< Code Girl />

Code Girl All characters and scenarios in this post are entirely fictional Because of the partnership between airtel and facebook, it was possible for a young girl in the village of some state in western Nigeria to begin learning how to code. What I mean by coding is writing some set of instructions for the computer in order to solve specific problems, these lines of code packaged together is called software.

The partnership of facebook and airtel in Africa gave birth to something called Free basics. Free basics is a service that allows people to access information on the internet for free (without paying for data subscription).

The little girl began to learn great stuff like the legendary "hello world", variables, assignments, operators etc. She was having the best time of her life or her mama's mobile phone.

She got to an important aspect of programming called conditions. Conditional statements help in decision making.
 For example, a girl wants to separate her black dresses from the red ones. Lol, a funny thought just crossed my mind. Girls ain't the only ones that wear dresses nowadays, some boys also do and they call themselves cross-dressers. I won't mention names because this is not a gossip post. I am sorry for the diversion.

So, the girl prefers to keep her black dresses in the upper drawer of her closet and the red ones in the drawer below.  Writing a conditional statement for this task will look like this:

The simple flow 

 if (dress.color == black){ // if dress is color black  
  push to upper drawer;  
 } else { // since we are arranging only red and black dresses we can assume that if the dress is not red it's black  
  push to lower drawer;  
 }  

One on faithful day, her mom sent her to the next street to buy palm oil and eggs. She said and I quote

buy one bottle of palm oil, and if they have eggs, buy five

This fascinating young coder gets to her destination to buy what her mama sent her. She confirmed that palm oil was available, she got a bottle and she proceeded to ask for eggs. The seller confirms that she has eggs. You expect her to buy five eggs. But her mama said

buy one bottle of palm oil, and if they have eggs, buy five

She bought a bottle of palm oil and when she confirmed that they had eggs in stock too, she decided to buy four more bottles of palm oil to make it five bottles.

Getting home to her mama, her mama was furious. She wanted to spank her because she wondered how a girl as smart as her daughter couldn't run a simple errand. In protest, the little girl in between her sobs said: "Mama, I can explain.. I did exactly what you asked ". She picked up her school slate, hanged it on the wall and began to explain basic control flow to her mama right in front of their little house.

 buy(OneBottleOfPalmOil); //Buy one bottle of palm oil  
 if ( eggIsAvailable) { //If they have eggs  
      buy(OneBottleOfPalmOil * 5) //Buy Five  
 }  

People passing by stopped paid some attention to the little girl's explanation of conditional statements to her mama.
That was how a 7-year-old girl gave the first coding tutorial to half of her community without ever having access to a computer or the Internet.

Thanks for your time.

The Boy who saw Jesus.

This kid was hopping across the church hall with a loose shoe lace. So, a young pastor beckoned and called the boy. “Over here kid, what is your name ?”  The boy answered. The young pastor bent down to tie the lad’s shoe lace and the conversation continued. “ John, always check your shoe laces, especially when you are about to run. Do you know why I am telling you this?”  John responded with a horizontal oscillatory head movement, signifying that he doesn’t know why he should look at his own feet before running.  You may step on stray laces and injure yourself by falling when running . "I am sure we both don’t want that to happen", the pastor said.

The boy gave the typical kid’s nod.

The young man gave the kid a fondly ruffle on his locks and said "off you go John and be care…” before he could finish the kid was pacing again and he was gone to his peers. He swallowed the remainder of his  statement , sighed and continued smiling as he looked at the boy enviously.

How priceless, the view of children playing in peace and harmony without the awareness of race, ethnic background, political affiliations, religious beliefs, sexual orientation or any other thing that tears the whole world apart as we know it today.

 These children will continue  to relate in peace and love  until someone tells them otherwise.

For long parents in the western part of my country corrects their children in this manner:

 ‘Ade, see the way you are shouting, are you an Agatu?’ or ‘Stop spitting all around the compound are you a Malam?’  This creates a certain illusion of superiority in these children's minds , which is the beginning of national disaster.

No  tribe is superior to another.

 I remember how surprised I was when I learnt that the vice chancellor of my school then was Ebira. I couldn’t believe it.  He was a professor of some kind of mathematics I have never heard of before. The Ebira people I met earlier in Ekiti were not so educated.They were mostly local farmers. So, it was entirely shocking for me to encounter an Ebira professor of Mathematics, but I was glad I did, because my ignorance was educated. I met a lot of classy Ebira people during my undergraduate days and don’t let us even get started about their girls, some of them own asses that could change the world.

Back to my story about a boy seeing Jesus.

The service  started and the children departed to the children’s church. After a while, the service was coming to the last phase, it was time for sermon and a senior pastor was the one taking the sermon. Some stray kids were coming back to the main church and of course, John was one of them.

 The sermon was going exactly as the preacher has planned. This man’s kinda sermon is not really one that excites the members of the church. He was not preaching about what members love to hear. He was talking about sacrifice, about members letting go of themselves in service to others. So, at the peak of his sermon, he asked a rhetorical question. ‘brethen, how many of you have seen Jesus?’ No one answered except  John ( the boy with the loosed stray shoe-lace earlier).  He raised up his little hands and said ‘I have seen Jesus. I even saw him this morning’, he said.

Everyone was so confused, there was silence and all eyes were on him.

“Jesus helped me lace my shoe this morning”. He pointed at the young pastor “see, that is Jesus na”. Everyone gave a loud roar of laughter and some kind of relief. Trust me, from what I have read about  the coming of  Jesus, a lot of people are not eager to see him come like a thief in the night as he promised.

