Diamond Bank workers protest

Diamond Bank workers protest

THREE MEN IN BLACK?

I was doing a research for a matter on-line when I stumbled on the quote of Honore de Balzac below. I have decided to share the quote with everyone not because I agree with everything in it, I most certainly do not, but because it is nothing if not interesting. Some of the things in the quote are true, even in my short years of legal practice, I have seen quite a lot which always remind of the cliché that truth is always stranger than fiction. I have seen hitherto close siblings become bitter enemies because of their parents' inheritance, I have seen marriages break which had no business coming together in the first instance, I have seen people do things which make me wonder whether their brains were on sabbatical at the time of doing the deeds...

I do not agree with the author of the quote that priests, doctors and lawyers do not think well of the world, perhaps I am only speaking for myself in this wise, but I really haven't seen too much to make me agree with this part of the quote. While I agree that most priests and lawyers in most countries wear black robes, the only kind of doctors that my research tells me wear black robes are the academic doctors and not medical doctors that I think he means in his quote. I nevertheless think the quote is interesting enough to be shared with you.






There are in modern society three men who can never think well of the world, the priest, the doctor and the man of law. And they wear black robes, perhaps because they are in mourning for every virtue and every illusion. The most hapless of these is the lawyer. He sees the same evil feelings repeated again and again. Nothing can correct them. Our offices are sewers which can never be cleansed. I have known wills burned. I have seen mothers robbing their children, wives kill their husbands. I could not tell you all I have seen for I have seen crimes against which justice is impotent. In short, all the horrors that romancers suppose they have invented are still below the truth.

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850)

RAMBLINGS OF A PERSON CONFUSED

...that which we call a Rose by any other name will smell as sweet

- Juliet in ROMEO AND JULIET, William Shakespeare




Since the Western world determines most of the things in the civilized world as we know it, allow me to lay the blame for my present confusion at their doorsteps. It started by them either being confused themselves, or deliberately trying to be mischievous by getting the rest of us confused. You probably are wondering by now what I’m going on about.

Well, it’s not just one thing, it’s a whole lot of things; from the disparity in the spellings of certain words and the way they are pronounced, to the differences in the pronunciation of certain similarly spelled words, from the way certain words appear on paper, chalk boards, computer, name it, and the way the words are rolled on the tongue, to the name given to certain animals, plants etc.

Let me start with two words that have already appeared in this piece, pronounce and pronunciation. You will think that since the word pronunciation is a derivative of the word pronounce, it will be spelled pronounciation. But oh no, the English people in their wisdom decided that the spelling must be pronunciation though every other word related to the word pronounce is similarly spelled. For instance, pronounceable, pronouncedly, pronounced, pronouncing, pronouncer, pronouncement. So, why on earth is pronunciation different from the rest? Why the sacrifice of the letter “u”?

Other sources of confusion are the words know, knowledge, psychology, pseudonym, writ, write, wrung, wry, the list goes on. And you of course guessed right! In none of these words are the first letters pronounced! So, again, I wonder, of what use are these first letters if we are supposed to ignore them in their pronunciations? Would the meaning of psychology have changed if it had been spelled as sychology from the beginning? Of course the same question applies to every other word on the list.

Still on spellings and pronunciations, you would think since the words choose, chance, choice, charade, chain, chaff, chair, chalk etc are all pronounced as if you are pronouncing words beginning with the letters sh, or ch in other words you pronounce the word chandelier as if it is spelled shandelier, charade as sharaid, you will of course naturally think words like chameleon, chamelot, chaos, character, chiropractor, all also commencing with the letters ch as the earlier-listed words will also be pronounced with ch or sh but oh no! These words are pronounced with the letter k! This is why the word character is pronounced karaktar, chamelot as kamelot, chaos as kaos and chirocpractor as kairoprakto! As a junior secondary school student 1, I made this very innocent but I dare say, understandable mistake in pronouncing chaos not with the letter k but with the letters ch! It was quite an embarrassing episode as I had made the mistake while reading a passage from one of the recommended texts out in front of the whole class! And talking of class, if it is going to be pronounced klass, why deprive K its rightful place? Why let C take the glory while K does all the work? What criteria were used in the decision of how a particular word was going to be spelled? And how many people actually know that the word choir is supposed to be pronounced with an invisible w as in kwir? Or that the word which is actually supposed to be pronounced with an invisible k commencing it? If you didn’t know, all I will say is, it serves them right that you decided to pronounce these words as spelled!

