto The Simple*_ (Psalm 119:130).

The word translated *Simple* above is the Hebrew, *Pethîy*; it means *To Be Foolish Or Silly.* It also connotes *Being Open-minded Or Seducible.* It aptly describes *Someone Who’s Open To Any New Thinking About Anything.*

The open-minded or seducible person could hear, *There Are Three gods,* and agrees. Then, he listens to a podcast where the speaker says, *There’re Actually Five gods,* and he also agrees to that. Soon, someone else comes up with another theory that says there’s no God; and he nevertheless agrees. No! That’s being a simpleton.

Such folks need the entrance of God’s Word to give them understanding. It’s guaranteed: *God’s Word Will Eject Foolishness And Impart Wisdom To You.* 2 Timothy 3:15 tells us that the Holy Scriptures are able to make you wise. Hallelujah!

*When People Aren’t Behaving Or Acting Right, Refer Them To The Word. When The Word Gets Into Them, There’ll Be A Transformation.* If they were timid, they’d become bold, sagacious, discerning, discrete, perceptive and prudent. The Word will cause them to deal wisely in the affairs of Life (Joshua 1:8 AMPC).

Colossians 3:16 says, *Let The Word Of Ch byrist Dwell In You Richly In All Wisdom….* *The More Of The Word You Have Inside You, The Wiser You Become, Such That Even Your Choice Of Words In Dealing With Others Will Be Gracious, Excellent And Loving.*

*Confession:*

*The Word of Christ dwells in me richly in all wisdom; therefore, I’m sagacious, discerning, discrete, perceptive, and prudent. I exude wisdom and sound judgment. I deal excellently in all my affairs today, and I make accurate judgments and decisions, for the Word propels me from within, in Jesus’ Name. Amen.*

*Further Study:*
:
*||* *2 Timothy 3:15.*
15 And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. *||*

*||* *Joshua 1:8.*
8 This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. *||*

*||* *Acts 20:32.*
32 And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified. *||*

*Daily Scripture Reading Plan:*

*1-Year Bible Reading Plan:*
Romans 6:15-7:1-6 & Psalms 60-63.

*2-Year Bible Reading Plan:*
Luke 12:35-48 & Judges 8.

And We Lost Dr. Vwaere To Nigeria’s Anyhowness.

When Dr. Vwaere was being inducted as a Nigerian doctor after her six-year sojourn at Babcock University last year, she had high hopes and expectations.

She had hopes for a flourishing medical career.

Expectations to use her newly learned medical skills to benefit the community and society at large.

Training a child at a Babcock medical college is quite expensive and does not come cheap.

2.5 million per annum for school fees alone during her time; it is now 6.5 million per annum, but her parents did it because they wanted to give the best to their daughter and then to avoid the anyhowness in the Nigerian university eco system.

Post-induction, Dr. Vwaere got a place to do her internship at General Hospital (Odan, Lagos Island), a facility owned by the Lagos State Government.

Before Dr. Vwaere joined the General Hospital as a student doctor, it was noticed by the resident doctors and staff of the hospital that the only elevator at the hospital had been in bad shape since 2018.

But because of Nigeria’s anyhowness, one big madam/Oga siphoned/embezzled the money meant to replace the elevator while patchy work was done at the elevator to serve as a respite, endangering people's lives in the process and paying deaf ears to the genuine complaints by resident doctors at the hospital.

The elevator was so bad that it stopped at intervals, and you had to manually use your hand to close it in order to continue your journey.

The carelessness, wickedness, and anyhowness culture we have here have finally ended the journey and the dreams of Dr. Vwaere.

Just like the rest of us, Dr. Vwaere woke up today with bright hopes for the month of August.

She was upbeat for one reason: her housemanship at General Hospital (Odan, Lagos Island) was finally coming to an end.

She had less than two weeks to round up

She went to work excited that she has less than 2 weeks to complete her housemanship.

And this afternoon, a dispatch rider who brought the food she ordered online called her on the phone to let her know that he was around.

Since she was free, she elected to go and pick the food herself from the ground floor where the dispatch rider was, and on her way to meet the dispatch rider,

She entered the faulty elevator.

And then disaster struck.

The elevator fell from the 10th floor where she was to the ground with a loud thud that shook the foundation of the hospital.

Even the dispatch rider who was waiting at the entrance of the elevator thought that Armageddon was here when he heard the noise, so the man ran for his dear life.

