Xenophobic Attacks in South African: A Sad Lesson in Irony.

Right now, many Africans are victims of xenophobic attacks at the hands of their black South African hosts. The reasons adduced to these heinous crimes against humanity by the black South Africans are ignorant at best. One claim is that they are being deprived of good jobs by the African immigrants. If that doesn’t sound silly, another excuse is that many of the men among the African immigrants are getting married to South African women. And for these reasons, whatever they are worth, African immigrants are being hunted down like animals in Durban, Johannesburg and other cities in South Africa by the indigenous black people.

Like many Africans across the world, my heart aches at this very unfortunate irony playing out before our very eyes. Were these not the same black South Africans for which many of us Africans sacrificed financially, morally and physically? Back then in high school, every now and then, we would contribute money from our meager pocket money for onward transmission to the African National Congress (ANC) in the fight and struggles against the then apartheid regime.

Poor global community. People, the world over, may seem nonchalant at this strange form of genocide. But I guess, just like the rest of us Africans, they too must have been finding it as a most embarrassing incident. As it is now, only the African Union leaders can best handle this sad issue. In the meantime though, it’s high time someone reminded those ignorant black South Africans that without the rest of us Africans, they would still be wallowing in a modern-day form of abject slavery by now. And back then, didn’t they have a permanent sad expression plastered on their pathetic faces? Now, they are flexing some lazy muscles at the people that should have been honored as saviors. Nelson Mandela must be rolling uncomfortably in his grave.

Why I Hate Math.

My daughter has just written a beautiful piece on her blog. It was about the negative experience she had with the subject of Math. She aptly reminded me of my own high school days and the horrible experience I had with the subject.

Really, the subject was not (and is still not) hard. The problem however was that the individuals charged with the responsibility of laying the Math foundation in our lives back then were some, tired, boring old men. I remember one particular Math teacher (Mr. I-think-get-it). This alias was coined from his fast-speaking and intermittent use of the question: “I think you get it?”

As he approached our class one day, I grabbed my books and walked out. He turned around quickly to call me aside. And gently, he asked why I always chose to leave whenever he was coming. I explained my dislike for Math. He then stared hard at me and said, “Young man, I have to give you some bad news...there is no way you can ever do without Mathematics in your life…”

The old man has since been vindicated several times over. All my life…I have not been able to avoid Math. The more I advance in life, the more the subject keeps getting in my face mischievously.

A Poetic Justice in Mississippi.

“The sadness of this day also has an element of irony to it: Each defendant was escorted into court by agents of an African-American United States Marshal, having been prosecuted by a team of lawyers which includes an African-American AUSA from an office headed by an African-American U.S. attorney — all under the direction of an African-American attorney general, for sentencing before a judge who is African-American, whose final act will be to turn over the care and custody of these individuals to the BOP [Federal Bureau of Prisons] — an agency headed by an African-American.”

– Being excerpt from a speech read by U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, (one of just two African-Americans to have ever served as federal judges in Mississippi) while he pronounced sentences on three young white men for the death of a 48-year-old black man named James Craig Anderson in a parking lot in Jackson, Miss., one night in 2011. They were part of a group that beat Anderson and then killed him by running over his body with a truck, yelling "white power" as they drove off.

A Brutal Irony of Life.

A brutal irony of life that I have come to realize is that it’s not everyone that comes with me on this life’s journey that will go with me to the end. Along the road, some individuals will drop off either by choice or due to some circumstances beyond our collective control. When this happens, I believe no offence is meant. It’s just that each affected person has played their destined roles in my life and we both need to move on, in different directions. Once in a while though, I think about certain individuals who made some ground-breaking impacts on my life socially, morally or professionally. Then, I wonder where they are now likely to be on the surface of the earth. After a few seconds of reminiscence however, I let their memories fade away as gently as they have appeared. Such is the irony of life.

When Only Common Sense is Needed.

A reporter interviewed Albert Einstein. At the end of the interview, the reporter asked if he could have Einstein's phone number so he could call if he had further questions.

“Certainly” replied Einstein. He picked up the phone directory and looked up his phone number, then wrote it on a slip of paper and handed it to the reporter.

Dumbfounded, the reporter said, "You are considered to be the smartest man in the world and you can't remember your own phone number?”

Einstein replied, “Why should I memorize something when I know where to find it?”