Did you know that the colour pink used to be called white? You didn’t? Well, that makes the two of us because neither did I! More to the point, I still do not know that it was ever called any other name different from Pink. But I am guessing it makes sense that it must have once upon a time been called white if the English people refer to their skin colour as white when we all can see it is actually pink. Of course, there is also confusion in the label they gave to the other different human race that populate the universe. While they refer to their own skin colour as white(?!), they call the Asians yellow and the dark-hued Africans black! Before I start on this, I have to confess that I can be quite dumb when it comes to telling colours. But even as dumb as I can be, I have managed over the years to be able to tell the most popular of the colours apart. Having been able to do this, I find it confusing, if not downright dishonest that Caucasians refer to themselves as the white race and thus the colour of their skin as white. I know the colour white, it is one of the perhaps not so many colours that I can tell in my sleep and even while unconscious. I have also seen these people and while I may not be so great with colours, I do know that the closest colour to that of the skin of the Caucasian is pink. Why then have these people chosen to call the colour of their skin white? Was pink once called white and they somehow neglected to effect the necessary correction when it was swapped with white or did they choose white because of all the positive attributes associated with that colour?
They call my skin and those of other dark-skinned Africans black. Well, I am a very dark skinned person. But as dark as I am, the most accurate colour that describes my skin is a chocolate that has a very generous portion of cocoa. And I know unless my skin is mixed with other colours, no matter how dark it gets, it will never turn black. So, if the colour of the skin of people like me is brown, why did they decide we should be called blacks? Again, could it somehow be because being dark skinned, they feel our skin (and perhaps behavior) will be closer to black and its not-so-positive attributes?

The Asians are called yellow. The only thing I’ll say is that anyone who has ever seen an Asian will know that the colour of their skin is certainly not yellow, not at least if we are going by the shade of the colour we were brought up to call yellow.

When I was in my first year at the junior Secondary School level, I read a book titled THE MADNESS OF DIDI in which the Author whose name I do not recall, argued through the novel’s protagonist that if Caucasians knowing their skin colour is pink and not white insist on calling it white, then he was also at liberty to call his own skin colour green and not the black they chose to label it. The poor man was sent to the psychiatric ward on the ground that he must be off his senses to call his skin colour green!

Again, not done with either they themselves being confused or trying to confuse the rest of us, they decided to name a species of dolphin Killer Whale! If the mammal is a dolphin, why name it Killer Whale? Talk about giving a dog a bad name in order to hang it! And, talking of which, has anybody seen a hung dog? I don’t know how that phrase came about, but I hardly think anyone who decides to kill a dog will adopt hanging as the method of choice. What happened to just shooting the dog or poisoning it?

The above by no means represent all the ways the people in the Western world have either exhibited their own confusions or deliberately attempted to confuse the rest of us. Either way, I am convinced that I am not the only one confused!

Hey, did I remember to thank you for suffering my ramblings till the very end? Thank you!

MOCALITY CLOSES SHOP!

I think I first heard about mocality.com on the radio either early in 2012 or sometime in 2011, I’m not really not sure exactly when. What I do recall is that the advert of mocality that I heard on radio then cast it as a directory of sort for local businesses in every person’s locality. For instance, if memory serves me well, the first advert I heard about Mocality.com was about a lady who needed to buy good Ofada rice for her boss and who was directed by a friend to the website for the nearest place at which she could buy the rice.

That was before they came up with mocality deals. Mocality deals aroused my interest and I signed up to receive their daily deals directly to my mail and I have as a result bought a few products and services and got to meet new people and service providers. This is how the deals (from my corner as a consumer) work, the mocality team get some product sellers and or service providers to offer their products and or services at a reduced price for a particular period of time, may be a week, and consumers like me who are interested in any of the products or services click either to buy the product/service online or go to the office of mocality in Ikeja G.R.A. to pay for it and then collect a coupon which they take to the office or shop to get the product or service already paid for.

I don’t know how profitable this venture was for the mocality crew, but I do believe very strongly that while they were still on, they provided a very valuable service mostly for the Small businesses and enterprises which ordinarily have very little or no at all budget for advertisements. For instance, a consumer who purchased a deal on mocality.com and goes to redeem the coupon at a particular business outlet can thereby establishment a relationship with that outlet that goes way beyond just merely redeeming the coupon of the product/service purchased. The consumer can see other products of interest which he/she would buy quite apart from the deal already purchased.

When I got the text and email messages which informed me of Mocality’s intention to shut down on the 28th February 2013 and which invited me to redeem the coupon of any deal I might have purchased from them on or before 25th February 2013, my first reaction was; there goes yet another casualty of Nigeria’s horrible business environment. I nevertheless put a call through to one of their staff members and asked why they were closing down. The only response she gave me though was that it was management’s decision. In search of further insight into why the company was shutting down, I went online and read their blog, therein I learnt that the company was shutting down not only their Nigeria operations, but the Kenyan as well.

