Naming In 21st Century; An Outright Cultural Brigandage

As young as five years old, I went to my mum and asked: “what is the meaning of Luqman?” That look that elevates cultural insouciance took her facial expression as she replied gleefully that the name Luqman was one respected so much in the holy Koran. She said it feeling happy that they gave me such name but she remained unencouragingly lackadaisical to the probable damage done to her immediate culture if that name survives my native ones. I was this curious at that considerably small stage.

Adewale, Ayomide, Abiola, Omobolanle and Ayanmun. These were the beautiful names that the name Luqman set out to render useless regardless of it being culturally impotent and devoid of any message unlike my Yorubian names highlighted above. I would ask myself in solitary since my mom was not an agent of conviction in the naming philosophy of my race that “do you think this foreign name will add value to you at the mentioning of it?”

Although, I never for once blamed my parents for naming me this, for I believe that they are parts of the products of a miseducated society that think that naming you Samuel will earn you an automatic visa to heaven or calling you Bello will grant you personal paradise tour with the prophet of Islam, Mohammed. They didn’t know that Naming is a very powerful device that a culture always uses to suppress others the moment the target culture embraces their homegrown product: Religion.

If I answer the name Luqman, and my neighbor Salisu, you reading this Saka, your uncle Joseph, his wife Mary, their three children Samson, Elijah and Micheal respectively, give it 200 years from now and the name Ifaleke, Temidire, Osuntooke or Ojebiyi will sound foreign, if not odd, in the auditory channel of the then generation. By this time, it would be logically concludeable that Yoruba culture and/or race would have been once-upon-a-time tale. Particularly now when Kings in Yoruba land are either dragging the role of Imam in mosques or declaring Jesus as their father without any feeling of guilt.  If that is not the beginning of our end, then what is it??!!!

But some of us who have seen these alien products in the bare, who have known the motive of forceful intruders marketing their gods, with hell and paradise advert, to us, we would not sit idly and allow their gullic erosion of deceit to wash away the hard labour of our ancestors. Be told that we are in the era of knowing. We keep progressing everyday in our bid to finding our roots that have suffered negligence because it was painted by our slave masters. How can a tree grow healthy when the root is rotten?

Yorubian people are environment-conscious sets of individuals. They are keen observers of the world around them. Before they give names to new members of the family, they would have observed the nature surrounding their birth. Any name they eventually resort to will always serve as security, helpmate, spiritual soulmate, and driver to the child(ren)’s destiny. So if your parents named you Ifagbemi, for instance, and you decided to exorcise the prefix — Ifa, only to substitute it with either Jesugbemi or Abdulgbemi, resulting to cultural conflict, then blame no one when your real life is dominated by conflictual marriage of events.

No single thank to Samuel Ajayi Crowder for his efforts in degenerating Yorubian culture is not only monumental but also one of a kind. For the sake of verifiable history, this man was sold out to slavery at the age of 12 and was taken abroad to serve his slave masters. For anyone to think a kid of 12 years old would be well versed enough in his culture to authoritatively ascertain some things upon his return from a year long journey, particularly on his traditions, is purely delusional.

How can this person weaned of respected custom return from years of slavery only to translate the Bible and say that Satan in Israel equals Eshu in Yoruba folklore? Nope, he must be high on something. Eshu in Yoruba mythology is a well respected god. He is a god of justice who oversees every issue of passing unbiased judgement whenever occasions call for it. Unlike the Satan you have in the Bible, Eshu never for once contends the superiority of Eledumare. He works with Him in respect to his delegated duties.

Before you join your slave masters to malign the person of Eshu Laalu, Ogiri Oko, and your culture, conduct more research about them and stop displaying your intellectual midgetary to the wide world. I have seen some people with the name Eshubunmi, Eshuseyi, Eshufunke and more. The question you should ask yourself is that; if Eshu has been an abysmally wicked god like they keep telling us, would any family in Yoruba race have given their children names as above? Time to think.