 

Humanity Goes Beyond Skin Color.

There is a small shopping center in New Castle, Delaware which harbored only a pet clinic and an African Foods Supermarket.  Yesterday, I had just pulled into the parking lot when my car suddenly screeched to an abrupt halt. The front left tire had dislocated.

While waiting for my insurance company to send a tow truck, vehicles of clients (mostly Caucasians) of the pet clinic and customers (all Africans, especially Nigerians) of the African foods store were pulling into the parking lot. But while each of the white people stepped out of their vehicles to approach me to show compassion, my fellow Africans were frowning their faces at me. Before long, their ugly attitudes turned into rude verbal outbursts such as “Hey…this car is disturbing the free flow of traffic…” to loud orders such as “You’ve got to get this car out of here now…”

Some of these outbursts were even delivered in my Yoruba language while all my explanations fell on deaf ears. Incidentally, my car was only parked awkwardly but it was not blocking the road. The drama soon assumed a new dimension when some of the white people in the pet clinic stepped out to confront them.

“You guys are so rude!” one white man yelled. “Is it this guy’s fault that his car became disabled?”

“Disabled…disabled as how?” some Africans, most likely Nigerians asked in ignorance.

“Okay…” a white woman screamed at them. “Can’t you ‘frigging’ see the twisted tire of the car?’

Another white woman added. “Maybe they are all vision-impaired?”

I could only shake my head in embarrassment. Finally, and much to my relief, the tow truck arrived. And while my folks stared sheepishly, a couple of white people came around, offering to assist the tow truck driver in loading my car.

I have always refused to see humanity in colors but objectivity. Yesterday, I was greatly vindicated.

A Tale of Two “Sweet Sixteen”.

Recently, Lil Wayne’s daughter, Reginae Carter, was reported to have celebrated her 16th birthday anniversary with pomp and pageantry. To her celebrity parents, becoming a “sweet sixteen” was a big feat. And for this huge "achievement", she was rewarded with a BMW SUV by her father while the mother gave her a Ferrari GTO.

Initially, when the news broke, I felt some sense of shame. Why so? My daughter, Ebunoluwa, also attained the age of sixteen this year. For my daughter though, becoming a “sweet sixteen” was not the only feat achieved. Earlier, at a tender age of fifteen, she got admitted into college. That was the age Lil Wayne's daughter completed middle school. Unlike the rapper's daughter, my daughter actually turned sixteen while in college and she has since been maintaining the status of a straight “A” student which culminated into her acceptance into an Honor’s society. In a sharp contrast to Lil Wayne’s daughter therefore, my daughter deserved a plane, possibly one of those luxurious executive Lear jets. But what did I give her? Some clothes and a dinner at Red Lobsters, a sea food restaurant!

In the final analysis however, my shame turned into pride when, in a subsequent discussion with my daughter, I was made to understand a salient point. She did not envy Lil Wayne’s daughter. If anything at all, she would rather sympathize with the “poor” girl. Why so? The teenager's case is like that of a Biblical phrase about the impossibility of anyone “worshiping God with Mammon at the same time”. Luxurious, exotic cars with loads of cash can never go together with a teenager’s pursuit of education, sense of values or moral standards. Sooner or later, all those material things will pass away. But nothing can ever take away an education and neither can anything surpass a high sense of values.

And I concurred.

 

Just When You Think You're Better-looking.

Al Sharpton: The Gold Fish has no Hiding Place.

When the news broke the other day that one of the highly visible and vocal civil rights activists in the black community, Rev. Al Sharpton owed some money in unpaid taxes, I was not really surprised. Guys like that, in spite of the pious image they portray to the public, usually have some stinking skeletons in their cupboards.

I was however surprised to learn that the amount he owed was in the sum of $4.5 million! According to an investigation conducted by the New York Times, Sharpton “regularly sidestepped” taxes, rent and other bills. His non-profit organization National Action Network alone owes over $1 million in overdue payroll taxes. Now, how could taxes be deducted from the employees of his organization without the same taxes being remitted to the Internal Revenue Service?

For Al Sharpton, it is a double moral tragedy.

In his desire to fight for justice and the civil rights of other people, Al Sharpton does not necessarily have to be a holy angel or a saint. But he is not only a sundry civil rights activist but also someone who strongly lays a claim to religious leadership, a factor on which rests the bulk of his reputation. For this factor therefore, he definitely needs to be morally above board.