The pastor asked the kid “Why do you think Pastor Ebube Emeka Obasi is Jesus?” everybody gave a laugh at the preacher’s sarcasm.

What really happened,

Earlier that day, in children school. The children teacher told them of the story of how Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. And he concluded that Jesus helps people with matters they can't resolve by themselves, especially matters related to their feet because he washed the feet of his disciples, and, that same Jesus helped him with his shoes. Hmmm, very smart kid.

We need to do so much good until kids start mistaking us for Jesus.

Only in a Country like Nigeria

I Captain Nigeria, wasn't born in the 1970s but I do know a little of what happened those days. Thank God for the internet. On the 1st of October, 1979, Olusegun Obasanjo, a  then military head of state,handed over to an elected civilian president. How noble of him.

Just a few year after,  Nigeria thought they have bided Military rule goodbye,  there came another coup d'etat in the Nigerian political history. This coup was supported by Buhari our present democratic president. After the success of the coup, Buhari was selected as the Miltary head of state and Idiagbon his de facto vice president. In my own terms, I am concluding that Buhari played a major role in effecting a drastic setback in the history our political development.

January 1, 1983, Buhari gave his maiden speech but this time he said nothing like "I belong to everybody and nobody". In his own wisdom, he suspended the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1979) and ran the country with an Iron fist with no respect for human rights.

Later in 1985, the most experienced man in coup planning took over from Buhari. He wasn't so tough after all. Major. Gen. Ibrahim Babaginda was involved in the planning of a lot of coups in Nigeria history (From July 1966, February 1976, December 1983, August 1985 to December 1985).

Now I didn't have to google this one because it happened right in front of my very eyes, Abdulsalam Abubakar handed over to Olusegun Obasanjo on May 29, 1999, and the constitution came back to live on May 5, 1999. I was eight years old at this time anyways and I definitely didn't know the true difference between democratic and civilian rule except for the uniforms. All I could tell was that people were happy and called Obasanjo's administration ijoba alagbada

The funny thing is, men that were thorough enemies of democracy, the rule of law and human rights had the guts and audacity to campaign and run to be presidents in a democratic setting. Maj. Gen. Ibrahim Babangida annulled the famous June 12 elections and still felt the entitlement to run  in the 2007 and 2011 presidential elections.

I am confident that it is only in a country like Nigeria that a leader like Buhari could run and win election to become president despite his political history.

WAR HERO

War Hero

Just like every other kid growing up, Captain Nigeria had dreams of his own. Dreams, fantasies and goals, all combined in my little head. Dreams of wanting to be that guy that will make the difference, fantasies of what it will feel like to fall and be in love. The love dream started after watching a few Nollywood and Bollywood movies. The thoughts of being the guy that will champion a cause for significant improvement in the quality of life we live in this country was more pressing. Of all my dreams and their backups, I love this one the most. This is the dream of being a War hero, you know? like the movies? But Nigeria, my country was at peace at this time. It was profoundly easy to dream of my heroic acts of war when we were at peace. Now that Nigeria is technically at war with herself, the dream of being a War hero is easier described than lived. So, I will start with the easy part by describing my dream of being a hero.

Imagine me, leading a classified special unit team of the Nigeria Military on a combat mission against the terrorist sect in the Northern part of the country. As in, we are banging doors down of the sect’s HQ, I am barking out orders to members of my unit and we are in constant communication with command center in Abuja in real time. The president is present with a bunch of potbellied Joint Chiefs, Minister of Defense, National Security Adviser not Dasuki, watching the live feeds of our exploits from the safety of the conference room in defense headquarters. In the midst of the chaos and adrenaline rush I hear this voice that seems so far but clear in a typical northern accent saying “Captain Sola-Ojo, do you read me?” and I reply at the top of my voice “Loud and clear, Mr. President” he waits for a while and says “Son, be safe. Let’s end this once and por all and take no frisoners”. I say nothing except “yes sir”. Just like that, we go in into the dark source of the terror that troubles our nation, fighting with great strength like we were an army of a thousand soldiers and like smoke disappears into air, the end of Boko Haram. We emerged from this depths of dark terror into blossom light of peace which our country will bask in once again - courtesy of Captain Nigeria and his men.

Feeling good with myself now that I have done something important with my life. I just completed a mission to save our country from those who threaten our livelihood and freedom. The president invites my team to White House! Oh sorry I meant Aso Rock!, he says if he had his way he would have given myself and my team medals on National TV but for the sake of our safety and that of our family there will be no such thing. I totally agreed with him because I don’t want Boko Haram sympathizers targeting my friends reading this piece. And Captain Nigeria replies in his baritone “If we wanted applause sir, we would have joined the circus.” He shakes our hands firmly and thanks us on behalf of all Nigerians for our fearless service. Some monies were sent to our accounts but we don’t care about that, the fact that our country is safe again was enough payment.

How sweet, how heroic? Brave me….. I know you wanna paste my portrait on your wall but hold on till you hear the second thought I had about the other way the mission could go.
I imagined again that the story could actually go the other way. My black ass could have just been captured and the General that assigned us to the mission will not even be able to recall my name without checking the list of deceased members of the armed forces that have paid the ultimate price in the service to their country, or worse still, a video is posted online where a man in mask forces me to read some written text that convicts me of being an infidel and enemy of Allah. Blah blah blah

And you and I know what masks men do to soldiers that wants to die for their countries on youtube. Ha! and I remember I may not see my mommy again.

Dedicated to the men and women of our armed forces that have lost their lives in service to our country Nigeria. May God grant their families and friends the fortitude to bear the loss. Amen.