Look at the respected scholars in Africa like Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Obafemi Awolowo, Ken Sarowiwa, Wale Oyedeji, and more, they all drop their slave names or you think they don’t have them? They do, but they see what an ordinary mind cannot see easily. Does that not tell you something about naming culture? Think deeply brothers. It is now popular to hear names such as Jehovahyemisi, Jesulaabomi, Mohamadutomiwa, Abdugbamila and other trash even when they are utterly meaningless or we don’t know them.

A name should add value to individuals. Ask yourself, is your name adding value to your life?

Wale Oyedeji.

Is Being Black Bad? : The Implicature Of Egyptians’ Story Drowning In The Red Sea

Like Professor Molefi Ashanti of Ghana, I shall also begin my write up with a conclusion that “until the lion tells his side of the story, the tales of hunt will always glorify the hunter”. When I was younger, my grandmother would gather us, her grandkids, together to tell us the tale of tortoise. She would tell us how covetous, how dubious, and how ‘wise’ the animal was in all expeditions concerning him and other animals. To us, story telling was enough a convincing reason not equate our likeness for granny with our innocent grandfather, who took delight only in carrying us on his shoulders, gave us a hard knock on our foreheads to right our wrong and would entice us with bitter kola whenever he noticed our ambushed grudges nursed against him.

Poor man, he never knew that the generation of his grandkids gave credence to stories as told by his wife and contemporaries than having penchant for ethical standards he was trying to instill in us. To many of us, the stories listened to from our grandmother were just mere stories and nothing more. They were tales meant to reduce the burden of contemporary playfulness that people  of our age would indulge in at that stage of their lives. But to some of us who were discernible enough to decipher her motive behind the revelation of such stories, we knew she was just indirectly lecturing us not to be dubious, covetous or diabolical for it carries unbearable consequences than we could possibly anticipate as evident in tortoise endings.

This also applies to every story we ever heard of, they all carry along their messages meant to be decoded by the wise. Same goes the story of the Egyptians, symbolising Africans here, drowning in the Red Sea.

Egypt was said to house some Israelites which a certain Moses was going to liberate. In there, ie Egypt, the things they were well versed in doing were warfare, technology, education, infrastructure and what have you. Including but not limited to human resources like warriors of a kind, seasoned academics of unmatched standards, whose sudden disappearance in historical reference of today questions the originality of the white folks’ documentation of past event. Don’t forget that Socrates who lived about 400 BC came to study in this same Egypt, Africa. In short, Egypt was the then epitome of everything you call progress.

No doubt therefore that these Israelites would have learnt the ways of Egyptians, their secrets of technology, their method of warfare, their style of education and their ways of modernisation. It is just like the southeastern people of Nigeria dwelling in Lagos State. No one would negotiate the fact that the long period of cohabitation with the residents of the place would have got them accustomed to the traditions of the occupants of that geographical location.

Also, it is only an educated illiterate who would throw his weight against the glaring fact that intermarriage between the said Israelites and the Egyptians was an absolute coincidental necessity. So, separating one from the other was going to be more than herculean a task.

Pharaoh, who was the Obama of Africa then, was painted black, reported callous, said to be despotic and more. Every name denoting denigration never escaped the historical pen of Abrahamic religions faithfuls. They failed to tell us that Pharaoh was a loving King, that he was a protective leader, that he was a tactful warrior and that he was also an accommodating person who took in the troops of helpless Israelites’ immigrants like America is doing today, in order to shield them from the attacks of their immediate kinsmen. If this assertion is untrue, why would anyone sell Joseph into slavery in the first place?

I will not be disappointed if my African brothers come here to wail that “God has predicted it”, it will only help in concluding my belief that we still have puerile grown up folks who would believe Harry Potter is real “if God has written that in those books they call ‘holy'”.

