Clues That The Old Man Was A Wild Card In Squid Game.

1. He's player 001.

He's the only important member of the cast that was not exposed for being a debtor or followed up outside after the majority of players first voted to stop the game.

2. He's not struggling financially.

How come he was the first person to join the game even though he had no need for money?

3. He's terminally ill.

Terminally ill people usually want to die a peaceful death, surrounded by their loved ones. Why would he choose a survival game as his last moment on Earth?

4. He was way too happy during the first game.

Did you notice the confidence with which he ran, as well as the way he balanced his steps?

5. He knew too much about tug of war.

You could tell that he was not ready to die just yet. He acted more as an instructor than a player.

6. The setting of the game with marbles was modelled after his childhood neighbourhood.

It wasn't a coincidence after all.

7. The riot was stopped after he begged the frontman to stop it.

How did he manage to climb that high and why? Perhaps he had intel that a riot would happen at night. After all the organisers did intentionally withhold 5 portions of food to give the players a motive.

8. He was killed off off-scene.

We saw all the dead main characters being killed or placed inside a coffin. We even saw the North Korean woman being cremated. But we never saw the old man's bloodied body.

9. We only see the boss (back of his head) after he was killed.

At the beginning of the show, we saw his outfit and mask worn by a mannequin. Then after he supposedly dies, that same outfit and mask are worn by an old man (we saw his trembling wrinkled hand).

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What other clues did you find from watching the series a second time?

WHAT IS YOUR REASON FOR DISLIKING ANGEL?

At this point, it's obvious that some of you just dislike Angel for the sake of disliking her. Especially Whitemoney's fans. Imagine feminists who preach sexual liberation hating on a woman for being sexually liberated.

BBN is rated 18 and over. It's none of Angel's business if you as a parent leave your underaged child unsupervised. If I'm participating in a game show that is meant for adults best believe that I'll engage in activities that are suitable for an adult audience.

You are whining about Angel's private parts as if it's the worst thing that has ever happened in the history of television. Why aren't you channeling that same energy towards porn? Kids can watch porn too, abi? You should be advocating for all porn websites to be taken down. After that, you can start a campaign to eliminate any form of violence and sexually allusive content from your TV to protect your innocent and gullible kids.

I find it funny that supposedly educated people would pick an uneducated, uncouth, sexist, and cowardly man who never minds his goddamn business and is always talking in the nonsense over a smart, bold, and vibrant young woman. If many among you were to meet Whitemoney today, you wouldn't be able to have an intelligent conversation with him. In fact, you'd be irritated with many of his utterances. But he has the Igbo vibe. I get it. He's good for entertainment.

But remember, personalities may attract but ideologies will eventually divide.

I'm not Angel's fan. I'm totally indifferent to her. I don't even get the hype over her looks, but God forbid that I preach one thing, hate a woman who embodies all of it and love a man who shits all over it.

"Angel is this, Angel is that". Says a woman who would never touch a man like Whitemoney with a ten-foot pole.

This season might be the worst one of the Big Brother Nigeria franchise yet, but it has done a lot to expose the rot and hypocrisy hiding among many of you who claim to be woke and liberated.

The saying “She slept her way to the top” is ridiculous.

In Nigeria, there is an unwritten social contract between men and women in heterosexual relationships. The average man and woman don’t go into relationships for the pleasure of having a romantic partner whom they can spend quality with and rely on for emotional and mental support. Instead, it is a social connection that has a clear purpose: marriage. For this reason, men and women will spend their time proving to the other person that they can take on the future responsibilities that come with being a husband or a wife. For the men, it is the capability of taking on financial responsibilities, while for the women, it is the capability of taking on domestic responsibilities. In this social contract, sex is part of a woman’s domestic responsibilities. Even when there is no clear intention of getting married, in the case of an affair of a married man and a single woman, both the man and the woman will still strive to retain spousal privileges without necessarily fulfilling their obligation. This is where the man starts to lose out. Since a mistress lives outside of the man’s home, she cannot perform full-time domestic duties, even if she wanted, except for the few times he comes to her house, and she performs wifey duties for him. But the man will still find himself fulfilling all his social obligations. So, the mistress will enjoy the privileges of a wife without actually doing much of what a wife is expected to do.

