Frankly Dedoyin

by Adedoyin Shobo Where are the jobs? Why can't I get a decent life for me? Twenty years or more of one's life in an empty rat race running like a hamster. Running at an all-time high, believing that a brain washed education will bring that life. You know that life that is T.V-worthy – fast and sexy. But what did the people that say you are not employable expect? We are the product of the colossal failure in the educational policies and extension, the whole institution. Brain-washed education. Education for the Stone Age man running with rag-like fabric fastened to his loins with a stone tipped spear trying to kill a wooly mammoth many times its size. But is it not true on Y2k-plus-18-earth we deal with real problems that this archaic education for the weak and dead can't solve. Education is a big mess in this country. Teachers aren’t paid. On the other hand, teachers are paid that should not be paid a kobo from our national treasure. Frigging men that shoul...

by Adedoyin Shobo Someone said there's a difference between being ignorant and willfully ignorant. I can imagine how willfully ignorant I had been? I recall as a kid my teachers (also in pursuit of this squalid cycle attaining the Nigerian dream) whipped the holy-living-hell out of my senses. The one thing I remember is the sound of the whip as it struck my bare African back sending shock waves that connected straight up to my growing brain. The feeling?... The feeling of excruciating pain while I convinced myself it was indeed for the best if this was what it took to be great. To be among the stars in the heavenly sky someday. O God! I can't even remember shit of what I was taught in school and worst its relevance. All this obsolete data I sponged up in my wild unrefined mind. All I have as pips are long eerily-looking welts to bear witness. Give me that to take home to my kinsmen. The system of education is so wrong and at best ineffective. The varsities...

by Adedoyin Shobo …But what did the people that say you are not employable expect? The cold war between the Soviet Union and America lasted for decades and was based on a myriad of issues from the Arts, economic prosperity to Science. It was the war of the titans indeed, the who's who countries stood in the battlefield...in the gladiator’s coliseum of the mind. The result was the explosion in the technological advancement today from rocket science to smart phone science… The question of education is a quest for survival. It is a quest of how-much-do-you-know-before-you-run-out-of-your-precious-life...lines. It is the flint that forges the infrastructure that makes life a little more meaningful and interesting. I highlighted below - a montage of sanctimonious words from the bible. It pontificates in the curious voice of a child and the wisdom of a grey - bearded geriatric that has seen-it-all. “Be ye diligent in all things...one day you will seats with Kings and the ...

by Adedoyin Shobo Man’s life is fraught with endless activities . Aspirations and hope keep him alive. Quotes like “either you are fast or you are dead” , puts him in constant apprehension of being swallowed by the world around him. In every single normal day of man’s existence, there’s bound to be stress – everyday with its challenges. In the race of life, there’s bound to be trophies and inevitably, knocks. Have you ever imagined what life would be when you no longer have anything to look forward to? When your world twirls and spirals incessantly in life sized “black-hole” of worlds that are just disjointed and completely unrelated? Sure everyone does at one point in their life. For some, it’s a chronic malady, requiring all available arsenals of pyschotherapy and pharmaceutical extractions. For others, it’s short-lived, blown away by something as simple as a shrug. A study by the World Health Organization revealed that of all the medical illnesses, mental illness ...

by Adedoyin Shobo ‘We are all in one deep shit. A good shit depending on how you see it.’ I thought to myself. I’m Yoruba. I’m in deeply love with an Igbo girl. My favourite buddy Rika is a Northerner. I recall in the early eighties, growing up in my neighborhood had been an awesome experience. Me and my friends from all manner of ethnicity played in the suburb of Lagos in reckless abandon like daisies in their assorted colours . I learnt the ‘normal’ way of life, how to eat, to talk…dress. I learnt to the art of acrobatics, played hard and worked harder under the watchful eyes of all my fathers and mothers. They loved us and showed in no small way. I ate Ofe nsala/Akpu ; drank Zobo and Kunu from my next door neighbours while my friends participated in the popular Lagos owambe parties. We attended each other’s birthday parties like closely-knit family members, quarreled sometimes but made up pretty soon. There and then, I had made myself an oath to cherish a...

by Adedoyin Shobo Last night I went to bed angry. Angry at what? I can't even recollect or understand. I just felt this inundation of negative vibes licking its way through my mind. Emotions that initially seemed to have gone AWOL ages away when I was much younger steadily rising like a scene from a blood-curdling horror movie. I felt fear, indifference, restlessness, burnt out, hate and any other nasty thing the mind can imagine. There in my room, perched in one of the dilapidated blocks in Shagari Hall of Obafemi Awolowo University, under the stupid naked light bulb dangling dangerously over my head, I tightened my eyelids to a solemn promise of a better tomorrow. Suddenly, I’m not sure what woke me up. Maybe the sound of some ecumenical club of fellow students raining fire and thunder at the devil or the grating sound of music from some dude that wouldn’t just use his head that people go to bed late. In midst of this confusion I dragged myself and began mulling abou...

by Adedoyin Shobo I was stopped short in my jaded stride when a figure breezed past and into the bush on my left. It dissolved into another path leading to another part of town. ‘Idiot’ I blustered. I sucked my teeth so hard that I tasted blood on the inside of my lower lip. Stupid riff-raff!!! The man had dashed across my path so fast I could only conjure fragments of images of him. Of course, it was a male. He appeared adorn in a threadbare clothing that showed signs of squalor like someone just out of the gutter. He was also dark in complexion. And yes he ran like his entire life depended on it. At that time, this was my thinking at the time. I was contemplating whether to pursue him for bumping into me like a hit-and-run but I was too weak to change my career home for something that tenuous. *** It was up to five seconds from then… It was as though I slipped into a hazy day-dream. There was a fiery-looking sand storm of angry abominable howling from the storm. ...