Khadijat

We are the first generation of Uncles and Aunties not fighting for land cos we no get anything

Nkechi left Owerri for London at 23. She had a nursing qualification, 1 suitcase, and 1 address she had never seen before. The 1st winter nearly broke her. The days were too short. The nights were too long. She cried into phone cards that cost too much and cracked in the middle of her mother's sentences. She worked night shifts at a care home. The old people called her "the Nigerian girl." They forgot her name every morning and learned it again every evening. 1 Tuesday, her train was delayed. The platform was freezing. She stood there shivering, wishing she had bought the thicker coat. A man tapped her shoulder. Nigerian. Tall. Wearing a fleece jacket that had seen better days. "You look like you need this," he said. He handed her a cup of tea. Still hot. The cheap kind from the vending machine. "I am fine," Nkechi said. "You are lying," he said. "But you are also shivering. So drink the tea. Then lie to me some more." She laughed. She had not laughed in weeks. His name was Obinna. From Enugu. An engineer who drove a minicab because his certificates meant nothing here. He did not ask for her number. He did not try to impress her. He simply sat beside her on the cold bench and told her about the worst day he had in London. The day his landlord locked him out. The day he ate bread and water for 2 weeks. The day he almost went back. "Something kept me here," he said. "What?" "I did not know then. Now I think it was this bench. This train delay. This cup of tea." The train arrived. He stood up. "Your tea cup," he said. "Give it to me. I will throw it away." She handed it over. Their fingers touched. Neither pulled back. They married 2 years later. No big wedding. No money for 1. Just a small ceremony at the registry office and a party in their 1 bedroom flat. She cooked jollof rice. He made pepper soup. Their guests were 5 other Nigerians they had met at church, the bus stop, and the hospital. Someone brought a Bluetooth speaker. Someone played old Sunny Ade. The flat was too small for dancing but they danced anyway. Hip to hip. Laughing into each other's shoulders. "We made it," Obinna whispered into her hair. "We are making it," Nkechi whispered back. That was 15 years ago. They have 3 children now. A house with a garden. A freezer full of egusi and ogbono. Their daughter plays the violin. Their son wants to be a pilot. Every weekend, Obinna still brings Nkechi a cup of tea. The cheap kind. The same brand. He says it reminds him of the day she let him sit beside her. She says it reminds her that home is not a place. Home is a person who hands you something warm when you are freezing and does not ask for anything back.

My preferred presidential candidate is Atiku, and I don’t owe anyone an apology for that.

@Ucijomanta @Sir_osas Exactly

Yes i am back to tell you all that The Coalition candidate is my choice in 2027, I will support and campaign for who gets the Ticket. The goal is to vote out APC. Meanwhile, Atiku My Choice.

@streetcated @Onomz_D1 We have something like this in Abuja.

@Onomz_D1 They should do this in Nigeria

My own “tony-stark” dun pay me ₦213K. This is one of the perks of living in Europe 🇪🇺. 😂😂😂😂😂😂

@beingeunice Abeg no make laugh and fall .

Please be the judge. You said we should go somewhere and chill out. You asked me to name anywhere I like to go. Okay. I said, “Take me anywhere you like.” You said, “Anywhere is nowhere. Pick somewhere else.” Oya, take me somewhere else if anywhere means nowhere. Now you said you’re not interested again, that I am not smart enough. How am I not smart enough? When you said we should go somewhere, did you forget that somewhere is not anywhere in the first place?

@Queenie_Bim @ree_rehanat The okoyas no dey play with anyone.

Wait, that Okoya’s wedding was just introduction, not even the real wedding. Jesus!😳 Owo buruku!