Deal Dey is still in place though to continue to give small businesses the much needed exposure, but I can't help thinking what happens now to all those that earned their living at mocality.

HYPERTENSION, NOT DRUGS

The report of the autopsy done on Goldie came out yesterday and the result was that she died of hypertensive heart disease which in turn triggered intracerebellar haemorrhage. (Hypertension seems to have shifted from something associated with the old to a condition which does not discriminate based on age). This is of course contrary to the rumours being widely circulated even before Goldie’ s body got cold that she died from doping or drug use.

While the news of Goldie being married came as a huge surprise and left me wondering whether my perception of her was at all right, I am at least happy to see that my firm belief that she wasn’t the kind to be hooked on drugs is given some sort of validation. Of course this doesn’t mean that her dying of hypertension will make her death less sad, but it does mean that she died with her dignity virtually in place.

MARRIED GOLDIE!

I, and I’m sure thousands of other Nigerians who knew Goldie were sure at the revelation after her death that she was married and had been since 2005! The name Harvey, which most of us thought was her family name, it emerged, was in fact her marital name. Her husband, Andrew Harvey has since circulated pictures of their wedding probably to further convince all that there was indeed a wedding and a marriage.


The news of Goldie’s marriage was all the more surprising because of Prezzo, her former Big Brother Africa housemate’s proposal of marriage to her. These revelations, may of course have no bearing whatever on Goldie as a hardworking and homely(?) person but they do raise a lot of questions on whether anybody really knew the real Susan Oluwabimpe Harvey.
While her desire to probably keep her private life out of public scrutiny is of course, the total secrecy or at best confusion surrounding her marital status is probably the entertainment industry’s best kept secret. I had in fact earlier written that she would have, had she lived made a good wife to some lucky man, now Andrew Harvey who was she was married to for about eight years before her demise will be the best person to answer if she was.

SUSAN "GOLDIE" HARVEY: TRULY GONE TOO SOON

Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind and therefore never send for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee – John Donne





There is something about the news of the death of a young person that affects me deeply. And so it was with very great shock that I heard just this morning, I slept very early last night, the news of the passing on of Susan Harvey popularly known as Goldie this morning on 98.1 Smooth FM’s ‘Freshly pressed’ program.

This is by no means a tribute, I do not lay claim to knowing her beyond what I saw of her while she was in the Big Brother House. I am not a fan of her music, I am more a fan of soulful music and oldies. This is just my perception of her person and an expression of my shock at the suddenness of her death

Perhaps, if Goldie had not participated in the Big Brother Africa Stargame edition last year, the news of her death might not have affected me for more than the few minutes that news of the death of strangers usually affect most of us before we promptly move on with our lives while chanting that life must go on.

However, much as I do not approve of the fact that the Big Brother Africa reality show does not appear aimed at promoting any particular talent in its participants but rather has the effect of promoting idleness and vices such as drinking and smoking, I must nevertheless confess to taking more than just passing interest in the reality show. And so, I was one of those who watched 2012’s edition of the Big Brother Africa dubbed Stargame in which Goldie participated. Prior to Goldie going into the house, I only knew her as a musician who dressed “funny” (for want of a better and more appropriate word) and none of whose songs I knew. But Goldie’s participation in the Big Brother Stargame showed not just me, but I believe also, a lot of Nigerians the side of her which her music never did.

In the house, we saw a Goldie that was homely, always cooking, cleaning the house, doing the laundry of both herself and Prezzo, the Kenyan housemate she fell for in the house. I saw an intelligent Goldie who won most of the tasks in the house that had to do with the intellect (just like Malvina in the previous edition which Karen Igho and that unbelievably boring Zimbabwean guy won). I saw a Goldie who was particularly emotionally vulnerable. I also saw a Goldie who in spite of her apparent deep feelings for Prezzo and the latter’s obvious desire for a physical relationship refused to allow herself to be messed up. I saw a Goldie who didn’t drink alcohol or smoke and who I very much doubt would have allowed herself to be pulled into doing drugs. I also a Goldie who was very strong in spite of her apparent emotional vulnerability. I remember my dislike of Prezzo because of the way Prezzo treated her and I felt he was very much unworthy of her and remember praying that the husband she marries be someone who will truly love her and not someone who will take advantage of her. I have no doubt she would have been a great wife to some lucky guy she will now never marry and a great mother to children she now will never bear.

The news of her sudden death after complaints of headache was all the more shocking to me because having seen her on Big Brother Africa Stargame, it was as if I had gotten to know her as a person and not just the singer with the noticeably false eyelashes and outlandish dressing. May her soul rest in peace and may God console those she left behind while forestalling this kind of death of our youths who have the capacity to contribute so much to the growth of our country.