And in silly attempt at self-defense, Sharpton appeared on the CNN yesterday saying that the reported $4.5 million was the original figure he was ordered to pay back in 2008, but that he has been making regular payments since then and the amount is now less. Pleaseeeee! Can someone please tell this guy that whether 2008 or 2014, he has no moral right to owe taxes, period!

Sharpton cannot, on the one hand, strive to be seen as a respected “man of God” that is playing “savior” all over the place while, on the other hand, he is grossly shirking in his civic responsibility to pay taxes in his individual capacity and as a business man who owns some for-profit companies such as Raw Talent and Revals Communications.

If a famous, money-making public figure such as Al Sharpton refused to pay taxes why should poor, ordinary folks like me pay?

The Dilemma of a Perfect Gentleman.

I have always believed in the wise words of sages.

I particularly treasure the admonition that a woman of virtue can consider herself, a precious jewel, that must not be given out to the swine of a man, lest he tramples his foot on her. Another word of wisdom is to never bother teaching a pig how to sing. The effort will be a waste of your time and the pig will end up getting angry.

What however happens where a "precious jewel" is handed to an appreciative gentleman who not only loves, adores and cherishes her but also gets over-protective, lest her great values be tarnished? I guess the sages of old would have expected only sheer gratitude from such a woman; except that in today’s world, there is tendency for the woman to react negatively rather than gratefully. And trying , under that circumstance, to explain the situation to an ungrateful woman can only get the man frustrated while the woman gets hassled.

And I Thought I've Got Problems!

Life is full of ironies. Just when one thinks he has problems, fate comes forward to beam a floodlight on the problems of someone else. All of a sudden, it dawns on one that his so-called problems pale in significance and magnitude to the other person’s. That’s when it urgently becomes necessary to relax, meditate and give thanks to the Lord, God almighty.

Glory Belongs Only to God.

 “Ojo wo leda yio simi ogun?

Igba wo leda yio simi ote?

Ote nile.

Ote lode.

Ote re,

nibi gbogbo…”

 (When will people stop waging wars?

When will people stop treachery?

Treachery at home.

Treachery outside.

There is treachery everywhere…)

• The movie theme of Opa Aje, a middle-1980s depiction of the 19^th Century internecine wars among the Yoruba people in the western part of Nigeria.

This was the most tragic period in the lives of the Yoruba people. It was a very sad moment when brothers were at each other’s throats and sisters were stabbing each other in the backs. Nothing was spared in the various war fronts, from the use of dangerous charms to other metaphysical powers. The brutal wars also led to the procurement of the most sophisticated military weapons of that era in the African continent. The Yoruba used all these lethal weapons against each other.

 And the consequences were legions, top among which were:

1. The internecine wars weakened the Yoruba in their opposition to the British military invasions. In fact, the military defeat (at Imagbon) of Ijebu forces by the British colonial Army was the platform used in the eventual annexation of the rest of Yorubaland. If the Yoruba were united, the British would have thought twice before going into that war.


2. The Uthman Dan Fodio’s Jihad campaign made serious incursion into Yoruba land at Ilorin through the treachery of Aare Afonja, the then Field Marshall of the Oyo Empire. If not for the great, valiant Ibadan warriors that defeated them, the whole of Southern Nigeria would have come under the Fulani hegemony.


3. The European slave traders also took advantage of the situation to forcibly cart away millions of Yoruba individuals to Cuba, Trinidad & Tobago, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Venezuela and other parts of the World.

The sad irony though was that the crazy wars were fought merely to prove a point over who deserved the glory for the greatness and sustenance of the Yoruba race! This problem is not restricted to a race of people. Too many of us as individuals within marriages, families, churches, mosques, corporate establishments, neighborhoods and communities do also engage in glory-seeking battles.

And as it happened in Yoruba land, every quest for glory always leave bitterness, divisions and pains in its wake. Why so? Because glory belongs only to God!

 

 

No Good Deed Goes "Unrewarded".

It was one February morning during the harsh winter of 2003. As a supervisor, I was showing a new staff around the job place when we stepped briefly into the front of the building.