Segun was seven years old. His father had left three weeks earlier. Nobody said divorce. They said he's traveled. But his cupboard was empty and his slippers were gone from the door. That evening, the generator refused to start. His mother pulled the cord until her arm must have hurt. Nothing. Then the kerosene lamp ran dry. They sat in darkness, Segun and his two younger siblings, listening to the neighbour's television play Tales by Moonlight through the wall. "Let me go buy kerosene," Segun said, already reaching for the tin cup they used. His mother shook her head. Her wrapper was tied tight around her chest the way she wore it when she hadn't bathed. "Stay inside." "But we can't see." She didn't answer. Segun heard her rummaging in the dark. Then the scratch of a match. The small flame caught a candle stub she'd saved from Christmas, the one shaped like Father Christmas, now just a melted lump. By that light, Segun saw her face. Tears running down both cheeks. Not sobbing. Just falling, like rain from a roof that had finally given up holding anything back. She saw him watching and turned away fast. "Blow the candle when you finish your homework." "Mama, there's no kerosene for homework" "Just blow it." Segun didn't understand then what she was carrying. School fees due. Landlord banging on the gate. No food for tomorrow. And three children who thought their father was coming back with presents from "travel." She sat on the floor with her back to him, shoulders shaking quietly. Segun didn't know what to do. So he did the only thing he knew. He sat behind her. And pressed his small back against hers. In their compound, the older women said that was how you warmed someone who had no fire to warm themselves. Back to back. So your heat became theirs. She didn't move. But after a minute, her shoulders stopped shaking. They sat like that until the candle burned down to nothing. That woman never told anyone what she went through. She showed up at parent-teacher meetings with her head high. She served her children garri with groundnut and called it "special breakfast." She mended their school uniforms by lamplight and never once said I can't do this. But Segun remembers her back against his in the dark. He remembers how small she felt.

@slimvnsn The New Masquerade,Checkmate on sunday Cockcrow at Dawn, Sesame Street,Samanja, binta and friends trying to remember the name of that series which Alex osifo and Benita acted in.

God !!! How my ancestors carry me come this country that everyone is mad.

My brother called me from Kano at 11pm to say he had been rejected from every job he applied to for 8 months. Not crying. Just talking in the flat voice of someone who has finished feeling something and arrived at the other side completely empty. He said he didn't know what he was doing wrong. I said nothing for a moment because the honest answer was complicated and the comfortable answer would have been useless. Then I asked him to send me everything. CV, cover letters, every application, every rejection email he had saved. He sent 47 documents. I stayed up until 3am reading all of them. The problem was not his qualifications. The problem was that he had written his CV like a man apologizing for existing. Every sentence hedged. Every achievement buried under language so careful it had become invisible. He had a first class degree, 2 certifications, and 3 years of solid experience, all of it packaged with the confidence of someone who expected to be told no before anyone finished reading. I called him at 7am. I said your CV reads like a plea. It should read like a verdict. He was quiet. I said you are not asking for a chance. You are presenting them with a solution. Write it like that. We rewrote everything together over 4 days. Every lunch break I had, every evening, voice notes back and forth, him resistant at first because the new version felt too bold, me insisting because bold was simply accurate. He sent the new CV to 6 places. 3 called him back within 10 days. He got the offer on a morning and called me before he called anyone else. I heard it in his voice before he said a single word. That specific frequency of a person who has been walking through a long dark corridor and just found the door. He said they want me to start in 2 weeks. I said I know. He laughed, the kind that carries months of quiet suffering finally finding an exit, and I sat in my office in Lagos holding the phone and feeling something I didn't have a precise word for. Not pride exactly. Something older than that. The particular satisfaction of watching someone remember who they were before rejection taught them to make themselves small. He is 3 months into that job now. Thriving in the specific way of someone who simply needed the door to open once. He rewrote his own story. I just helped him find the right language for what was already true.

Sokoto result!

@slimvnsn Thank God he is in a better place.

