Punocracy

… where sa-tyres never go flat

The Village People's Dictionary

The VP’s Dictionary: Activist, constituted authority, corruption, and 22 other words

Collins Dictionary, for instance, defines a road as “a long piece of hard ground which is built between two places so that people can drive or ride easily from one place to the other”. That’s correct you know—but only as long as you don’t import that understanding to Nigeria. Things are much different here… So different we’d need the entire dictionary rewritten to suit our realities. Here, a road would be more appropriately defined as “a warzone where potholes are mines, shock absorbers are shields, curses are bullets—and from which every soldier returns home a casualty”.

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Unseriously Serious

The Nigerian government’s guide to road maintenance

There are some silly countries, such as Canada, that have created online forms and helplines just for people to complain about potholes. Every year, the city of Toronto alone spends millions of dollars repairing hundreds of thousands of potholes and then—wait for it—also gives progress reports to the people about how many potholes they’ve massacred. Who does that? Aren’t they aware that potholes are citizens with fundamental human rights? Don’t they know they are a necessary evil that deserve to be treated with love, care, and respect?

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From Our Allies

Mediocrity is praying

See how all your prayers since 1960 have produced plenty crude oil refinery for the nation, many monumental projects apart from the ones the oyinbos left us with, ASUU has stopped striking like thunder, the number of our of school children has drastically reduced, and we even produce more foodstuff than we can take. See how we export our best hands abroad because of surplus development here, and portable water continues to reach all Nigerians. Sisi mii, aku adura o!

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The Book of Ajanaku

Undecorous Decalogue… The Nigerian politician’s 10 commandments

14. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour—save where thy neighbour belongs to the opposition camp in which case he deserves not a single shekel of pity and thou may paint him in whatever colour thou pleases. If he is from Airegin, thou may say to give an example that he haileth from the neighbouring town of Nooremac. If he is hale and hearty, thou may spread falsehood that he hath passed on and hath been replaced with a look-alike from the Northern kingdom of Nadus.

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Unseriously Serious

PROGNOSIS: 10 things to look out for 10 years from now given the rise of small parties in Nigeria

Needless to say, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the boom era of smaller parties will be designers, logo makers especially. Apparently, asides the name, the other most important thing about a party is its logo. The lines. The colours. The choice of emblems and animals. Ah-mean, when it comes to content development, no one really gives one hoot about aim and objectives, mission and vision, ideologies, constitution, and that useless one they call manifesto. Graphic designers should therefore get ready for a career make-over that’ll financially elevate them above university professors and possibly even medical doctors.

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