“Oh my God!” the woman suddenly exclaimed while pointing at a car on the street. “My car is all covered up in snow…”

Expressing my sympathy, I promised to get a permit for her to pull the car into the staff parking lot. But first of all, the frozen snow had to be taken off the windscreen. Getting too concerned with the woman’s plight, I told her not to worry. Dashing back into the building, I went into a nearby kitchen, got a bucket-full of hot water and walked toward the car.



I emptied the hot water on the windscreen and saw the snow melt. But as the woman began to thank me, we both heard a strange, crackling sound. Alas, the windscreen had cracked sharply from the impact of the hot water.

The same woman now glared at me in obvious anger, “Excuse me sir…you’ve broken my windscreen…”

“Oh my God…” I muttered in shock. “I am so sorry…”

“Yeah…” the woman continued to glare at me. “I…I guess you’ll have to get me another windscreen.”

I was dumbfounded.

 

 

 

 

The Damned Human Race by Ebun Olawole.

In Mark Twain’s literary work, “The Damned Human Race” (1905), he conducted an experiment that compared man to other animals. He concluded that man should be called the lower animals while the so-called lower animals should be regarded as the higher animals. He found Darwin’s theory wrong.

In terms of brutality, lower animals are better than man. He gave humorous examples of how brutal man can be. He continued that man has a flaw. And with the flaw, he is unable to reason because he descended from lower animals.



I agree with Twain (p. 8), that man is greedy, compared to the so-called inferior animals. In line with Twain’s opinion, it is man that will keep accumulating excessive things, especially riches, far beyond his actual needs because he is never satisfied. Man always wants more. For example, a well-fed, satisfied lion won’t kill another animal merely for the fun of it.

With man’s brain and intelligence, he is supposed to be able to differentiate between good and evil. However, it is not so in reality. As Twain noted (p.10) man is the only animal that agonizes over insults and waits patiently for a sign of weakness, then retaliates. A dog has no brain that is so sensitive as to realize that it has been offended and has to retaliate.



Twain recognized the many bad traits of the human race. Man is the only religious animal, yet the same man fights each other because of religion. There is a good example where, in the name of religion, a Moslem sect in Nigeria is currently holding about 150 abducted high school students hostage.

I also agree with Twain that man is the only animal that engages in war. Examples are the Ukraine-Russia crisis, Israel-Gaza war and many more. While the human race is known to possess the best brain, man will often act before he thinks.

 

 

 

How We Destroy Sacred Institutions in America.

In the global community, we are known as a nation that destroys every sacred institution. Nothing is sacred anymore. Here are samples:

Back in those days, even in the most rotten society, priests are revered and held in very high esteem. But in the United States, it’s no longer the case. A parent that trust his/her child to a priest, and especially, a Catholic priest, is courting trouble for the child.



I remember my growing up days when sports coaches played important roles in the lives of us kids. Apart from parents, we could easily trust our lives to coaches. Now, the “game” has changed. Sports coaches in high schools and colleges, these days, have to be carefully monitored by parents or guardians to ensure that their kids are not sexually abused.

As for marriage, no institution has been so battered, trashed and ridiculed in any part of the world as that of marriage in the United States. Now approaching 60 % divorce rate, the marriage institution in God’s own country can, at best, be described as a farce.



And what about fatherhood and motherhood? Instead of a man and a woman raising children together, we now have over half of the children in the United States out of wedlock. In some neighborhoods across the country, over 7 in 10 children don't have any form of relationships with their fathers. And among the few kids who do know the sowers of the seeds that produced them, all they have are “Disney fathers” who show up once-in-a-while to take them out shopping. And after a couple of hours together, the “fathers” leave, and not to be seen in a long time. It’s only in the United States that a kid grows up and gets to become a celebrity before a man will suddenly show up to admit paternal responsibility for the star.

 

 

 

My Life and Some of its Ironies.

It was early March, 1995. I had gone to visit a friend who, like me, was among the hundreds of staffers laid-off by our former employers. It was his wife that opened the door. After exchanging some pleasantries, the woman called me aside and started to whisper,

"Weren't you among the people laid-off?" she asked.

As I nodded in response, the woman stared at me all over and wondered, "But how come the effect doesn't show on you..."

"The effect of the job loss?" I asked.

"Yes..." she said. "You're always looking very calm and cool like a cucumber..."

I smiled and informed her that it was not easy coping without a job but the grace of God had been sustaining me.