It took one hour before Dr. Vwaere was rescued from the debris of what was once the elevator.

She was still alive, though badly injured, and was bleeding when she was brought out and rushed to the emergency section of the hospital.

And from mutiple accounts of those who witnessed the surreal drama

Dr Vwaere was crying that she did not want to die, even while stuck at the elevator and crying for help that she wants to live, the plea for life continued after she was rescued.

Again, Nigeria's anyhowness kicked in and deprived her this chance to live.

She was taken to the emergency section of the hospital, but after another delay because there was no blood,

That was how Dr. Vwaere gave up the ghost.

The young lady died just like that.

Corruption kills, and this is another part of corruption we don't discuss well enough.

We just lost Dr. Vwaere because of that hydra-headed monster and Nigeria’s culture of anyhowness.

I am visibly upset as I’m writing this.

This is not right.

We can’t continue like this.

We can’t continue living like this, like animals.

For how long will we continue to tolerate losing our best and brightest to this culture of mediocrity?

Nigeria keeps devouring its young.

Nigeria failed Dr. Vwaere; may her innocent blood spilled for no reason haunt and punish those criminals who embezzled the money meant for a new elevator.

Monday Lines

The Afonja in Niger Republic

By Lasisi Olagunju

(Published in the Nigerian Tribune on Monday, 31 July, 2023)

Six contiguous states across Africa, from Guinea on the Atlantic Ocean to Sudan on the Red Sea, have suffered eight military coups since 2020. The United States Institute for Peace (USIP) noted and wrote the above in relation to last week's coup in Niger Republic. It described the situation as depressing. It is. Depressing means upsetting and distressing, painful. It also means disheartening, heartbreaking and heart-rending. Each of those words will fit an experience of betrayal where trust is invested. Ousted President Mohamed Bazoum would use those words too, especially when it was announced that the head of his guards was the one who sacked him. The violent process is called coup d'etat; Napoleon Bonaparte did it after his Egyptian military campaign in October 1799; it crowned him emperor, a virtual dictator in 1804.

Coups are sometimes redemptive and corrective; they are many times ruinous. The December 1, 1983 issue of the Nigerian Tribune carried a front page story headlined: 'Metroline takes off in 1984.' It was about Lagos State and the UPN government there thinking ahead. Exactly one month after that report, a coup d'etat killed the metroline dream; the result is the intractable snarled-up Lagos traffic we feel today. When the Nigerien coup story broke last week, I asked a reporter in his late 20s what he knew about coups de'tat. He started 'blowing' grammar but I understood his limited knowledge of what I asked. To him, coup was a mere subject of discussion; to my generation, it is a lived experience, a permanent scar. I told the young man of our experience in the 1970s, 1980s and the '90s when we slept under a 'regime of hope' and woke up with 'renewed hope' under another regime without having a say in who ruled us and for how long. The last time we experienced a coup was November 1993, about thirty years ago. 'Impunity' and 'arbitrariness' were the words the young man used to qualify what I described. He was right. What rules coups is not the law as we know it. It has its own rule, its own morality - might is right, what Charles Darwin (and Herbert Spencer) called "survival of the fittest...an overthrowing of the moving equilibrium wherever it presents the least opposing force..." It is a capricious supplanting of the Rule of Law with the rule of men in its crudest form.

Edward Luttwak, in chapter 2 of his 'Coup D'etat: A Practical Handbook' (first published in 1968, republished in 1979, updated and republished in April 2016), identifies what he calls conditions that predispose countries to a violent change of government. He lists "a passivity of enforced silence, not inertia", economic distress, and insecurity among such vulnerabilities (page 22). Were those conditions present in Niger Republic before last week? If they were, how innocent were the coup leaders in the making of the deterioration which now summoned their intervention? The new leader has been an inner part of the system since 2011. He is on record as "a staunch ally" of Bazoum's mentor and predecessor, Mahamadou Issoufou; he is still very close to him. He was very close to Bazoum until recently. When you are complicit in the making of a problem, would you not be insulting the intelligence of your audience if you advertise and hold yourself out as the solution?