Lo and behold, there came Moses, who was in no way different from Osama Bin Laden. Remember that the latter was also a liberator who wanted to rescue Saudi from the claws of American oppression. He was not different from Nelson Mandela of Africa, who didn’t back out until his voice of freedom was ringing loudly in the ears of the global community. What makes him different from Okonkwo who feels uncomfortable seeing his culture washed away in the erosion of alien intrusion? They are all fighters of a course. They painted Moses as the savior of the downtrodden, as a valiant soldier, as this, as that, who would “save” the Israelites from the “dictates” of Pharaoh. They didn’t tell us he was a magician capable of ‘separating’ an ocean of 438, 000 kilometer square long at the strike of his rod. Funny. Tell me what your reactions would be if anyone did this in 21st century and stop being a hypocrite.

Verily, Moses “took” his people away from Pharaoh through the Red Sea whereupon the Egyptians perished when chasing the rebels. Before I go to summarize the implicature of this story, ask yourself: would Pharaoh be as daft to enter into a sea that covers 355 kilometer at its widest, something he has never done before? Of what importance or value would the Israelites have been at the time to make Pharaoh, a King, decide to front a chase war against them, something he would have delegated his warriors to do? Was Pharaoh so blind to the plans of Moses devising to escape that day that such magnitude escape with the troops of nothing less than 1000 people would elude his notice? What was his minister of information doing? If Pharaoh was not privy to this info, who then alerted him that the Israelites were on the move? Such are the questions that should crowd our minds, not the trash can of blind faith.

In war, it is believed that people always go along with their best of everything namely astronauts, engineers, architects, warriors among others. Now the implicature of the story as depicted in the ‘holy books’ is that all the best people that Africa got prior to the escape of the Israelites had ‘perished’ with Pharaoh in the Red Sea while Moses ‘escaped’ to the ‘promised land’ with the best hands. And that, me and you reading this post are products of unproductive remnants in the land of Africa.

Today, the people that make the best of weapons in the world are the Israelites. Best in technology are the Israelites. Best in anything you can think of are the Israelites while Africans are at the other side of the story because their own ‘best’ have perished in the Red Sea. You still think the story is an ordinary tale? Nope, it is not. It is an effort to keep the black family backward the moment they believe it. No wonder that we don’t progress because the god that emanated from this same Israelites is the one my African brothers keep running to for rescue. Can the people who caused the problem be trusted with the solution?

You can keep believing the story of Merlin for all I care, but don’t you think it is best when we also start writing our own?

Wale Oyedeji.

Olubuse's Concession Of White Foster Father: A MONUMENTAL DENT ON THE BlaYck RACER Father: A Monumental Dent On The Black Race

Let us get it right first that the Yoruba people do not have any biological connection with either Sudan or Saudi Arabians as claimed by some sychophantic hagiographers. These bandits of history have little or no appreciable knowledge of a people whose most trustworthy myth of creation centers on the Eledumare-Orunmila folkloric explanation. A people’s language, religion, dressing, customs, dos and donts, marriage systems and more, are the systematically created ideologies and consciously woven fabrics by them which they unanimously agree to live by thus speaking through them to the larger global society, thereby calling it culture. Show me a race without a full grasp of their historical antecedent and I will reveal to you the magnitude of misdirected masses whose delinquent knowledge of self will render them forever slaves to their lifelong tyrants.

If it is true that the Yoruba people came from Arab or Sudan, it is merely a matter of logic that our forefathers would have had no reason to invent Yoruba language, they would not have had a dressing culture of wearing Agbada and Buba, Iro and Gele, which obviously negates the one you have in Saudi Arabia today, they wouldn’t have had a naming culture like Ifaleke, Osunbunmi, and the likes when Ibrahim, Mustapha and more are already present in the said culture of Saudi people. So cut the crap and save your Middle-Eastern creationist theory within the ambience of your exposure and let’s embrace the reality of our roots over unfounded falsities of western fallacy.