The question that follows is this: why are men angry with women for respecting the social contract that they established and have fought so much to keep?

That last part of the first paragraph is the reason: the mistress is not the wife.

Let’s use the recent case of Mo Abudu as our case study. If Mo had been married to these men, nobody would be accusing her of using “bottom power” to build her empire. Nigerians would automatically assume that Mo was rewarded for being a devoted wife, even though being a devoted wife includes satisfying the man’s sexual needs. A woman of Mo’s social status is unlikely to perform domestic duties such as cleaning, cooking, doing laundry, or even childminding. Chances are that sex is the only activity that she personally fulfills in the long list of duties that are expected of a wife. So, technically, the man is dropping money in exchange for sex. That is the same reason why Nigerian men and women generally dislike sex workers. They enjoy the perks without the burden that comes with being the woman in the social contract.

Let’s remember that in Nigeria it is not illegal for a man to rape his wife. So really, a man can force his wife to perform her duties even through the use of violence. Men don’t have that kind of power over their mistresses or sex workers.

Given this reality, will Nigerian men agree to ditch this social contract and draw a new one where men and women offer the same benefits to one another in a relationship/marriage?

Personally, I don’t see that happening any time soon. Only Nigerian women can redefine the social contract, but so far, the current one seems to work well for the majority of them too. In reality, the social contract, even with its loopholes in the case of adulterous affairs between married men and single women, still heavily favours men.

1. Since men made the rules and they are at the top in the social, financial, and political system, they are not under any obligations to respect their part of the deal.

2. Domestic labour is more onerous than working outside the home.

3. The average Nigerian man cannot pay the equivalent of his wife’s domestic labour. As a matter of fact, based on that social contract, poor men are not supposed to marry or go into relationships with women, but they do. Why? Read point number one.

We can only castigate Mo Abudu for dating married men and for collecting huge sums of money under false pretense. We can also castigate her for participating in the looting of public funds. However, we can’t absolutely fault her for dating men for financial benefits and for using the proceeds of those affairs to fund her projects and build her empire. Her affairs did not make her the powerful and respected woman that she is today. She was able to benefit so much from those affairs because she is a powerful and respected woman. And a focused and talented one too.

But let me know what you think in the comment section.

PASTORS' KIDS ARE PRIVILEGED

A Facebook friend, Ogbeni La, wrote a post about the implications of being the child of a pastor and asked us to sympathize with these kids because life is tough on them. I will not.

Even though I do agree that children whose parents are pastors are subject to extreme pressure to appear perfect and holy, it is also true that these kids enjoy unmerited privileges and grow up with this overinflated sense of self-importance. Even when they are the most mediocre people around, they truly believe that they are better than you and treat you as though they are better than you.

First of all, children of pastors are not judged with the same parameters with which other children are judged. By the reason of that coated perfection, they are given plenty of allowances to err and stray. Everybody believes that they will eventually find their way. Common kids are not given this same allowance. When common kids make mistakes, people just believe that those mistakes are the reflection of who they are and that they cannot be redeemed.

Pastors also believe that their children deserve the spotlight irrespective of their talents or abilities. A common member with equally poor skills will never get those chances. And even a common kid with more talent and abilities will eventually be kicked to a corner so that the untalented pastor's kid can shine.

The parents of these kids cover up for their mistakes, while they broadcast yours and even humiliate you for them.

Sometimes, you will not even do anything wrong. You may just be doing something relatively normal. Something that even those pastors' kids are doing, and those pastors will tell you that you are wrong to do that. But they won't say that to their kids because their kids have the grace and maturity to pull it off.