Coup is the political equivalent of armed wife snatching, an act that knows no friend because it is war. In that zero-sum game of power, every actor is a serpent and the closest is always the most poisonous. General Abdourahamane Tchiani, Niger's coup leader, was the commander of the elite presidential guard. His job was to protect the man he sacked and detained in an apparent preemptive strike. The coupist had an ancestor in Nigeria: Colonel (later Brigadier) Joseph Nanven Garba was made the commander of the Nigerian elite Brigade of Guards at Dodan Barracks in Lagos in the middle of the Nigerian Civil War. He was in charge of the personal security of the then Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon. Like Tchiani, Garba did the work admirably for almost a decade. Then on July 29, 1975, General Gowon was overthrown in a military coup announced by his chief guard - the same Joe Garba. In Mali, a certain Colonel Assimi Goita was in the news on August 18, 2020 for seizing power which he soon ceded to transitional President Bah Ndaw. Goita was back nine months later in May 2021 announcing that he had seized power from President Ndaw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane. He proceeded to detain the duo and became interim president and has remained in power since. What is the meaning of interim? The September 2022 coup in Burkina Faso threw up Captain Ibrahim Traore who was a key participant in the January 2022 coup that enthroned the man he sacked, Lt-Col Paul Henri Sandaogo Damiba. That act of a comrade toppling another comrade was consistent with the political history of the Burkinabe. On Thursday, 15 October, 1987, the leader who renamed the country Burkina Faso, Captain Thomas Sankara, was shot dead outside the central parliament building in Ouagadougou. It was his best friend, colleague and comrade, Blaise Compaore, who was behind his death. Someone reviewed the Sankara tragedy and warned: beware of best friends.

It is not really strange that the man who sacked his president in Niger was in fact the man in charge of the president's life and throne. Sadly, it is the way of life, and especially of power. You can't slap someone unless you are close to the person. I counsel all leaders to choose their men with their mind's eyes open. Whenever events like the Nigerien 'betrayal' happen, the Yoruba would quickly remember a head of their army, Aare Ona Kakanfo Afonja of Ilorin, who staged a coup against his lord, the Alaafin, in 1817, forced him out of power and out of life. Like the Arab Spring, the Afonja rebellion serially infected the whole of the Yoruba country with convulsions; the nation caved in to a pandemic of revolts and coups. But Afonja himself soon became a victim of his ambition.

Like Afonja, like Tchiani. The new man in Niger Republic is said to be very brave and popular among his soldiers. He holds himself out as a people's General. Reports describe him as a veteran pro-democracy officer "who has foiled similar uprisings" in his country in recent past. He was, in fact, the one who foiled a plot to prevent Bazoum from being sworn in in April 2021. Ambitious people always speak the language of freedom. Afonja was a 'freedom fighter' hailed initially for standing up to the excesses of Alaafin Aole. He later built a formidable army of forcibly freed Oyo slaves of northern origin. He encouraged the enslaved to desert their owners, gave them freedom, courage and arms. He needed them for his protection but, like he did to the Alaafin, those he cultivated for his defence turned out his nemesis. Afonja fell six years after his coup at the mutinous hands of his soldiers. He was attacked, assailed, defeated and killed one very bad afternoon in 1823 by his ex-men. His attackers were not satisfied with just killing him; they burnt his co**se, denying him a decent burial. What happened to Afonja was a coup that has endured till tomorrow.

Death that is serially killing one's age mates is dropping a sneaky heads-up in deep proverbs. We should understand the blue-murder cries across Africa's presidential palaces over the coup in Niger. Rebellion is like yawning; it is contagious. When Gowon was removed in July 1975, the New York Times noted that he was "the seventh African head of government to be deposed in two years." The newspaper reported that "the previous changes in government had come in Rwanda, Upper Volta, Niger, Ethiopia, Madagascar and Chad." Two American political scientists, Nathan Danneman and Emily Hencken Ritter, in 2014 looked at the Arab Spring and came out with a paper they entitled 'Contagious Rebellion and Preemptive Repression.' They noted that "rebellions in Tunisia (which was) followed soon after by challenges in Egypt, Syria, and Libya" suggested "the contagious nature of civil conflict." Rebellion in the neighborhood, they held, "make citizens more likely to rebel at home." In politics, as in revolutions, one thing almost always leads to another. We saw it with the 1776 American revolt against British rule; it was followed in 1789 by the French battle for independence. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 ignited a chain of events which altered the course of events in Eastern Europe. That is why the USIP (United States Institute for Peace) is alarmed that eight African countries in 2023 share not just common borders and insecurity but also anti-democratic behaviour. If you've been bitten by a snake before, every twerking, slithering creature would be treated as a snake. French president, Emmanuel Macron, looked deeply at what happened and declared that "this coup is completely illegitimate and profoundly dangerous for Nigeriens, for Niger and for the whole region." If an earthworm moves like a snake, kill it as you will kill a snake. Lovers of democracy in Africa should pay attention to these events. The Yoruba have many words of warning; one of them tells the careless to watch out for the dangers which pointed sticks pose to their eyes (igi ganganran má gún mi l'ójú, òkèèrè l'ati í lòó). You escape being blinded by being proactive.