My dear African brothers and educated elites, our long stay in four walls of the school should be enough to open our eyes to the fact that each race of people has their different process of creation, hence the diverse myths explaining such phenomenon in the global community. Genetics has proven it, science has shown it, that the melaninated blood that runs through every Afrikaan’s vein differs empirically from the ones you find in the people we have in Bible or Quran. It is sad that many of us don’t know this and we are at worst contented with the limited edition of our knowledge about things affecting our existence. Propaganda as employed by the two Abrahamic religions used in blackmailing and painting our forefathers’ religion, as anything but heavenly, has submitted our sense of reasoning to the callous hands of our oppressors!

More saddening is even the idea that the person sitting on the historically exalted throne of Oduduwa dynasty is not a very good student of history and is ill-informed about his ancestral exploits. He thinks the white Jesus has any DNA relation with his progenitors. Nope, that’s delusional. Although here is not an avenue to ring to the public hearing our myth of creation but it amounts to undertaking some educative adventure to drive home the point of Yoruba’s origin by revealing the communicational implicature of His Royal Majesty, Oba Adewusi, conceding to the white Jesus as ‘his’ father in white man’s land.

Yoruba creationist belief is that the planet earth is full of water at the beginning of everything and that nothing could hold its ground on it, not least humans whom Eledumare intends to create on the mother earth. He, Eledumare, thus sends Orunmila alongside some other divinities like Obatala, Orisa Oko, among others on an embarkation to the earth in order to create humans and other creatures who will live on it. He gives them sand, pebbles, a hen, and other needed tools to make the earth habitable for the prospective inhabitants: humans.

Through the efforts of the hen, the sand is circulated to every area of the world and as a result of such miraculous expansion, the name Ile-Ife is given and we have the physical evidence for that till date. If you find this myth of creation an impossible feast but think it is convincing that a certain god created ‘man’ from clay or dust and ‘woman’ from bone, you are one of the educated illiterates whose presence here has brought severe scientific retrogression to the world other than progress. Today, science is proving that it is only Africa that has a solid foundation and root on the mother earth, and that other continents float precariously on water. If this does not support our myth of creation, then what does it do?

It is just a sign of intellectual resourcefulness to admit that the town Ile-Ife we have today symbolises a lot for the Yoruba race. It is our source of humanity, a point of reference, a home of spirituality, the cradle of our technology, and our epitome of unanimity. If an ordinary member of the society runs to the alien religions and starts condemning his homegrown deities, their condition can be explained away as a confused son whose inadequate knowledge of self renders him mentally impotent in his fatherland. If a politically motivated King in places other than Ile-Ife declares his loyalty to the white Jesus, he can of course be shielded under the canopy of severe ignorance.

But when such culturally ignominious comment which is, in a plain language, a historical genocide, is made by someone on the throne of Ooni, the symbol of Yoruba race, then, elders should stand up from their generational slumber to ditch out the dessert of history to the King on the throne in order to stop engaging in actions that will serve as scalp on us in the future to come. Where is our pride? Where is our valued tradition? Would politics and money keep eating away the fabrics of our respected norms? Whatever makes the Bible and its authors to say: “give unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar” means they acknowledge that Caesar exists. Will the janitor of our own Caesar now continue to run hungrily to her most severe enemies?

There is little or no honour reserved for Kings who do not sit on their throne. They are the umbilical cord that connects us with our ancestors. Igba keji l’Oba f’Eledumare.

Wale Oyedeji

21st CENTURY NIGERIAN LEADERS AND THEIR DISPLAY OF HISTORICAL IMBECILITY

You see, when a people’s history is documented by intruders, chances are that the victim’s most revered ideology and philosophy would be eroded away by constant misrepresentation from the intrusive elements. Their custom would become an object of global mockery and their traditions would remain a mindlessly tainted villain. Two hundred years of missionaries and their contending counterparts, Arabs, trading the “soul” of gullible Africans, particularly Nigerians, and many of our history is filtered away through the window of stealth oblivion.