These kids do believe that they are better than common kids, even when they are not. And that's due to years of being told that being conceived by anointed penis and vagina makes them more special than the other kids whose parents were not called.

My view of pastors' kids is not so different from my view of men. Even though I recognize how the system may be unfair to them, I cannot deny that the privileges they enjoy are far greater than whatever pressure they are subject to. Also, they bask and revel in those privileges. So no, I will not make a case for them.

The privileges pastors' kids enjoy is the reason why Adeboye's son could come online and speak disrespectfully to his father's congregation while obnoxiously chewing on a toothpick.

So, again no. I will not sympathize with them.

SOCIAL OBLITERATION IS REAL

One thing we must understand is that how people behave in a group can be extremely different from how they behave when they are alone.

Thinking of this year’s BBN housemates, I have seen complaints that the casting crew did a very bad job at picking them as the lot are boring and too self-conscious.

However, what you fail to understand is that individually they might have presented a totally different personality: one which they haven’t been able to sustain among other people.

Remember that these people are Nigerians and that Nigerians believe that being part of a group and assimilating the traits that are characteristic of that group are essential for their survival and social advancement.

Think of mob lynching for example. How many of the people who take part in this horrific act can actually singularly make the decision to kill a person?

It takes a lot of self confidence to remain consistent with your personality; to not allow yourself to be intimidated, overshadowed, or obliterated by other personalities.

If you doubt me, think of how you behave when you are in the midst of people who are older, richer, more educated, more travelled, or more social than you and compare that to that how you behave when you are on your own. Are you authentic and consistent on both occasions?

I’m sure the casting crew thought that individually these people were interesting and well-rounded. They couldn’t have foreseen how they would behave in group. Trust me, it would take a behavioural expert to determine that, and, if I may say, BBN was just lucky to have been able to cast confident people (not all, but enough to keep the show alive) in previous seasons.

BBN is a social experiment, so look at this year’s season from that point of view.

Hopefully in the next season Big Brother will involve experts in the selection of their housemates as to avoid the same fiasco that happened this year.

DESCRIBE THEM WITH A NICE WORD

One day I was speaking with a friend and mentioned someone to her. I asked her if she knew this person and she responded, "Oh, that u**y person?" I had to pause the conversation and lecture her on the importance of using kind adjectives to describe people when they have never wronged her or anyone that she knows.

Besides, this is a person with so many qualities who has achieved so much for themselves. You know this well enough, but you couldn't mention any of those qualities to describe them. Instead you had to choose the one aspect you find unflattering about them. That's bad.

I asked her if she would like it if someone used an unflattering adjective to describe her and she replied "no". So why did she describe this person like that?

If you know you are fond of doing this, stop. I could understand if you don't like the person. But then people will lie that someone is something they are not just because they don't like them.

Try and be nice when you have no reasons to be otherwise. And try and see the good in people.

BLACK MEN WANT TO KEEP OPPRESSING BLACK WOMEN

I find it funny that black/African men who understand systematic racism and white privilege perfectly, think that women in Nigeria are fighting imaginary enemies.

There is literally a system in place to keep women in a position of dependents. Even when women are not dependent they are still mandated to act as if they are so that they do not usurp the authority of the man-provider.

Now someone wrote that women should stop acting like dependents when they are not and a Nigerian man described it as "fighting imaginary enemies".

You all are tripping seriously.

When slavery was abolished in America, blacks were segregated. They were denied an education, good income, and even their freedom through targeted criminalization.

Imagine now if I thought that black Americans are fighting imaginary enemies because any opportunity they get, they speak boldly about their wealth, their degrees, and their pristine criminal record.

I always say this: the worst type of person is the one who says that privilege does not exist and that you are the cause of your own oppression while basking in that same privilege.

Nigerian men are to Nigerian women what white people are to black people.

