NIGERIANS DO NOT PRACTICE RESPECT

Respect implies a mutuality, where people relate with one another on an equal level. It's at the very foundation of the concept of equality. People are not judged based on their status in the society but based on their humanity. You recognize that as people, we are born with the right to live freely and with dignity.

However that is not the case in Nigeria. Nigeria does not operate on the basis of equality, instead she operates on the basis of social hierarchy. Based on your sex, age, occupation, role and finances, you will be accorded a certain level of respect.

And because Nigeria is ruled by a patriarchy system, you have females at the bottom and males at the top. So no matter how low a male ranks, he will never rank as low as or lower than a female. And no matter how high a female ranks she will never rank as high as or higher than a male.

In the family setting, the parents rank higher than the children.

In a marriage the husband ranks higher than the wife.

In the society, men rank higher than women, adults rank higher than kids, rich people rank higher than poor people.

This structure means that people who rank lower must respect those who rank higher, but those who rank higher are not required to respect those who rank lower.

Wives are to respect their husbands, while the husbands are meant to love their wives.

Children are meant to respect their parents, while parents are meant to care for their children.

The people who are meant to give respect also have the onus of maintaining peace, forgiving and never challenging those above them.

BY NIGERIAN STANDARDS I AM EXTREMELY DISRESPECTFUL.

I'm an egalitarian, and I firmly believe in the concept of mutual respect. I do not respect people who do not respect me. No matter who they are.

And if you err me, I will demand for an apology. And until you apologise, I will not reinstate my respect for you.

As a progressist, I believe in challenging authority and holding it accountable for its actions. A society where those who occupy positions of power are never questioned is a society that will never grow or be egalitarian.

I want a society where people do not believe or get comfortable with their privileges.

And if you are assigned or have self assigned a role, play it well. There are too many people claiming to be something and acting unlike someone in that position.

The president is failing.
Governors are failing.
Policemen are failing.
SARS are failing.
Teachers are failing.
Parents are failing.
Religious leaders are failing.
Employers are failing.

They are failing because they do not respect those they consider beneath them. Like they do not owe us anything. However everyone of them still demands respect from us, their "subordinates".

This is not even funny anymore. This is the mentality of dictatorship and man worshipping.

The importance of reciprocating respect cannot be underemphasized. A society where respect does not exist, is a society that is doomed.

CORDIAL BREAK UP IS THE BEST

In Nigeria, you cannot break up, move on and still be friends with an ex. It means that the two of you must be sleeping together.

Because you know, once a man's penis has been inside your vagina, it can enter over and over again any time he wants.

Back in high school, I had classmates who dated, broke up and eventually became friends again. After the usual bitterness and anger that followed their separation, they would start getting close again, and within a few months, they were talking and chatting like they had never even been together before.

But in Nigeria, kole happen. They want you to be keeping malice with your ex to show that the two of you are no longer involved. Even then they will still judge you for being bitter and perhaps fake. Who knows? You could still be meeting up with him in secret.

Unless the person who has remained friends with an ex is their son or daughter of course. In which case, they will praise him or her for their maturity and ability to resolve conflicts.

The rest of us instead, will be labelled cheap sluts who still want a piece of their ex.

Imagine a woman questioning my decision to remain friends with an ex when her own son was going about town with his ex. The nerve of some people to be hypocrites and be shameless about it.

I'm one person who believes that some people are better off as friends than boyfriends/girlfriends. And just because you didn't work out as a couple doesn't mean you should discard each other like garbage. If you are constantly discarding your exes after a break up, it's time to sit down and ask yourself questions. Because it's either you are a horrible person or you are a damaged person who keeps choosing horrible people to date.

I know my value as a person and I know how much a friendship with me can be beneficial. I'm not perfect, but my friends can attest to my level of dedication and loyalty. You can't say you were friends with me or dated me and didn't gain anything. So any basic Nigerian who wants to use their sand brain to judge me should get ready to be trashed.

Exes are not vomit or sloppy sachets or used products. They are people. Know the value of people for who they are and not just for what they can give.

And if your exes keep running away from you after the break up, then my dear, you are the problem.

WE NEED TO REFORM THE MARRIAGE INSTITUTION

Marriage Reforms I'd Endorse

1. Treat it like the contract that it is.

The whole point of getting married is to legally document your relationship with someone, and, as such, the two parties enter a legally binding contract. Like any other contract, marriage comes with clauses and conditions under which it is valid or it is void. Except that those clauses do not take effect automatically like they do in other types of contracts.

As a matter of fact, the individual party will have to seek legal assistance to dissolve a marriage that has in fact already been dissolved due to a breach of contract.

All a marriage needs to be dissolved or voided is the proof that the other party broke one or more of the clauses stated in the marriage contract.

Divorce proceedings should not take months or years, instead there should immediate dissolution of the marriage in the face of a breach of contract.

2. Marriage license should be subject to renewal.

Marriage license should be valid only for a limited period of time, and after it expires, the couple would have one year to renew it, otherwise the contract would automatically cease to be valid and the marriage would be dissolved as a result.

3. Spousal support should be paid only if the couple agreed that one person should not work.

If I didn't ask you to stop working and made efforts to get you a job, after the divorce, you are leaving with your broke ass. I don't owe you shit.

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If I think of something else, I'll add it.

YOU BOND BY SHARING YOUR PAIN

When I arrived in Italy in 1999, my father was 51 and was a pensioner. The age of retirement was around 60 then. Nobody told me why.

When I arrived in Italy in 1999, my father and my mother slept in separate bedrooms. I shared room with my mother until I was 16. Nobody told me why.

I noticed that my dad took a lot of medication. Nobody told me why.

