How I Ended My Romance with Cigarette

Cigarette smoking is a huge concern for many who have found themselves deeply engrossed in it and wish to pull out. They say that it has substances, such as nicotine and tar deliberately added to keep users hooked but, for me, I pulled out with ease –I never felt any riveting influence it is said to have.

While in secondary school, there were boys who were deeply into cigarette smoking. They were so involved they often absconded from class to stay in the hills, where they smoked without someone bordering them. Suddenly, it seemed there was something in it that I was missing.

I left that school for another, driven by a strong desire for academic excellence –I was more predisposed to books than anything else. There again, I met a guy who often had thick dirty lips, bloodshot eyes and left a strong tobacco stench in his trails. He would leave school to stay in the city, nightclubbing, girls hunting, puffing all the time and sleeping wherever night caught up with him. Though he was born and raised in the city, he never went home, giving his parents the impression he was in school.

My friend got a little serious, as final examinations neared –he wasn’t crazy after all. That was how we got closer with me taking up that habit.

After graduation, I was waiting for admission to a university and stayed with my elder brother in the city (though my parents were also in the city). It was during that period that my smoking habit flourished. Inwardly, I got the feeling that my brother knew about it, but pretended he didn’t know, especially since he never saw me with a stick of cigarette –I smoked only when I was out, sometimes with that friend and, sometimes, alone. I recall one day when I tried to smoke in a taxi. The driver stopped and requested that I get out. While I was getting out, I was conscious that I was drifting away from society’s acceptable standards.

Eventually, I found my admission and moved to the university. While attending the pre-degree bridging programme, there were girls from influential family backgrounds with whom we had struck a much-valued camaraderie. On the day we completed that phase of schooling, it called for feasting. While walking towards the gate, I bought a stick of cigarette and was smoking it when some of these girls were driving past. I tried to hide my cigar but they still noticed it. It was how my esteem in the eyes of those girls vanished –they concluded I wasn’t a good boy, after all.

I moved into the mainstream of the university programme. In my class, I found a guy with whom our lives rhymed –we both loved music and followed the trends. He was already into smoking. So, we blended with ease. But in addition to cigarette, he also was into weed. I tried to get him to usher me in, but he kept playing games until I gave up. Now, with hindsight, I understand he felt weed-smoking wasn’t for my type.

In our second year, we stopped smoking. It wasn’t planned. It just happened naturally. One day, we just realized we had not been smoking for some time. I learned something from this: smoking for us and for many others was a stage in the staircase of adolescence.

But it didn’t really end abruptly. There were times, I found myself in a party or an adventurous mood. I consummated such moods with a stick of cigar. While at the orientation camp of the National Youth Service, I had money that I couldn’t spend since we were fed three times a day. So, I sometimes spent the evenings at the mami market, drinking. In the end, there was always a stick of cigarette to go with it.

After national youth service, I returned from Benin, Edo State, where I had served. I eventually got a job as a mine manager. The job took me to a remote village, somewhere around the limit between Plateau and Taraba States. In that village, there wasn’t decent food, no clean water, no electricity, the people were antisocial, the housing was practically a tent, and there weren’t people in my social circle... The funk in the village was so deep I often felt I was in prison. When, eventually, I had time to travel to the city, it felt like party time and called for celebration. At such moments, cigarette often came handy. That was probably the last time I recall smoking cigarette. It was in 1997.  

How Asake is Crippling the Nigerian Music Industry

Asake. Image Credt: https://radrafrica.com

You may have noticed that the Nigerian music industry has been slowing down for some time –we are having enough of the old artists, yet there are no new arrivals from behind the horizon. Somehow, the industry has been all about Asake in the last year. It isn’t that no one has been active at all, just that the attention has drifted to Asake such that the other artists have been forgotten. Davido, in an attempt to save his career, chose to collaborate with Asake. His reason for wanting the collaboration was because “Asake has scattered every place,” to use his exact words. Davido said he was waiting for Olamide’s consent –Asake won’t collaborate with you without Olamide’s approval.