They will keep denying and discounting their privilege and the other person's oppression so long as it serves their goal of maintaining the status quo.

COMFORT FRIENDSHIP

One day I asked my friend: “Why do you always come to me when you need financial help even though you and I are on the same level of brokeness?”

I asked this question without malice or resentment. I was sincerely curious. She and I are quite close, and we discuss our lives, including our financial struggles, so it just seemed odd to me that she would choose me to be her support when she could easily go to someone else who has it better than both of us.

She answered: “I just feel more comfortable asking you.” And I understood.

I remember the story my mother told me. I have written several times about how my mother grew up in abject poverty. By the time her father, who had two wives, had died, her mother had already given birth to six children, of which she was the first. They had nothing and every day they literally struggled to feed. However, although they had relatively nothing and lived in penury, my mother’s friends whom I believe had it better than her, preferred to come to her house to eat and dine together. Just like my friend, they felt more comfortable in her little shackle than in their well-built houses.

I also have friends I feel more comfortable asking for help and surprisingly they are not close to being the richest among my friends. They just make it easy for me to go to them in times of need. It’s not necessarily because they have a lot to give away. Instead, it is because of the sense of security they convey and their lack of prejudice. And this comfort extends to other areas of life.

There are people we just feel like we can open up to without the fear of being judged. We are confident that they will keep our secrets safe and offer us the comfort that we seek. And it’s beautiful that I am one of those persons to my friends.

We all need people that make us feel safe in our lives: people who don’t shame us in our moments of sorrow and who can listen to our problems even when they do not have any solutions to offer.

The Taming Of The Mane

I took my birth father's hair and for the longest time, my hair was tagged stubborn and tough to deal with. It didn't help that I had a full head of thick hair. I went through years of relaxing my hair to make it soft, but nothing ever worked. The most that happened was that my scalp would burn and all the hair at the back of my head would break off. Then I decided that I had had enough. I wasn't aiming for long hair. I just wanted to stop using chemicals on my hair.

If I could describe myself as a natural hair enthusiast, I'd say that I'm no nowhere close to being enthusiastic. Between 2013 and 2015, I had no hair care routine. Then from 2015 to date, my hair routine has been basic at best. I just have good hair.

I remember the last time I saw my mother in Italy in 2014. I told her I had gone natural and wanted to grow my hair out and she told me to not hope for too much. "Your hair will grow but it will never become long". She was wrong. I didn't take her hair. Her hair is soft and scattered. It also struggles to grow long. Her mother has the same hair. Using relaxer on that kind of hair would mean killing it. Her hair has never been a struggle for her, so comparing it to mine was quite a silly thing to do. Just like many other things she was fond of saying (we look alike so she would constantly make unflattering comparisons between me and her. But I'm actually a smaller, lighter, and prettier version of her. She has a fuller and curvier body though), I brushed it off and carried on with my natural hair with plenty of hope in my heart. And luckily, my hair did not disappoint.

Yesterday, as my friend ran her fingers through my hair to detangle it, she kept commenting on how soft and healthy it is. The hair that used to give me plenty of headache has been tamed. This is the same hair that I couldn't even comb at the early stage of it growth. But today, it's giving me joy and making me proud.

First picture was taken in January, 2019. I had to cut off a great length of my hair as it was damaged and uneven.

Second picture is from yesterday and that is my hair soaked in deep condotioner.

Third picture, also from yesterday, is my length check. I'm close to 16 inches. I believe I'll hit 18 inches by next year.

WHO FINE DON FINE FINISH, DARK OR LIGHT

I read from someone yesterday that Maria is not fine. She is just fair.

Some of you eh, na your insecurity go kee you.

I'm not denying the existence of colourism among Africans and descendants, but this silly belief that light skin is just a coating needs to stop. A beautiful woman is a beautiful woman, and Maria is a beautiful woman.