I overheard one time that he was ill and I asked "Is anything wrong with his heart?". My mother responded by throwing a plastic container at me.

Nobody ever told me anything but somehow I was expected to know that things were not right. How?

One of the reasons why my father and I have been able to build a relationship is because now we share our pains without the fear of being judged and ridiculed.

Something that my mother did so well. She lived to humiliate us over anything.

Imagine berating your child after he or she just got heartbroken, or lost a friend or went through shit at school. Why are you acting like you never went through any of that?

I often joke with my friends that whenever my father calls me, it is to complain of one pain or the other. And that he seems to be developing a new one every day. 🤣 But thank God he does. Because there was a time I was not allowed to know any of this. And he probably thought that the reason why I didn't care about his health was because I didn't care about him. If only he knew that the one time I enquired, I was met with an object thrown with brute force against my head.

People don't bond over the happy things in life. It's the sad ones that create those moments of sincerity and vulnerability among the parties involved.

So, please, if you are parent, do not be afraid to be vulnerable with your child. It won't cause them to disrespect you. Instead it will make you more relatable and approachable. And he or she will feel more human too.

The best relationships between parents and children I have seen so far are the ones where the parents share the pain and disappointment they experienced when they were young.

"I was once like you".

No other words can teach your children that life evolves, that things get better and that one day they will get to the point where they can talk about it, just like you did.

"I was once like you."
"This happened to me too."

Those words would have been of great comfort to me as a teenager. Luckily, I still grew up to learn of their importance.

GOSSIPS/RUMOUR MONGERS DO NOT PROGRESS

Years ago, I dated a guy whom I'll later describe as "the most stupid boy I have ever dated". However, this episode that I'm about to write is not what earned him the unflattering superlative adjective.

It happened that on a particular day, I was at his with a friend of his. Two adults, in their mid 20s, both struggling financially and living day to day.

One would expect that given the monetary urgency that afflicted their daily lives, these two youngsters would be devoting their time to searching for solutions or ideas that would fetch them money. Instead they spent their time in the most idiotic way possible.

For the two hours, or thereabout that the visit lasted, these two men talked about everybody else but themselves.

- Who is sleeping with whom;
- Who is doing runs;
- Who is doing whatnot;
- E.t.c..

After his friend left, I told him: " You and your friend just spent two hours of your time gossiping. Two hours."

He looked at me in total embarrassment.

I'm not saying that I don't gossip. But to make talking shit of other people or their business the entire purpose of my visit to a friend's? That's the height of mediocrity and hopelessness.

When years ago, they were forcing me to be "friends" with an imbecile, I'd tell them: "This person and I have nothing in common. As in, nothing".

What is the criteria for making friends?

- Same age;
- Same sex;
- Same tribe;
- Same struggles;
- Same church;
- Same relationship status?

Nope, none of that does it for me.

If you are only bringing gossips and problems, then stay in your lane.

I need people who can offer solutions or at least make efforts.

I have wasted enough years of my life in friendships that should have ended years ago simply because I was looking at what they could have been instead of what they were.

I want to receive. I have expectations. If our friendship is not feeding me with meaningful things, then it's time to waka.

BRAGGERS ARE DEALING WITH TRAUMA

As sleep don abandon me, let me use this opportunity to drop some info.

👉🏽 That person that is always exaggerating their achievements is dealing with trauma.

I believe that most people can distinguish their fantasies from their realities, so even though they dream of living in a million dollar mansion, they recognise that they are still far away from achieving that and as such, are realistic about their lives and achievements.

Unfortunately, some people can't.

Some people often obsess over their fantasies to the point that they considerably inflate their reality as to make these two spheres match. And, since people generally do not bother asking intrusive questions unless they suspect a foul play, they just take words at face value. As a result, many people get away with bragging about a reality that is not theirs.

Let's take for example the son of a deceased rich man who cannot accept the social and financial decline that his family suffered after the death of his father. Even though it's been over twenty years, he is still convinced that he is the son of a rich man, and wants to enjoy the perks of belonging to the upper class.

"I only wear designer clothes. Gucci is my favourite brand."

"My family has three houses, two in Nigeria and one abroad. My father left one, while my grandmother left the other one. The one abroad was bought by my mother."

But should you ask questions, you'd find out that he is a minimum wage worker who lives way above his means and that his family assets are not that valuable.

Questions that would send him on a rage:

Why does he priotise finances over his well being in his relationships?

His father died more than twenty years ago. What is a house that was built that long ago worth today?

His mother married his late father at the age of seventeen. What well to do family allows their underage daughter to get married?

Why did his mother buy a flat in a low income neighbourhood?

People have different ways of dealing with trauma. And the death of a parent, coupled with the loss of a comfortable lifestyle can definitely trigger a defense mechanism, which, left untreated, could permanently alter our perception of reality. We could find our ourselves lost in a fantasy world that resembles the world we believe we would have had, if we had not suffered that loss.

Why not simply work hard to recreate that world then?

Well, when people feel that they have been slighted and unjustly wronged by life, they are more likely to wait for life itself to make it up to them, rather than get their asses up to try and rebuild what they have lost. Also, It could be that they do not have what it takes to recreate that life.

In my example, the father was a rich man. Not the son. What results can an entitled man with average abilities achieve on his own? It's much easier to try and ride on his father's long gone glory and expect handouts from people.

Doesn't he have friends who can shake him back to reality?

You can't always wake people up from their daydreams, and people might even cut you off for criticising their choices.

So when next you come across a bragger, do not get upset with their incessant boasting. Instead, hug them and tell them: "Nobody cares if you wear Gucci. You are just a messed up person who needs help".