Bablo

"Most of these FC are children that grew up in poor homes... The biggest examples of people who grew up in poor home are people wey believe in 'japa'. Anybody wey japa grew up in a poor home." - Seun Kuti

Sometimes, it’s hard to believe these things happen

THE NAIVETE OF THE INTELLIGENTSIA/PRIVILEGENTSIA By DELE MOMODU PROFESSOR PAT ITOMI is one of the brightest Nigerians I love and respect. We still spoke two days ago when he called me. He gave a speech at my 40th birthday lecture some 25 years ago. I truly admired him as a young man who managed VOLKSWAGEN Nigeria in those good old days. I have followed his trajectory ever since. He is a man of immense passion whose theoretical knowledge of the rise of the Asian Tigers is quite fascinating, and tempting. But that's where my romance with him ends. I believe he has infected my very dear Brother PETER OBI with his romanticisation of the Asian countries and obvious developmental successes. My candid view is that every nation must have it's own organic strategies while it may study and borrow ideas, and ideals, from elsewhere. The Nigerian topography is an abnormal configuration. For example, GANI FAWEHINMI, UTOMI, OBI, FALANA, SHEHU SANI, SOWORE and others should be able to win elections and become our own BARACK OBAMA, but not here. Primordial sentiments rule the game. This is why the above statement credited to my Egbon, PAT, and his like minds, often break my heart. He seems not to have learnt from his own personal experience, and example, that "big grammar" don't win elections. DONALD TRUMP is back today because the Republicans needed him, warts and all, to neutralise KAMALA HARRIS. Pure and simple. It is not about zoning or who's more brilliant, or elegant. The key word is REALITY. APC had a far more FASCINATING, CEREBRAL, ELOQUENT and RESPECTABLE YEMI OSINBAJO when it chose BOLA AHMED TINUBU as its flagbearer in 2023. I'm, therefore, disappointed, and flabbergasted, at the total lack of political PRACTICALITY on the part (no pun intended) of PAT UTOMI, who's been a serial victim of Nigeria's electoral process. Anyone insisting that OBI cannot run behind ANYONE is definitely not a Democrat who wishes to rescue Nigeria from one man dictatorship. In 2019, one visionary gentleman, ALHAJI ATIKU ABUBAKAR, placed OBI on national platform, against the wishes of many Governors and PDP stakeholders. OBI should be encouraged to be a humble party man...

At the direction of the President of the United States and the Secretary of War, and in coordination with Nigerian authorities, U.S. Africa Command conducted strikes against ISIS terrorists in Nigeria on Dec. 25, 2025, in Sokoto State.

John Perkins On How The West Uses Loans To Destroy Sovereign Nations In this 2024 conversation with The Emerging Alkebulan, John Perkins, author of the 2004 bombshell book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, explains how Western “aid” has been weaponized against the Global South for decades. He outlines the simple formula used by the West’s “economic hitmen” to turn weak-willed Global South leaders into puppets: billions of dollars in one hand, threats in the other. Accept the “loan”, and your family and cronies are rewarded. Reject it, and your country is destroyed. Africa has experienced this formula many times, and lost many great leaders, like Patrice Lumumba and Thomas Sankara, who dared to put their people first. But after nearly 70 years of this vicious cycle, it seems that Africa is finally witnessing a rebirth of that revolutionary spirit that defined the Decade of African Independence. The Alliance of Sahel States is carving out a new path for the continent and its diaspora, and by all indications, the “economic hitmen” and “jackals” of Perkins’ world will not find it so easy to kill the revolution this time.

Please allow me to provide a slight different perspective. I don’t think the problem is ignorance, or lack of exposure. Let me begin with the ones on top. Most of the people wrecking Nigeria, and many of the idiot aides defending them online, have travelled widely. Some shuttle in and out of London, Dubai, Paris, Berlin with enviable regularity. They know exactly what functional airports look like. They have used steady electricity. They have enjoyed public transport that works. They have tasted what it means to live in a place where the state does its basic job. And yet they return home perfectly comfortable reproducing dysfunction. Now this is the same with those at the bottom. Even for them the issue is not that they don’t know what a good country looks like. There is social media, or they have relatives who probably live abroad. They know it is possible. It is that many people, even poor people, but especially those close to power, are deeply uninterested in true equality, uninterested in reducing our violent hierarchies, uninterested in living in a society where there is no one beneath them. It sounds harsh but I really do think that even on a cultural level, Nigerians do not desire equality. They just don't want to be at the bottom of the ladder. But you see that ladder, too many people want, even need it. In Hausa we say, duniya kwandon dankali - Manya kan kanana -- the world, a basket of potatoes, the big ones piled on top of the small ones. (You know like how those people who sell tomatoes or potatoes on highways hide the small of bad tomatoes or tomatoes at the bottom of the basket🤣). We love that basket arrangement. We just don't want to be the rotten tomato or small potato at the bottom. The middle class madam does not want to sit in the same train as her housemaid, even if she is happy to sit next to people she is richer than in public transport abroad. The junior political aide, who has narrowly escaped extreme poverty and begun to put on flesh since leaving his village to work for a politician, does not want shared amenities either. He wants to go back to the village and be bowed to. Be called oga. Have people kneel. How many Nigerians genuinely want their children in the same schools as their drivers’ children? How many want to use the same hospitals as their gatekeepers as the women braiding their hair in the market? How many want public goods so good that private alternatives become unnecessary? So airlifting everyone abroad, like the Devil took Jesus to a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, will not magically produce consensus for reform. Exposure alone does not create virtue. What many people actually want is the ability to escape, not the obligation to fix. They want to travel abroad occasionally, take photos in Cape Town or Joburg or Seychelles, and return home to lord those images over people who cannot leave. Mobility becomes a status weapon. Dysfunction becomes useful. I remember a moment in Kaduna that clarified this for me. NEPA took light. It was getting dark. A young girl shouted to their gateman: Maigadi, bambamta mu da saura!—“Gateman, distinguish us from the others.” She wanted the generator turned on. She was delighted at the idea of being the only house glowing on a pitch-dark street. That sentence contains a political philosophy. This is why Nigerian elites are comfortable building vulgar mansions surrounded by potholes, shanties, hunger, and decay. Wealth means nothing without visible poverty to frame it. Power requires contrast. Hierarchy needs spectators. If everyone had access to dignity—reliable electricity, clean water, functional transport—how would big men be worshipped? How would pastors promise what governments should provide? How would politicians and traditional leaders maintain relevance? How would people (even average Nigerians) find poor people's children to turn into slaves, aka housemaids? How else would someone have the temerity to beat his chest and ask: do you know who I am? So the problem is not that Nigerians don’t know better. Many know. They just don’t want a society where dignity is common. They want one where it is scarce—and personally controlled. That is a harder problem than ignorance. And it cannot be solved by excursions.

How many in total?