Maria's beauty is not about her light skin, it's about her facial features. There are many light-skinned women who are not pretty because they don't have attractive facial features. You will find many light-skinned women who look plain despite their complexion.

Features are also what make Saskay beautiful. Not so much her complexion.

If you as a man or woman need to separate a woman from her light-skinned complexion before you can evaluate her beauty, then you are not so different from those who worship light-skinned people. It shows that you are intimidated by that complexion, that you are conscious of the power it holds, and for this reason, you want to nullify it by removing it from the equation. You cannot. She is light, she is light.

Maria is a beautiful woman. Whatever you think of her personality and character is irrelevant in regard to her physical appeal.

SMOOTH TIPS FOR FACEBOOK

1. Create a separate email address for your social media handles.

Shortly after I had started advertising my services here on Facebook, someone tried to hack into my account. Obviously, they must have thought that the email address that I use for business is the same one that I use for my social media handles. It's not.

Make sure that whatever email address that you use for your Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/etc, is one that you do not give out to people frequently.

2. Do not add people you cannot recognize as friends.

One of Facebook's security checks requires that you identify the names of your friends correctly. A few months ago, I had to help a friend recover his Facebook account. We spent two days trying to log in. Not only had the number that he had chosen as his main number been lost to someone else but his registered email had also been lost as he couldn't remember his password. His only option was to identify his friends. We had to make several attempts before we were able to access the account.

3. Choose a username.

Your username is the word that comes after Facebook dot com. You can personalize it. If you go to your messenger, you will see the option to edit or choose one.

Instead of your email address or phone number, you can use your username to log in. This is another way of protecting your personal data from prying eyes.

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Let's start today with wisdom, knowledge, and productivity.

SERVE YOUR FOOD YOURSELF.

Both the man and the woman are entitled and both are the products of the same system. The man feels entitled to a woman’s servitude, while the woman feels entitled to the man’s money.

You cannot sympathise with with one and condemn the other. You either accept the two situations or you trash them both.

My assumption is that people will tag the woman unkind in the first post and tag the woman again as entitled in the second post. Because one involves a simple act of kindness while the other involves a woman demanding to be taken care of.

For starters, serving people is not a simple act of kindness. It’s actually labour. There are people whose job involves serving food and drinks to other people. They are called waiters and maîtres.

Many people do not understand the inconvenience that comes with having to put everybody’s needs before yours. Just because women have been doing it and have been indoctrinating other women to do it does not mean it’s not a pain in the ass.

If you think that the woman in the first image is unkind, then you must agree that the man in the second image is unkind too.

If instead you think that the man in the first image is entitled, then you must agree that the woman in the second image is entitled.

It’s either patriarchy for all or feminism for all. Nothing like having your cake and eating it.

Most Nigerian Men Are Useless As Parents

A Facebook friend, Omoby, posted about a lady who received a scholarship to study abroad. She and her husband have a son together. In the wake of her trip, she and her husband agreed to leave their son with the husband's mother. She is going off to Canada, the husband works, her own mother is late, so the mother-in-law accepts to take their son in. Good.

Omoby has already explained that particular circumstances led to the decision to keep the son with the MIL, so I am not probing further. However, another woman came under my comment to report that she is experiencing the same situation. She travelled, her husband works, so they had to take the kid to live with a relative.

My question now is this: if the husband had been the one to travel, and she too worked, would she also ask her mother to take her child in with her?

Yeah, these women and travelling and fulfilling their dreams. That's lovely. Hurray for female empowerment. But can we also talk about how some children are being displaced from their homes because their fathers cannot take care of them?

Because you and I know that no woman would be dumping her child with a relative just because her husband travelled and she must work. They would ask her what job is more important than raising her kids.

A husband's support does not end with "Yes, darling, you can travel abroad for your studies". It has to include "And yes, I will take care of the kids". These men are parents too and they must do what parents do which is to take care of their children.

