The things we drink

Popular singer, Amy Winehouse was found dead in her apartment some days ago; and with a history of substance abuse, it was not hard to speculate on the cause of her death. She joins the list of many others who got too friendly with substances they rather should have kept a distance from and ended up ruining their lives.

In Nigeria, substance abuse is not as rampant. They say we are a transit nation so we are not grouped amongst countries with a drug problem. But something else as bad, which currently enjoys a legal status, threatens us and is daily wasting away many lives in our society; alcoholic drinks.

By this I don’t mean the consumption of beer, wines and other such assorted drinks. These are age old culprits I admit, but somehow their cost moderates how much of them we consume, and by implication their effect on us. I write however about the cheap, deregulated drinks indiscriminately brewed and hawked all over the streets of our country.

They come in different colours, and the mere sight of them for the un-indoctrinated could be stomach churning. Their aroma is downright repulsive. The packaging is as interesting; their manufacturers have made it even cheaper by producing in sachets. With the sachets, they can package in various sizes to meet their customers’ ability to pay. So it’s now deregulated and drinkers can now pay as they go. The others come in funny looking plastic bottles, often with the tag ‘bitter’ attached to its name. Then there are the so called roots and ‘agbo’ herbs dispensed from plastic bottles that once held water; whose speculated powers are legendry, from the treatment of fever to the enhancement of libido.

If you think however that it is only the motor part touts, the Okada riders, truck pushers, and their likes that patronise these drinks then you have to think again. I see supposedly well to do men, fellows in suites and marching ties, sit around in corners away from public view and mix shots of these concussions and drink. Perhaps the most irritating aspect of it all lies in watching the drinkers swallow their liquor. The grimace on their face as they gargle and swallow hard leaves you in no doubt as to the awful taste of the drinks and you wonder why all the trouble.

Why dwell on this? The reason is simple. With the indiscriminate sale of these drinks and their rampant abuse, we are gradually degenerating into a crisis situation, one that leaves both the individual abusers and the entire society in danger. More so, the availability of these drinks to minors portends grave dangers not only for prolonged addiction but for crime and juvenile delinquencies.

See full article on Daily Times 

 

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Domestic violence; holding women culpable

Media reports were recently agog with the news of a young man (unemployed or self employed depending on your source) who was alleged to have killed his banker wife in what seems to be a now usual wife battering session gone awry.

It doesn’t matter what opinion you hold on the now popular incidence, especially as to what might have transpired on the day of the sad occurrence, one fact that was established is that there’s been a history of domestic violence as claims from both neighbours, colleagues of the deceased and even her family indicates that the husband was in the habit of mistaking his wife for a punching bag.

It will be easy for men to voice condemnation and make like it is some unheard of act but the reality remains that this is a very endemic occurrence in our society. Not a few men bash their wives regularly. Indeed it starts long before the dotted lines. Many boyfriends slap their supposed girl friends with ease and beat them up at the slightest provocation. And this habit is carried on by the young men into their marriages.

Perhaps the biggest irony of it all is that the victims of this violence, the girlfriends and wives, encourage and sustain it by enduring it silently and maintaining what I will refer to as a self destructive conspiracy of silence about it. What we thus have are constantly abused ladies who have made their ordeal a normalcy, perhaps one of the wifely duties they have to fulfill in marriage.

Make no mistakes about it, I hold firmly the opinion that any man who as much as raises a hand to his partner is certainly not man enough to be seen in the company of real men, and must be subjected to public ridicule before being handed over to the law enforcement agents to face the law. However, I wish to hold ladies culpable for the sustenance of cases of domestic violence.

Evidence shows that except in very few cases that are one offs, domestic violence in relationships has a history. He hit you the first time. You cried and he said he was sorry and you stayed. It repeats itself again and again. You leave and you return. Soon it becomes the norm and you develop the staying habit. Some girls even begin to blame themselves for being beaten. I have heard abused ladies make excuses for their deranged men, hawking such baseless talk of love or how he is really lovely when he is not angry or how they are Christians and cannot leave their husband’s house and such other related rubbish.

The point must be made strongly and ladies must get this clear, that no man has any right to turn you into a punching bag for whatever reason; and it is necessary to your long term happiness and health that you run away from men who exhibit such violent tendencies early enough no matter the lure. And when you are already married, I believe it is only the living that can be married and raise their children. If you end up in a body bag, those children will still be raised and that marriage you think you are doing God a favour by keeping will end all the same.

The scriptural and cultural injunctions that wives should be submissive to their husbands do not translate to wives being servants or even worse. This fact must be propagated and young girls made to appreciate it as they grown into womanhood. Parents should stop sending their daughters straight back to a home where they are being abused with the talk of a woman’s place being in her husband’s house. Responsible parents should seek out the issues and work to resolving it, at all times having their daughter’s safety uppermost in their thought.

Pastors and other man of God must also stop covering up cases of wife battery and encouraging obviously ill-fated unions to continue running just because divorce is perceived as unchristian. But above all, abused women must begin to speak out and stop enduring and dying in silence. You can only be abused repeatedly when you make yourself a willing object for abuse. We can solve many cases of domestic violence by the victims simply having the resolve that they have had enough.