"Really?" she moved closer to whisper all the more. "Ah...my husband is taking this matter too badly. Can you please talk to him?"

Once again, I nodded, promising to talk to the man as soon as I got into the house.

The following day, another former colleague visited me and as I observed his emotional turmoil, I gave him some words of advise. A week later, the same man came to thank me for changing his outlook toward the job loss. And as I waved off the man's gratitude, he went on to ask for a favor. I thought he wanted money. But he said as a fellow member of the Baptist denomination, he would like me to come address members of the Men Missionary Union (M.M.U) of his church. I protested immediately, saying I was neither a pastor nor deacon to be talking to people in a church. But he kept pleading that so many members of the church had lost their jobs and if I could just talk to them as I did to him...blah...blah...blah. The following week, I was at the church auditorium to say precisely what I said to my friend. And that was it! I was surprised by the huge response of the men afterward. A few days later, I got a special, highly emotional "Thank you" note from the church's pastor for "saving" a large section of his congregation from misery and depression. All the fuss over just a mere pep talk! Anyway, I shrugged it off as just another exaggeration some people would demonstrate over a little thing.

A couple of weeks after the loss of my job, I was surprised to get a special invitation from the Board of Directors of a community bank. I was offered the job of Manager and Chief Operating Officer. Upon my resumption for duty, one thing that struck me was the personality of my secretary. Patience was stunningly beautiful! Describing her here could take a whole page. Almost everyday, several customers would insist on seeing me for one petty stuff or the other until I realized the real reason. They all actually wanted to feed their eyes on the beauty of my secretary. And after just one visit, a couple of my friends resorted to coming almost every other day "just to say hello" to me until I got to know their actual reason. Patience was not just all beauty. She also was well-educated with a Higher National Diploma (HND) in secretarial studies. Out of curiosity, I went through her personnel file. There, it was stated that she was previously working with a highly reputable commercial bank. I now called her into my office to ask why she left such a big bank to come work in a community bank. If her beauty stunned me, her personal story knocked me down emotionally.

She started by acknowledging the frequent commotion her beauty generated everywhere including the bank. To her, it was not a new thing except that her beauty had been a curse, not a blessing. According to her, at the age of 28, she would have been long married but for her beauty. Men would never let her rest with love advances. From married young men to those men who are old enough to be her grandfather. Everyone of them was dangling huge amounts of money and gifts. But in return, she knew that they all were interested in only one thing. Her relationship with each of the few young bachelors who showed interest in her could not last due to the terrible sense of insecurity exhibited by them. One man went to the extent of telling her that he would not live long if he married her because he would suffer from constant high blood pressure any time she was out of his sight. The most interesting thing I noticed in Patience was that she was very highly principled. She would politely thank each married man, including my friends and the silly old sugar daddies for their interest but would say no. Indeed, she had to resign from her previous job at the big bank because every top shot, from General Managers to the CEO, wanted to date her.

"So oga (boss)..." she concluded. "Do you now see my predicament because of this useless beauty? Young eligible bachelors are too insecure to marry me while the married men and especially the dirty old sugar daddies only wanted to satisfy their sexual curiosity."

Hearing her story was a new experience for me in all of my life. I heaved a deep sigh and finally asked if she believed in God. She said yes. Then, I started to talk to her, giving suggestions and words of caution here and there on what to do about her situation. In a nutshell, I let her identify one singular fact; that having the right man in her life was and would never be a problem but letting the man feel secure and comforted by her inner qualities in addition to the outer beauty was the major task she had to accomplish. To this end, I made some all-encompassing suggestions to her on the urgent need for a strong focus on new social/moral orientations and attitude. To cut a long story short, it took just a couple of weeks for both of us to see the overwhelming result of the "little" project.     

And then came the ironies:

First: Patience started seeing me in a different light and treating me with some "holy" deference as if I had suddenly become one of the "Nigerian funky pastors" or some demi-god. There was also her fiance (a lawyer who I teased by calling him a first-class eligible bachelor) who began to address me as "daddy" despite my correcting him several times that I was only a few years older than him. And even her parents wrote to thank me for the "great miracle" I performed in the life of their daughter.

Second: My secretary approached me one Monday morning to ask which church I was attending. And when told, the poor lady felt disappointed and loudly exclaimed "...so, you're going to one of those old churches instead of a Bible-believing church?" My response to her rhetoric would fill another 2 pages here. But she never made that statement again.