Asake wasn’t the cynosure until the release of his single, Lonely at the Top. That single launched him to the top, making him the most sought-after Nigerian artist globally. But then he released his Lungu Boy album. Before its release, Asake talked about how the album would be in Yoruba and that he is more comfortable singing in Yoruba. I cowered when I heard him say this –I believe his success, following the release of Lonely at the Top, had to do with the language switch –he chose to perform that song in English against his tradition of singing in Yoruba.

When Lungu Boy finally got released, there was a rush for it and it trended, especially on YouTube and TikTok, albeit for an unusually short period. When an album is a hit, it continues to trend for months, but Lungu Boy trended for a couple of weeks only. Thus, all the plays were for the sake of reviews, people playing to rate it. Now, the abrupt silence is their opinion about the album –it is as if no new album has been released.

Most of what I have heard from Lungu Boy is Amapianowish. Plus, he added other elements that made the music so complex, leaving other artists wondering how he did it. He moved so swiftly that other artists couldn’t keep up. Following his success with Lonely at the Top, he became the avant-garde. With this, every music executive became fearful of putting money on any artist to avoid a financial loss.  

With the exception, of Ayra Star, who played around with Comma, Asake chose to single-handedly carry the Nigerian music industry on his shoulders in the last year. Now that he has tripped, the whole industry comes to a standstill.

When an African-American man was asked why the Nigerians are the most successful artists from Africa, he echoed my opinion: the Nigerians sing in English. The question is: what is responsible for the failure of the new album, Lungu Boy? For me, just the word “lungu” turned me off. I don’t know if it is a Yoruba word or a word from another tongue or Asake’s jargon. In Hausa though, the word, “lungu” means an alley or a hidden corner, a place where bad things happen without people noticing. You can, for instance, trap a woman and rape her successfully in a lungu. Furthermore, the whole album turned out to be in Yoruba, as Asake had promised. It is vital to note that while Asake sang in Yoruba, he failed to find that universal appeal until the release of Lonely at the Top, which is in English.

The decision to sing in Yoruba messed up Lungu Boy. People argue that music is a universal language. Yes, but not absolutely. English in our contemporary world is considered a superior language –everyone, including narcissists, wants to speak it. If the music is in a tongue that others consider inferior, it explains why its reception has been frosty. The success of any artist globally comes only if he is supported by the Western world, the storeroom of the English language. It isn’t by design but what Asake has done is to get the Nigerian music industry befuddled. 

A Plateau Author Who Lives in Obscurity

Changchit Wuyep, Plateau Author

Changchit Wuyep is an author with three published books to her credit. Her books include Offspring in Peril and Jiji volumes I and II. She said, she has finished Jiji volume III and is working on publishing it. The Jiji is a book set in Tarok folklore. The Tarok people are in Lantang North and South Local Government Areas of Plateau State.  

Because of funding challenges, Mama couldn’t finish formal education, dropping out midway in her secondary school. Thanks to eternal examination, she studied on her own and wrote the external General Certificate of Education (GCE) exams. With a brilliant result, she proceeded to nursing school and later worked as a midwife until her retirement.

Given her training as a midwife, one can’t help but ask how she became a writer. She says the secondary she partly attended ensured they understood the importance of reading, not just academic materials but anything else. That was how she built a strong romance with books. As a midwife, she often had ample time while off-duty and read works of Shakespeare with their typical Elizabethan English. She says her writing is inborn and explains why she was able to start writing by just critically looking at the works of other established authors. 

She feels she has an overcrowded mind and often wants to have a channel of release and relief. After reading so much, she wanted to be heard, too. Writing presented that channel to communicate the issues in her mind, issues triggered by people, places and events. One day, she sat down and simply started writing Jiji, her debut novel. But there was hesitancy at times. So the book may not have seen the light of day if not for her daughter who often returned from boarding school and went through the manuscript, discovering that the book has a strong potential as a result and insisting the book must see the light of day.

Offspring in Peril, which has a moral theme, was inspired by a place underneath a cashew tree, which was littered with waste suggesting the place was a rendezvous of drug users. Given her supplementary passion for bible class hosting, she felt deeply hurt in her mind. Thus, there was the need to reach a larger population of youths. Offspring in Peril was born.