Every society has their religion, which is a by-product of the interactions with their immediate environmental structure. Man always wants to explain things he finds undecipherable without dedicating much time to the study of such, hence he creates gods as a consoling figure believed to understand such knotty existence. No doubt however that this happens to every man in his different society. It is this man’s created religion that gives birth to other subclass of his cultural voice like naming culture, dressing culture, marriage, government among others.

Also, the intrinsic tendency of man to dominate others makes him see the necessity to sell his cultural exploits to others who are simply gullible or docile to purchase the merchandise. Alas, man cannot sell his naming culture alongside with others alone to people otherwise, it will become an unmarketable commodity and will be dead on arrival. Therefore he needs to sell his religion to people most especially with the use of physical force or psychological massacre. Physical force when he chooses to conquer his prospective preys by tagging them infidels who deserve to be lynched for his god to feel elated. Psychological massacre when he tells you of an imaginary Heaven which he would say is forbidden for you when you are a sinner, ie not worshipping his gods, and also Hell which he would say your forefathers are already rotting because they worshipped “idols”.

The man so much trusts your dumb mind because he calls your place of worship ‘shrine’ whereas he has only modernized his own shrine as alta or whatever as the case maybe. In that alta, he would say he communicates with god while your own shrine you are “dancing Alanta” abi? The lawd is really good. Honestly these two weapons have been very effective on my African brothers, the potency cannot be underestimated. No wonder you would see even learned ones in 21st century fighting for Jesus and campaigning for Mohammed. These two actors have been advertised like telecommunication networks in Africa since 19gbooro. It is very easy to spot the marketers of this unfounded commodities saying ‘my god’ is better than yours throwing up many allegorical references to solidify their intellectual mirage.

Even some are so fanatic of these merchandise that killing their African neighbors is just a mere exercise of showing their masters how loyal they could be. I have seen many who invited me to a powerful prayer session dedicated for the whites for enslaving Africans. In their own dictionary of life, they believe Blacks would not have survived without their forefathers being enslaved, brutalised, beaten, exposed to hard labour and subjected to libidinal torture. That’s how damaged our people’s brains are.

One would never imagine how long our journey is as a race until you hear that Aregbesola proposes that the future generations of Oduduwa descendants should veil their head with some sort of Arabic garb. You would never know how lost we are as a people until you notice that someone occupying such great a political office in a State that serves as the cradle of Yoruba race known throughout the wide world wilfully hands our cultural ram to the callous excommunication of the Arabs. Yes, many adherents of the faith are expected to throw their weight in support of such insidious move by a historically handicapped fellow.

But wait, it is hijab today abi, when this sits comfortably on our cultural physiognomy, twenty years from now and the speaking of Yoruba language by the sea of hijab users will be tagged ‘ungodly’ and their justification for this would be that “such language is not a heavenly one because Allah does not understand it”. My Yorubian brothers are blind to a fault. This blindness is not a physical one but blunt psychological enterprise. They are very blind because they could not see how ignoble, disrespectful and threatening this stupid move could be for the founding fathers of Yoruba race.

If a state like Ogun, Ondo, Ekiti or others takes this step, one could conveniently hide under the middle finger of modernisation to explain away such ridiculous move but for the State of Osun that houses Oduduwa and other historical artifacts, my brother, it is just a generational bomb detonated today but which explosion will be till the end of time.

Somewhere also in the eastern part of Nigeria, their governor would beat his chest in public that he erected a monumental Xmas tree worth of #600 million as a birthday present for a man who has died more than 2000 years ago even when poverty occupies the strategic center of the masses’ GRA. Also in this same east, the man Jesus crawls his way into the poem of a state’s anthem. I saw this and almost concurred that that freedom fighter, Nelson Mandela, has painfully died in vain, for how would one explain it that a revolutionary for black freedom whose death was recent does not feature in his people’s minds but there is a space reserved for a white man’s god who was busy looking at his men enslaving Africans desperately without mercy.