Gave him that privacy of falling apart without an audience. Some pain is too old and too deep for witnesses. He was different the next morning. Not better exactly. Just lighter, the way a person gets after something that needed releasing finally leaves the body. He sat at my kitchen table and ate the ogi I placed in front of him, slowly, both hands wrapped around the bowl like warmth was something he had forgotten he was allowed. He said the last time anyone cooked for him was 2020. I didn't respond. Just refilled the bowl. He stayed 3 weeks. Woke before 6 every morning, old habit from his business years, moving quietly through my flat doing small useful things before anyone asked. Fixed the leaking tap. Repainted the gate. Reorganized the store room one afternoon with a focus that meant he needed his hands occupied more than I needed the storage sorted. Never mentioned any of it. Just did them. That was who he had always been, before 2019 walked into his life and spent 3 years convincing him he was nobody. A former client called him 2 months after he left my flat. Small printing job. Temporary. Nothing resembling what he once had. He took it anyway, showed up on the first day 30 minutes early, and didn't leave until the work was perfect. They kept him. By the end of that year he had been promoted twice, moved into his own place in Palmgroove, and was quietly rebuilding the kind of life that 3 years under a bridge had almost permanently erased. He called me on evening, 14 months after I found him at Ojuelegba. I picked up and heard the laugh before he said a single word. The real one. The laugh that used to fill every room it entered, the one I had not heard since my childhood, the one I had quietly stopped expecting to hear again. He said he had just signed a lease on a shop. Agege Motor Road. Same road as the original business. I couldn't speak for a moment. He said he ironed his agbada last night for the first time in 4 years. I put my hand over my mouth. He said are you there. I said I'm here. He said thank you for sitting on that ground. Not for the flat. Not for the food or the clean sheets or the new toothbrush. For sitting on the ground beside him when he had nothing, when he smelled like everything that had gone wrong, when he told me don't and I stayed anyway. That was what he needed to say. That was what I needed to hear. Some people come back from places that should have finished them, dust themselves off with a quiet dignity that breaks your heart in the best possible way, and remind you that the human spirit, when someone simply refuses to abandon it, is an extraordinary thing to witness. He is doing well now. Better than well. He is back.

Please dont, we have a bigger problem which is to kick Apc out by 2027 so forget all this insult.thank u

@jrnaib2 I have said this several times

Atiku Abubakar is the only viable pathway to Peter Obi’s presidency. The more you sabotage Atiku’s chances, the further you push Peter Obi away from Aso Rock Villa. Facts are stubborn.

Dear sir @PeterObi, As at 12.28pm today, I noticed you are yet to post anything about the event of yesterday in Ibadan where the opposition figures came together and agreed they will be fielding a single candidate against the tyrant Tinubu in 2027. Interestingly, some of your core loyalists were involved in the organization of this epoch making event. I also noticed you didn’t really feature in most of the pictures but I saw you at location where you alighted from your tinted vehicle to greet the crowd of young people hailing you. That was great because that’s what a great leader should do. You have built bridges. You have built network from the south, east and the north. You have been a philanthropist. You have been an helper of many destinies just like your elder brother @atiku. Nothing else left to build except a nation to compliment your efforts of love for decades. You can only build individuals but with nation building, you would have built an army of people. Well done sir. I have quietly and closely observed your move since you came into the coalition and I can boldly say your followers have consistently followed your body language to behave in a manner that is not acceptable to people whose businesses, livelihood and hopes have been destroyed by the consequences of split votes of 2023. Instead of consolidating as opposition, we went separate ways on popularity contest and not for the presidency. Atiku Abubakar has always been your respected elder brother. A man you have so much respect for. You can not deny the fact that he has more administrative experience than you. He has been there. He understands the economic, political and security demography of the country more than you. Considering the bastardization of the entire political system of Nigeria, wanton destruction of our institutions, do you not think giving Atiku all you support to become President while you work closely with him is the best option available for now? Millions of your supporters have insulted your elder brother AA severally of which I know you did not send them but your body language and not consistently condemning some of their conducts online has further fueled your tacit approval of their behavior online. Even though you once referred to them as criminal elements but I think it is not enough. You have done well aligning with Atiku as a northerner with cult like follower-ship like Buhari. Play your game well and get what you want. I don’t think anyone from the south east has been able to penetrate the north the way you have done. Not even Mr Ben Obi. A region that can bring Obasanjo out of prison and make him president can make you anything you wish as long as you play your game right and earn their trust 100%. Philanthropic works you are doing in the north won’t make your earn their trust because you are doing it for power. MKO Abiola did it for almost 2 decades before he showed interest to become President. You started this after you showed interest to become President. Not a bad move at all but not enough to earn northern trust. In your own wisdom, kindly ensure you don’t fall for APC trap again by creating a 3 horse race. If you do not win and Tinubu comes back, no one will ever trust you again. Ejecting Tinubu from Aso Rock now is a priority and this move is bigger than any individual ambition. I wish you a very successful contest in the ADC primaries but in case Atiku wins, do all you call to support him to succeed and if you emerge , we will certainly support you but I want to appeal and advice that you lead the team to agree on making @atiku the consensus candidate of the opposition and you will be glad you did sir. Thank you sir