Despite her talent, Mama Changchit lives in obscurity. She has come to believe that writing a book isn’t the difficult part of the job, but publicity is. She had liaised with the Association of Nigerian Authors and made attempts to be published by an international publishing firm. She also tried to be heard through television interviews. All efforts, however, failed short of giving her adequate publicity.

Mama Changchit, who holds an advanced diploma in Public Administration, is now aged yet her writing inferno continues to burn –she has completed Jiji volume III and is working on publishing it. 

 

Fanstory Wasn’t the Reason Why I Got Published

An author. Resource: ttsmaker.com

I had been practising journalism for about a decade but discovered the beauty of literature after the shortlist for the 2013 Caine Prize for African Writing came out. I was inspired and started writing short stories and fiction.

However, I couldn’t get published. Each time I tried, I was turned down. Somehow, I discovered Fanstory. It is a rendezvous of authors with a hunger for visibility. At Fanstory, authors share their writings and receive reviews that help them discover loopholes.

When I got published, eventually, it wasn't because of Fanstory. Nevertheless, everyone has a peculiar experience at Fanstory –some people may have become published because of it.

If anything, I suffered racism over there. Each time I think about Fanstory, this is what comes to my mind. The site has a plan that allows members to create contests. One day, I created a contest titled, The House with the Red Roof. I was shocked that most members who wrote had streaks of racism in their stories. I am a black African and, on my profile page, nothing was hidden –there was my picture and nationality.

The most upsetting of the racist entries received the highest votes and won.  This is part of the winning story (not in the exact words of Michael Cahill, the author):

The ship docked. It was quite silent except for faint sounds that came now and then and suggested there were extremely exhausted people, exhausted from hunger, thirst, and immobility in the many months of the voyage. When eventually they disembarked, they appeared withdrawn, cuddled to their dirt as if it were some kind of blanket.

The human cargoes were asked if any of them had a skill. One woman raised her hand, saying she could play the piano. The man wondered if indeed she could be of any use other than for sexual satisfaction. She was given the chance but appeared bamboozled. She was warned sternly that if she continued to waste time, she would regret the dire repercussions of doing so...

The creator of a contest must pay to have his contest displayed so members can see it. The money, together with a fee every contestant must pay, is used to reward the winner of the contest after Fanstory has taken out its charges. In the end, I realized I had rewarded someone for racially abusing me. At least that was how I felt –racially abused. Devastated, I removed my profile photo, also hiding my nationality.  When the renewal of my subscription to Fanstory was due, I declined and opted to leave, considering my devastation. Fanstory kept sending me messages saying, "We miss you at Fanstory,” but my mind was made up.

"Some authors never become authors" goes the saying. It is what every aspiring author dreads. I continued trying to get published. Eventually, the Cecile Writers helped me get published, by telling me precisely my shortcomings.  I had sent a particular story several times; each time addressing what I guessed was the reason it wasn’t published. One day the editor of the publication, based in the Netherlands, found me on LinkedIn.  I told him how humiliated I felt, each time the story was turned down. I also made it known to him that punctuation issues were the bane of my writing, to which he replied with an empathic, "No." He was generous enough to tell me what my challenges were: my stories were mostly plot-driven and archaic, as a result. Modern stories are character-driven, helping readers to emotionally connect with the stories.  He also talked about the technique of showing, rather than telling. So, I knew that I had to learn what these techniques were.

Over a couple of months, I learned them and, together with elements of plot, that I also discovered, I realized that getting published simply requires meeting the right teacher. Today, I am a proud author of six published stories, under the name, Yiro Abari High.

In a short story, there are elements which include:

1.         Characters, which are the people mentioned in the story

2.         A setting, which is the time and the location of the story.

3.         There is a point of view. This is the voice with which the author tells his story – it could be in the first, second or third persons.  In the first person, the author writes as if he is the character in the story and is writing about a story in which he was involved. So, he uses the pronoun,” I.” In the second person point of view, the author is telling another person what happened to that very person. So, in place of the pronoun “he,” he uses “you.” It is awkward and is the reason why many authors don’t like writing in the second person –you can’t be telling someone what happened to him, since he knows it more than you do, except if he had suffered dementia. In the third person, the author tells a story that happened to another person. So, he uses the pronoun, “he.” Here are examples: first person –“I” went to heaven. The second person –“you” went to heaven. Third person –“he” went to heaven.