The earlier we got back to our roots, the best for the coming generations of Africans!!!

Wale Oyedeji.

EMBRACING A COMMON LANGUAGE: A NOTABLE EMANCIPATORY AGENDA FOR THE BLACKS

Before you come here to bombard my wall with reasons why this liberty-oriented movement is not attainable, let me chip in how the English language came to existence. The language did not originate from England: it originated in Germany from a people called “Angles” who were so called because they lived in a part of West German seaside that formed an angle. The inhabitants of this angular West German seaside decided to invade the island known as Britain where people spoke a cluster of language called Gaelic or Celt.

The West German invaders from the angular coastline who mixed with, and sometimes drove away, the autochthonous Celts decided to call their language “Aenglish” and to rename the island of Britain “Aengland” (later to England) in honour of “Angles”, their place of origin in West Germany. The elites (monarch) of the colony of Britain however didn’t speak English, they spoke French, specifically Norman French, that is, a dialect of French spoken by the people of Normandy in northwestern France who conquered England in 11th century. This is partly because they regarded it (English) as “vernacular” or the “vulgar tongue”. It was condemned as the language of the unwashed masses and thus not fit for literary documentation.

Language is to a people what freedom is to a slave. Africa’s continuous dealings with the language of slave masters will continue to restrict her advancements in every sphere to the dictate of the mindlessly callous brutes who subjected her progenitors to an untold torture. Language is a unifying factor that binds people of a common identity. It helps to sell a people’s culture to the lager world, it is a vehicle that drives out the inherent gift in every individual.

When people speak a common language that pledges fidelity to their own culture, technological advancements become an easy ride. This is because there exists an unexplainable connection between an utterance and its exclusive ability to manifest. Say, the spirit you conjure when using indigenous language to carry out an action cannot be commanded when employing a strange tongue.

In Africa, one cannot closes one’s eyes to the bare fact that our age long allegiance to foreign language, in spite of its undeniable advantages, has wreaked havoc to the generality of our existence. Unlike our traditional African languages, the tongue of our colonial masters are such that encourages class divisions which is a deciding factor in dividing their society along upper, middle and lower class structures. Our long commitment to its usage has also influenced contemporary Africans to become conscious of class struggle so well that we now scornfully look down on our fellow blacks who could not speak it fluently or at all. Forgetting that it is another man’s culture.

During the slavery period, our fathers were enforced to physically influence the building of their (whites) economic and infrastructural temples. Before the trade was abolished, they have implanted into the psychology of our people the chip of mental slavery through the continuous adoption of their language and this, we still battle till today. That’s the reason you see African leaders willingly running to the Western world today to help build their economy and thus alleviating the rigours of their citizens. This is done to the detriment of their people languishing in an indescribable agony back home. Go to Dubai, visit the USA and you will see the investments made by African leaders.

Swahili is the largest spoken language in Africa with over 107 million speakers across the continent. This could be adopted as a unifying language among the blacks without necessarily having to “kill” our different indigenous languages. There is no easy ride to achieving anything worth of recognition and accolades in this globe of ours therefore, if we concentrate too much on the travails to be encountered for this goal to materialise, then 100yrs is too much till our culture and history become totally forgotten and pushed to an undeserving oblivion and our children and children’s children will become people of no identity.

We must start somewhere.

Wale Oyedeji.

STOCKHOLM SYNDROME

If I came to your house uninvited and you accommodated me not considering the unbearable discomfort my intrusion would likely generate, courtesy demands that I maintained a good level of moral rectitude, the one especial of a gentleman. That is, whatever you call your dos and donts deserve my sincere respect regardless of it agreeing with my philosophy or not. But in the stead of me to display an artful of equanimity in your neighborhood, I simply took to raping your sister, elder or younger, bullying your father with an unprecedented coercion, forcing your mother to lick my cock as a sort of foreplay before devouring your aunties and a host of other unsavory sacrilegious lewdness.