Are we ready to have this conversation? Let me know in the comment section.

POOR MEN DON'T DESERVE A WIFE

I will never understand women who champion the idea that it is OK to marry a poor man because the two of you can grow together. And unfortunately, this is a very widespread idea among Nigerian women. It's even sadder when you think that there are women who truly believe that they have a magic vagina or a special praying mouth that can change a man's fortune.

Now the problem is that you won't find the same widespread equivalence among men. You won't find men championing the idea that is it OK to marry a woman who can't cook, clean, submit, and is not a virgin.

While women are trying to exempt men from the only responsibility that the patriarchy has assigned to them, men are upholding all the responsibilities that the same patriarchy has assigned to women.

When will Nigerian women stop shortchanging themselves?

In Nigeria, the equivalent of a man's money is not a woman's money. The equivalent of a man's money is a woman's ability to perform feminine roles in the house, to be chaste, and beautiful.

That a man is poor will not stop him from being entitled to a woman's subservience and domestic duties. In fact, that's when he will mostly insist on them as proof of her "respect for him" as the man of the house.

God forbid that I endorse that kind of nonsense.

I maintain that in Nigeria a poor man has no business getting married. Relationships in Nigeria are trades by barter. Men provide money, women provide domestic services. For that same reason, I also believe that if a woman is providing domestic services, she has every right to keep her money to herself. If the man wants his wife to help him out financially, then he should be ready to take on some of her domestic duties too.

As for me, if a man cannot comfortably match my lifestyle, he and I have no business being together. I am not building with any man and I am not building any man.

If you want to follow the patriarchy, then follow the patriarchy in everything.

Old Job, New Mindset

During my first four years in the UK, I was not happy with the kind of jobs I was doing. I was making enough money to live and buy nice stuff for myself, but I was feeling unfulfilled and underachieving.

Before leaving Italy I had started working as an interpreter. It was a good job which gave me a lot of satisfaction. I did a lot of intellectual work and I conducted myself like a professional. Then I arrived in the UK and I started working at fast food joints, supermarkets, and warehouses. They are jobs and people do them, but they were not the types of jobs I wanted to do.

I could have done much better jobs but without a degree or the equivalent years of experience, no company would hire me. To make matters worse, these jobs were never permanent. I got laid off in January/February and had to wait until April/May to find another one. Fortunately, I have always been excellent at managing my money, so I always had enough savings to take care of myself during the periods in which I was without a job.

Then in 2018, after being laid off yet again, I made the decision to go into interpreting full time. I was no longer making as much money as I did when I was working those menial jobs, but I felt more fulfilled. I dressed up nice, looked professional, and got to make use of my skills. It was a whole different game altogether.

Now in 2021, I am back in the UK, and once again, I have to rely on menial jobs to hold myself together for the next couple of months. However, this time, I do not feel like I felt about them back in the day. I am very much eager to start working, and that's because I know that whatever menial job I do, it won't be the only type of job that I will get to do. I am busy using my skills to earn money on the side. I write, I translate, and I create. I enjoy moments of pure intellectual bliss.

So long as I can cultivate my passion while lifting boxes and stocking up shelves, I will do it with a smile on my face.

I just won't make the mistake of shelving my passion in exchange of some coins ever again.

On the issue that English is not our first language in Nigeria...

It is not entirely true. English can be your first language, together with your native language. That can happen if you started learning English at the same time you started learning your native language.

When you say that English is your second language, you are saying that first, you learned how to speak your native language, then you learned how to speak English. Many people might have followed this route, but not every Nigerian did. So it is wrong for you to categorically state that English is not our first language in Nigeria. It is for many of us.

In my own case, I have two first languages: Esan and English.

I learnt Italian as a second language.

Then I learnt French as a third language.

If you started learning how to understand and speak English right from birth, then English is your first language. And if you can't speak it correctly, then that is entirely on you and your poor linguistic skills.

Chikena.