@slimvnsn Waiting patiently for the next part...

I heard he was sleeping under Ojuelegba bridge on a Thursday and i didn't believe it. This was a man who used to iron his agbada at midnight. Who kept his shoes in individual cloth bags. Who smelled like Brut cologne and quiet authority every single day of my childhood. I drove there Friday morning anyway. He was there. Sitting against the concrete pillar with a plastic bag beside him, watching traffic with the expression of someone who had made peace with being seen by nobody. I parked and sat in my car for some time. He was my mother's brother. The one who paid my secondary school fees when things were bad. Who showed up at my university matriculation in his good agbada and shook my hand like I had done something he was personally proud of. Who had a 3 bedroom flat in Surulere, a printing business on Agege Motor Road, and a laugh that filled every room it entered with joy. Then his business partner emptied their account in 2019 and disappeared to Canada. I heard the story in pieces. The lawsuit that went nowhere. The flat he lost. The wife who stayed 8 months then stopped staying. The children who were with her somewhere in Abuja. I heard it all and sent money twice and told myself that was enough. It wasn't enough. I got out of the car. He saw me when I was 10 steps away and something moved across his face that I had no framework for. Not shame exactly. Something older than shame. The look of a man who had hoped nobody who remembered him would find him here. I sat beside him on the ground. He said don't. I stayed. He didn't speak for a long time. Traffic above us, danfos negotiating the junction, the city doing what Lagos does, moving without stopping for anything or anyone. Then he said I used to iron my clothes every night. I said I remember. He said I don't know how it went so fast. I said I know. I took him home that evening. Fed him. Put him in the spare room with clean sheets and a new toothbrush still in its packaging because that was the only thing I could think to do that felt like it meant something. He cried once, quietly, when he thought I was in the kitchen. I stayed in the kitchen longer than I needed to. Gave him that..

@slimvnsn Typed like 4 times to repost and deleted..leaving is the best solution to easy some pains.

So she found her husband's second phone and didn't say anything for 4 days. She cooked. She laughed at his jokes. She slept beside him with the stillness of someone who had made a private decision and was waiting for the right moment to deliver it. One friday she packed 1 bag. Not everything. Just the things that were hers. He came home to a note on the kitchen counter. No anger. No list of grievances. Just the facts, clean and final. He called her 11 times. The picked up on the 12th because she had promised herself she would give him a number that felt complete. He said she was overreacting. She said I know what I saw. He said they could fix it. She kept quie, looking out the window of her sister's flat at the street below, people moving through their ordinary evening completely unaware that her life had just changed its shape. She said some things don't get fixed. They just get carried. She hung up. He never understood that the most devastating thing she did wasn't leaving. It was how long she stayed after she already knew.

D best biscuit then