Third: I later got a much better job at Shell Petroleum in Warri (that's another story entirely) and had to leave the community bank. Obviously, Patience had given some "testimony" to some staff. During the send-off ceremony, the Chief Cashier called me aside to say she would like to come see me for some "spiritual" assistance in solving a "serious" personal problem. As the woman rambled on and on, I looked around for my secretary who, on meeting my gaze, quickly turned away to dash into the nearest restroom.

Lessons From My Mother's Death

Good, Good Morning by Andy Kim

The sad event occurred early in the morning of July 6th, 1979...precisely 33 years today!

One of the very first lessons I learned from my mother's untimely death was the irony of life.

As our family was reeling from the shock of the terrible blow, the music blaring from radios all around our neighborhood was a very popular song of the seventies titled "Good, Good Morning" by Andy Kim (click on the link above).

Ironically, the message in the song was so completely opposite what our family was going through that morning that I felt like yelling at the entire neighborhood to turn off their radios.

Another immediate lesson I learned from my mother's death was how devastating the death of a spouse could be. My father was not only shocked and pained but also disoriented for days. He kept on mumbling to himself that God should have taken him instead of his wife because "Your mother was the moral and emotional back-bone of this family. If I was the one that passed away, it would have been better as you kids would have been left in more capable hands...I am not as good as your mother in mobilizing or rallying a family together..."

This sad moment of my life also made me appreciate some of my father's very strong life's principles. The first was "Love your relations but don't ever depend on them for your survival." And the second was "A couple of good friends are worth more than a thousand useless, happy-go-lucky friends."  

Talking of friends therefore, I'll forever remember and be grateful to some of my father's friends and notably, Mr. Adigun.

Although younger, more educated and highly placed (he was a top shot in Nigerian Telecommunications "NITEL"), Mr. Adigun was more of a brother than a friend to him. As soon as the incident happened, he placed his entire family at our disposal. In the first place, Mrs. Adigun, a nursing Matron at Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) was working on the night shift the day my mother passed away. She did not only perform her best during the critical moment when my mother was battling for her life, she also took an unpaid overtime to wait around and ensured that the corpse was bathed and properly embalmed. And when she finally got off duty, it was to our home she came to play the role of a therapist. For instance, she took one look at me and said, "Femi dear, you look more angry than sad. You're the only one that has not cried..that's not good for your health, you know...maybe you should cry a little."

In reaction, I did not know whether to laugh or cry. Then, I told her not to worry but she kept on asking why I was angry. So, I finally told her.

"Excuse ma'am...do you know how much mama devoted her life to Jesus?"

The woman nodded her head sadly. "Oh, yes, everybody knew that..."

"But why did she have to die just like that?"

"Oh my dear, your mother was a fighter...she refused to give up her life easily even as she screamed for Jesus to save her..."

"There you are..." I continued. "She screamed for Jesus...and what did Jesus do?"

Alarmed at my sacrilege, Mrs. Adigun moved closer to wrap one arm around my shoulder. "Ah...please don't talk like that...you boys are too young to be in this sad situation...but no one knows the ways of the Lord..."

"Yes, I knew you'd say that..." I quickly withdrew into my shell.

The poor woman went on and on to counsel me and pleading for me to "just accept it as fate..."

But that would be the beginning of my personal feud with Jesus. And it took years for me to reconcile with Him.   

Still on the Adigun family, the man gave us a chauffeur-driven car with his son, Femi Adigun, as the driver that took my brother and I on all errands in preparation for the funeral. Mr. Adigun went further to equip us with adequate cash allowance to fuel the car. And there was Iyabo Adigun (I hope I got the first name right) whose duties was to assist in cooking and taking care of our home while my brother and I ran around. Incidentally, when we expressed surprise at all these acts of kindness, my father merely shrugged his shoulders with a smile and then he said something that confused us, "Well...Adigun and I are brothers from the same mother..."

My mother's death did teach me another great lesson; one must endeavor to be good to people because there would always be rewards to be reaped from good deeds, one way or the other. This was amply demonstrated the day my brother and I walked into a popular casket showroom at Ebute-Metta. The middle-aged owner took one look at us and showed a hint of recognition.

"Hey, young men...who died?"