All these I did because one of my distant uncles who share the same colour with me had long ago sanctioned the legitimacy of this moral subterfuge in a certain allegorical literature even before my conception. Since I NEEDED someone to do my work for me not because I was an amputee but because my comfort was more important than the freedom of people with ‘inferior’ colour, and fortunately for me, this distant uncle had included a portion in his literature in Leviticus 25 verse 24 that reads “Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of heathen that are round about you: of them shall ye BUY bondmen and bondmaids.” I kuku have the money in excess, all I needed to do was to show them this and BUY them in millions. Tekbir!!!

You see, my uncle was so nice a man, he knew there would be a time when my libido would crave for some sort of ritual, when this time arises, he even had included a portion for me to run to. Also in this same Leviticus but in different chapter. This time in chapter 19 verse 20 which reads “And whosoever lieth carnally with a woman, that is a BONDMAID, betrothed to an husband, and not all redeemed, nor freedom given her: she shall be scourged: they shall not be put to death, because she was not free.” My uncle just said they can even punish my African slaves here whom I have raped bitterly, simply because she is not FREE and heaven will not fall.

And whenever anyone of them thought of waging war against my moral ineptitude, my uncle said I should quickly run to Jeremiah 11:11 and show them what he had written which reads “Therefore, thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will bring EVIL upon them, which they shall not be able to escape: and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them. My Lord is good!!!

Simultaneously and coincidentally, another brother of varied gene but with compelling colour resemblance was in the next house preaching about the putative existence of a master who chose to appoint all his ministers from a single race. These said ministers were to eventually trumpet the magnanimity of their master across the planet of 510 million square kilometers with countless tribes and traditions of different people. The brother, a consummate dissimulator, had tried to euphemise how the last minister of his master had gone to war with any of his immediate neighbors who disproved and disagreed with the existence of his master.

He did well in his verbal prowess for convincing his prospective preys that there exists a wide difference between killing normal people and killing disbelievers for anybody would think that a disbeliever would never believe and as such, strangulating him is like doing him a handful of good. Lol. He told them that this same minister got many women in his museum of better-half most of whom were the proceeds of war. Funny though, these wives, according to narrative implicature, were fed by the economic produce of the first wife.

He would show them a book from which he quoted, not one or two, more than four, not to talk of three instances, where his master punished vehemently those people who disregarded his rulership. His argument for the tenability of this literature was that it was compiled by the last minister through his master’s telephatic inspiration because he could neither read nor write. The endgame was that, he was inviting the helpless audience to embrace his faith in order to enjoy some superfluous luxury kept in a certain stadium called Aljana in the land of yet-to-be-created planet.

This didn’t present them, the people, a large window of opportunity to make sound decision because of the already created notion that any rejection to this offer would mean killing and tagging them disbelievers eventually as justification, like those ones in the reported book. It is like holding akara in one hand and koboko in the other, for a child of eight years, deciding which to go for would be astonishingly difficult. And when you finally accepted it, the man would smile and say that he had brought you the crusade of peace. Peace indeed!!! E gbe Olohun tobiii!!!

But wait, this crusade of peace did not come without you paying your dues. You must bear names of his race’s origin because your name is not included in heavenly dictionary. You must pray to his master in the minister’s tongue because that is the only language he understands and yours is just a mere noise. You must touch not the beard on you because such was the last minister’s short code popular style and you must make sure your trousers are in constant disunity with your ankle because that is the heavenly dress code. And when you do all these, we welcome you to join in fighting the disbelievers in Syria and Iran because laying your life for this course will multiply your spiritual GP in the presence of the most high master. Can somebody shout hallelujah???

Stockholm syndrome is a psychological condition a captive develops after years of torture by their capturer where, after all hope is lost, they cope with their rape and captivity by actually falling in love with, protecting, justifying and even worshipping their capturer/rapist.

Thinking is still not as costly as a bag of tomatoes and it is not illegal yet to think. Think now when it is still free.

Wale Oyedeji