A stich in time saves nine. The ousted Nigerien leader appeared never to have heard that saying before his sack. The coup leader, Tchiani, had reportedly developed a cold war with Bazoum, his Commander-in-Chief, repeatedly "shunning official ceremonies and activities" where the president was present. He was sending his deputy, Colonel Ibroh Amadou Bacharou, who is now solidly with him in this coup. What did the toppled president do? He was reportedly considering a sack of the General. He went to sleep with a python in his rafters. The sensible would tell him that very few have ever put a date to their enemy's death and lived to carry it out.

War chiefs can be very uncontrollable and subversive. A particular Balogun some 200 years ago controlled Ilorin and resisted his Emir as it pleased him. It took the direct intervention of the British to put him and the other Baloguns down for the emir to breathe. There were several of such men in Ibadan history. In Ilorin, it was worse. The war chiefs actively competed for power and influence with the emirs, even demanding their removal and death - exactly as Afonja did with Alaafin Aole. But Lugard at a point resolved to address the question of the powers of the Baloguns in Ilorin. Colonial records say that in September 1900, Lugard wrote to the Resident in Ilorin on the need to deal with "the most ill-disposed" of the Baloguns as a lesson to others: "I should be glad if you would accumulate a case against (Balogun) Alanamu (or whoever is the worst) without letting it be known that you are so doing"...then 'arrest and probably deport him" (See Danmole and Falola's 'The Documentation of Ilorin by Samuel Ojo Bada'. 1993: 9). What Lugard said he would do, he did to that Balogun. My people say when you kill iji in the presence of ìjì, ìjì will know its place and how much it weighs.

ECOWAS on Sunday slammed border closure on Niger because of the coup there. Let us look at the political map of that country. It is bordered in the north by non-ECOWAS members, Libya and Algeria. It is bordered by Benin and Nigeria in the south where local people along the borders share farms and streams with their kin on Niger's side. Niger also shares borders with Burkina Faso in the southeast, with Mali in the west, and with Chad in the east. Is ECOWAS aware that all these countries are, like Niger, under military rule? So, how effective will the closure be?

It is gratifying to see the whole world rejecting what happened in Niger. Niger's old master, France, has stopped all aids to the country; the European Union has halted all help; the United States has talked tough in support of democracy even as it threads the needle with utmost care. It has to; otherwise, the bad child will run out into the warm bosom of seductive Russia. The big lesson in the whole tragedy is that democracies will endure only when it serves the people and serves them well. Coup-endorsing videos of street jubilation and attacks on politicians, their property and symbols of democracy in Niger Republic are a distressing spectacle. Democracy may be painfully problematic in Africa, but it is still the strongest bulwark against the buffettings of arbitrariness and misrule.

Healing Streams

Grand Finale

80th birthday anniversary

Reverend Margaret Idahosa.

Impossible is nothing

As seen on a bus in the United Kingdom

It's clearly a footballing banter about "age falsification" and a likely Chelsea dig, in one image

The Okwi guy in the picture would be 31 this December officially

When Genghis Khan laid siege to Bukhara, he could not take it by storm, so he wrote to the inhabitants of the city: “He who is on our side is safe.” The inhabitants of Bukhara were divided into two groups. The first of them refused to obey Genghis Khan, while the second agreed. Genghis Khan wrote to those who agreed to submit to him: "If you help fight those of you who refused, we will entrust your city to you."

So they followed his order and war broke out between the two groups. In the end, the “supporters of Genghis Khan” won, but the big shock was that the conquerors took up arms and began to kill them. And then Genghis Khan uttered the words: “If they were true, they would not have betrayed their brothers for us, when we were strangers to them"

Moral: He who betrays once, betrays him twice.”

Arab historian Ibn al-Athir (1160-1234).