Initially, we were both irritated by the embarrassing question until finally, the man invited us to his office and said, "I can recognize your Olawole faces...I hope brother James is not dead?"

Now, we stared at him curiously and said no but that it was his wife who had passed away. Suddenly the man began to cry, grieve and lament.

"No! Mama Bose can't die...no way! That wonderful woman...she can't die...why must good people always have to die untimely?"

We allowed him some few more minutes to grieve until he gathered himself together with an apology. Then, he led us back to the showroom where, still sobbing, he pointed at a section where the most expensive caskets were displayed.

"Young men, please pick any one of these caskets."

We both shook our heads as we explained that we did not have the money to buy any expensive casket.

The man said "No, you will not pay...it's free! I bet you boys don't know how nice your parents are...do you?"

As we thanked him, the man waved us off and promised to come commiserate with our father.

There was a little "drama of love" when a committee of my mother's friends decided to finance the Service of Songs/Wake-keeping service that was held inside the sprawling compound of Ijero Baptist Church along Apapa Road in Ebute-Metta. The Adiguns wanted the deceased's friends to finance something else as they insisted that it was a great honor for them to take care of the expense. My father had to plead with the women and they took care of the assorted desserts that were served to the guests at the subsequent funeral party.

The "drama of love" did not end there. The then Pastor of our church (Ijero Baptist Church) was away all through that time. Our father therefore reached out to the Pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in central Lagos who promptly accepted to deliver the funeral sermon because of his close relationship with my parents, and especially my father. The executive committee of our church however felt the task should be performed by a junior Pastor of the church. But the man of God in Ebenezer Baptist Church decreed that no one else was more competent than him in the matter. Again, it was my father who pleaded that the host junior Pastor do something else in the program.

During the funeral service itself, the church organist appeared not to be in his best form as the congregation soon began to murmur in frustration. Quickly, my cousin (Femi Durotoye) stood up to go replace the man summarily and the difference was clear between the performances of the two guys. It was like everyone just wanted to show their love for my mom and indeed, the Olawole family.

And so, Sarah Segilola Olawole, my dear mother, it's been thirty three years since your untimely demise. Although he was not as morally and emotionally strong as you were, papa really tried his best to guide us (the kids) to the Promised Land of social, moral and economic emancipation which you envisaged for us all through your life with absolute devotion. May you continue to rest peacefully in the bossom of the Lord in Jesus name.

Lauryn Hill---What an Irony!

It's now official! Rohan Marley, son of the late Reggae star, Bob Marley, has proposed marriage to his Brazillian lover.

The 39-year-old Rohan was previously in a relationship with popular singer, Lauryn Hill for 15 years. Take note, 15 years! And in the course of those years, Lauryn and Rohan produced 5 children, Zion, 14, Selah, 13, Joshua, 9, John, 8 and 3-year-old Sarah.

Initially, when rumours began to circulate that he was dating 28-year-old Brazilian model Isabeli Fontana, Rohan vehemently denied the rumour. He tweeted saying: "Ms. Hill is the mother of my children, whom I have a tremendous amount of love and respect for. I would never do that." And this was in spite of Fontana's posted photo of herself and Rohan Marley on Twitter with the caption, "I'm in love with @Romarley 's heart."

In the height of her singing career (1998) Lauryn Hill released an album aptly titled "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill". That album sold 18 million copies over the next decade. One major track in the album was "Doo Wop (That Thing)" which was not only entertaining but also very educational. A young woman only has to listen to the track and be inspired to think deeply before opening her legs to any man. It was a grand lesson in sexuality education and especially, on the issue of indiscriminate sex.

Now that she has been dumped by her "baby daddy" and saddled with 5 kids, what will be going through the mind of Lauryn Hill? Over the course of 15 years, Rohan never considered Lauryn good enough for marriage except as a baby factory. Obviously, he must have felt that the baby-producing mama would not fit into his future scheme of things when a much younger ravishing beauty was available. Men! But whose fault?

Going through, once again, the lyrics of "Doo wop (That thing)" by Lauryn Hill, all I can think of is that some people's charities just don't begin at home. There is no doubt that a lot of teenagers and young adults must have learned one lesson or two from the inspirational song. Yet, Lauryn Hill who provided the motivation did not deem it fit to learn anything from her own counsel. What an Irony!