Daily Times Tuesday 19th July 2011.

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Our governors and the new minimum wage

If you walk into a shopping mall, one of those choice places where the elite spend their money, with N18, 000 in the pocket, I am not quite sure how full your bag will be when you are done shopping. But for Nigerian workers, that is the minimum wage. Now, we all know how long it took us all to arrive at that agreed figure, the many strikes and hours of negotiation and what a sigh we all heaved when the law was out.

Now we hear drums of war again from labour as they threaten to return to the trenches on the very same issue. This is in reaction to the continuous claim by state governors that they cannot pay the minimum wage.

Independently and collectively, we’ve heard the governors lament the figure and restate how impossible it was for them to pay it. On one occasion, the governors, through their now extra powerful body, the Nigerian Governors Forum, asked that fuel subsidy should be removed in order to enable them meet the financial burden of the new pay structure.

It is not in doubt that the new structure comes with added responsibilities to the states, and that while some states are buoyant enough to easily meet this commitment, some others might not be. But it is defeatist for the states to take the approach of demanding a removal of fuel subsidy before they can pay. Not joining issues with the governors on how much they have in their coffers and what use they want to put of it, I maintain that all states can pay the new structure comfortably by simply saving cost.

Already, there is a lot of wastage in government. Democracy is being run at a huge cost with a large chunk of monthly allocations going into servicing and maintaining political office holders, their wives and their associates. The governors might wish to start by reducing the number of cars in their long siren blaring convoys and of those of their family members and cronies.

Read full article here on Daily Times.

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On Identifying Your Goals…

Recently, my boss and mentor Tomi Davies who blogs here shared a set of seven (7) goal-setting questions with me. Questions that i should ask myself and answer over and over again. Quoting his mail to me he said

“I strongly suggest that you take a pad of paper and write out your responses remembering TD’s maxim of “If it isn’t written it hasn’t been said!” or as in this case thought or desired….”

I share this with you as well confident that this will add some value to you.

Question Number One:

What are your five most important values in life?

This question is intended to help you clarify what is really important to you, and by extension, what is less important, or unimportant. Once you have identified the five most important values in life for you, organize them in order of priority, from number one, the most important, through number five. Not three or seven but five!

 

Question Number Two:

What are your three most important goals in life, right now?

This is called the “quick list” method. When you only have thirty seconds to write down your three most important goals, your subconscious mind sorts out your many goals quickly automatically prioritising them based on your previous thoughts and actions. Your top three will just pop into your conscious mind. Even with only thirty seconds, you will be as accurate as if you had thirty minutes.

 

Question Number Three:

What would you do and how would you spend your time, if you learned today that you only had six months left to live?

This is another value question to help you clarify what is really important to you. When your time is limited, even if only in your imagination, you become aware of who and what you really care about in life.

 

Question Number Four:

What would you do if you won ten million dollars cash, tax free, in a lottery tomorrow?

How would you change your life? What would you buy? What would you start doing, or stop doing? This is really a question to help you decide what you’d do if you had all the time and money you need, and if you had virtually no fear of failure at all.

 

Question Number Five:

What have you always wanted to do, but been afraid to try doing?

Answering this question honestly will help you see more clearly where your fears could be blocking you from doing what you really want to do.

 

Question Number Six:

What do you most enjoy doing? What gives you your greatest feeling of self-esteem and personal satisfaction?

This is another values question that will help indicate where you should explore to find your “heart’s desire.” You will always be most happy doing what you most love to do, and what you most love to do is invariably the activity that makes you feel the most alive and fulfilled. The most successful men and women in the world are invariably doing what they really enjoy, most of the time.

 

Question Number Seven:

What one great thing would you dare to dream of doing if you knew you could not fail?

Imagine that a genie appears and grants you just one wish. The genie guarantees that you will be absolutely, completely successful in any one thing that you attempt to do, big or small, short or long-term. If you were absolutely guaranteed success in just one thing, what would be that one exciting goal that you’d set for yourself?

 

Next Steps

Study the pad of paper that you used to answer these questions. This paper represents your future goals. Look at what you wrote every day and shape your life the way you see it on that paper. You’ll be amazed at how far you get towards them in very little time.

 

“Live long and prosper”

 

God bless you.

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Sentinel Nigeria No. 7

The Sentinel Nigeria Magazine is calling for submissions from Nigerian, and African, writers in the following genres:
-Prose
-Poetry
-Drama
-Reviews & Essays
-Translations {African languages and French to English}
-Video performance poetry {under three minutes}

All entries should be sent to submissions@sentinelnigeria.org together with a 100-word bio and a profile picture. A more detailed submission guideline can be found at the link:
http://www.sentinelnigeria.org/submission-guidelines.php
DEADLINE: 28th August 2011

Richard Ali
Editor-in-Chief
Sentinel Nigeria Magazine
www.sentinelnigeria.org

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