4.         The fourth element of a short story is the plot. The plot is the events that happened in the story.  The series of events arranged in the order in which they occurred is referred to as a plotline.

5.         The fifth element of a short story is the theme, something I often refer to as the colouration of the story.  It is the aspect of life to which the author intends to draw the attention of the reader. If the author intends to draw the attention of the reader to the eminence of global warming, for instance, the theme is environmental.  Other themes could be romance, war and crime, biographical, historical, etc.

6.         The last element of a short story is the style. The style is responsible for the mood the reader feels while reading the story. It comes from the choice of words the author loves to use, his experience and, sometimes, what the author has been reading just before writing his story.

 If you must get published, you must also understand the elements of plot. The plot has five elements, which include: exposition, conflict, climax, conflict resolution and the conclusion.

The exposition is the beginning of the story, which gives the reader the back story from where the story continues. Conflict is the challenge the main character, also known as the protagonist, faces and which must be solved. An example of a conflict could be a situation where a character is chased by wild carnivorous animals. The climax is where the conflict gets worse. For instance, the character comes across a gorge that is too wide to jump across as the animals get closer while he must find a way of overcoming both adversities within the few minutes he has. The conflict resolution is how he overcomes both situations to emerge victorious. The conclusion is merely the closing events of the story.

Now that you understand the elements of a short story, read several short stories to see how the elements play out and where flexibility is possible. 

President Tinubu Could Simply Be Taking His Revenge

President Tinubu. Source:Daily Mail 

It is surprising how Nigerians easily forget fthe past. Nigerians have all forgotten how President Tinubu was taunted, jeered and goaded while he campaigned to become the President. It was so severe he came out to say he doesn’t log into social media anymore.  Nigerians told him that he:

1.     Said, “balablu bulaba.”

2.     Was sick.

3.     Said, “God bless PD-APC.”

4.     Often staggered back and forth during campaigns.

5. He slept in the house of a northern emir, where he had gone to seek political support.

There are so many things that were said to frustrate his ambition of becoming the President. But it has been said that Mr President is not one who forgets easily. Thus he is simply taking his revenge.

There was another disparaging post I saw on Facebook. It was obviously from a Yoruba man. I was shocked that, contrary to our tradition of supporting one who comes from our tribe, a Yoruba man posted to say that, on a trip from Abuja to Minna via Mr President’s private jet, Tinubu had to visit the comfort room of the plane eighteen times in the less than thirty minutes journey from Abuja to Minna.

It takes a miracle for someone who has been subjected to these kinds of humiliations not to take his revenge when he gets the chance. However, Mr President should know that not everyone said things to humiliate him. The day he launched his campaign, there were so many people in his team, people who had been with him in good and bad times. They will also be affected.

If it is true that he is actually taking his revenge, he should remember he has got relations in the village who are experiencing this excruciating economic trauma and that what is happening will change the country in such a way that we may never recover.

If it gets too far, the powers supporting him can withdraw that support –there is the National Assembly and the cabal, whose mention sounds like a conspiracy theory at any time. They are human beings and have feelings. They could feel that enough is enough.  

It feels strange that the wealthiest nation in Africa has transformed into a nation where many now beg for food. 

How Nigerian Music Collects the Cash

 

Image Credit: furtherafrica.com

Before Nigerian music arose where the world could see it, I was an avid critic of its lyrical component. Some people loved to sing purely in local tongues. Others preferred to mix English and local tongues. I was an avid critic of the second category, saying that you should either sing in English or the native tongue –it makes no sense mixing the two. At the back of my mind, there was also the intellectual angle. I was, however, defeated when the music found global popularity.

The absence of intellectual content in our speeches or writing is a tradition that should be blamed on Britain for the colonial education they gave.  So many times, it has been said that Britain gave just enough to support its colonial ambition. I had come to believe this while teaching kids with Ginn Books imported from Britain, while teaching at St. Maria Gorettis School in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Britain deliberately designed a colonial curriculum so that a pupil's creativity is stifled. 

Against the odds, Nigerian music rose to global fame and is competing well. So, how did the music rise to such standing, despite the lyrical weakness? The strength of music doesn't only rest on the lyrics but also on melody, pulse, structure and modesty that enables many to relate to it. The modesty, plus the let-us-play-together dance style, is very fundamental to the success of the industry.

The modesty in the lyrics turned out to be a silver lining behind the clouds.  When something is highly intellectual, only the intellectuals can relate to it. Sadly, this demography of the world's population is a handful. By this, highly intellectual genres like Reggae, Soul and Hip Hop failed to pull a huge population of the world's population into their fan base. Now, Afrobeats by its weak intellectual content is engaging everybody.

Even the success of the Nigerian movie industry boils down to the emphasis on a simple storyline that everyone can understand. Now, the industry is ranked among the three most watched globally, collecting the cash.

Thus, it is about tradition, not weakness. This is because, when Nigerians travel to foreign lands and find strange traditions, they can adapt and succeed. I want to believe that Nigerians are just waiting for this conversation to register in their minds. When this happens, a Nigerian songwriter will have it in his mind that his song should have a conscious hue. When this happens, things will change –it has always been one thing at a time.

It is, however, important to understand that not all Nigerian music lacks intellectual content. If you do a survey, you will see that this is true.

Yiro Abari is the author of How to Become a Music Maestro.

 

If I Rule Nassarawa State

Areal Photo of Akwanga from Google Photos

Nassarawa State is one of Nigeria’s thirty-six states. It is located in the North-Central region, touching Kaduna and Plateau to the North and Abuja and Benue to the South.

From an indistinct past, the town has carved out the reputation of a stopover for people travelling in all directions.  Additionally, there is College of Education Akwanga that has pulled people from far and near. The town, thus, becomes an enduring imprint in their hearts.

Sadly, Akwanga is a paradox of sorts –iconic, yet forgotten. Given its popularity in the country, Akwanga shouldn’t be in the cold. This, sadly, is what you see when you pass through the town. Why has the town been left in the cold? When governors come, why aren’t they able to see that Akwanga, by its special place and the fact that humans live in it, should have been transformed for the good of Nassarawa State and the joy of the people who pass through it? So, what have past leaders of Nassarawa State been doing that is bigger than the subject of building Akwanga? We could say that they are either selfish or don’t have the eyes to see the necessity of its renewal.

When one talks about Akwanga, the picture that comes to mind is of that small roundabout, the business area. It is a small space that sadly accommodates the scale of activities of a big town. It is, thus, distended and bulging with cracks manifesting. Hence, the impression that one gets is that of a human jungle. From this, it is rational to say that, from way back, there have been expectations of expansion and the addition of physical brilliance. But the decades scrolled by with nothing changing. The Akwanga situation mirrors the character of Nigerian country towns, and we are speaking for all of them.

The outcome is a country jungle of sorts. In that tight space, there are women selling fura da nono, dudes roasting suya, fuelling stations, auto-mechanic workshops that spill greases everywhere, motor parks, trodden litters from used plastic bags, scores of school-age girls dashing back and forth with bowls of kunu to cope with orders, and hoodlums on eroded road shoulders, scheming to pull out the guts of your pockets. Ninety per cent of these humans walk with the air of ignorance, a situation that stabs the heart of a deeply conscious human.

In Nigeria, when we get educated, we don’t seem to know its purpose. Since independence, we have run Nigeria without a purpose –we don’t seem to have something we intend to achieve. The decades will roll past, trillions will be squandered and yet the towns, people and everything else remain as crude as they had been for the past one hundred years.  

I wish I was the Governor and ruler of Nassarawa State, the A. A. Sule. If I were, I would have embarked on a careful demolition to create space that allows the town to take in air. Then I will design a plan that ensures that the banks, auto mechanic workshops, motor parks, fuelling stations, comfort rooms, hotels, restaurants, and everything else are exclusively built and spaced, creating a town of sparkle that is the pride Akwangans, Nassarawas and the people that pass through.

When one passes through Keffi and Lafiya, he sees a sparkle. Why is Akwanga different?  

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