My Works are Warming Up!

Dear Dad

I will publish soon! How soon? Months. Certainly, this year.

From what happened in the votes today - peaceful national assembly polls nationwide - I'm speeding up my speed! We don't know the results yet, but it is sufficient that the exercise was peaceful and successful. Period.

My corpus is multidimensional and multisectoral, and my options are increasingly improving as we speak. The world of publishing is being revolutionized, what with Print-on-Demand (POD), electronic publishing (eBooks) and global markets, thanks to the Internet and ICT. Unlike in the past, today's authors can rightly see the universe as their audience: Just seek and keep your readers/listeners/consumers!

After the elections, ICT will explode in Nigeria. In its wake, Dad, things will happen. Good, good things.

So, you and Mom should watch and pray! My works are warming up!

Always
Dayo

Life is about lives

Dad, Mom

The overarching value you put in us, even from my infancy, was how to value life. You both lived for others! I'm grateful I saw it, and imbibed it. I've tried to pass this on as well. At least, I'm striving.

We watch in horror today as people actively destroy lives across the globe, and find it difficult to sleep. When those people are so-called leaders, wasting their own citizens for the sake of political or ethnic or religious power, we bleed!

Who is to know what a leader could turn out to be or become when they are voted into, or forcibly take, office? But murdering your own people to stay in office is blatant and utterly bad. I am being very polite, Mom, very polite.

It is a human failing. We've had our unfair shave in Nigeria, too. Which is how we can understand and sympathize and empathize with others in its throes. And why we as a nation must, and do, ask our country to speak up for all oppressed peoples around the world; and to always act with others to bring succour and solidarity to all such peoples - as groups, as individuals.

Today is my birthday; my thoughts for the day.

Love
Dayo

Mrs Jonathan's Electoral Value

Mom

Just a quick note. I'm still going to do a long piece on this phenomenon called Dame Patience Jonathan, our first lady. But we must acknowledge right away her indefatigable role in bring in the votes for her husband. She criss-crossed the country, rallying the womenfolk to vote for her spouse, and got him to announce a 35% affirmative action for Nigerian Women if he wins.

She is a fighter, and a winner's talisman!

When (not if!) the president gets reelected in April, all his supporters owe Patience a world of roses. And she will get it.

Patience is your daughter, Mom, keep praying for her.

Ever
Dayo

Niger Delta is Looking Up

Hi Dad

We thank late president Umaru Musa Yar'Adua for the amnesty programme that has restored peace in our native Niger Delta. And we praise President Goodluck Jonathan for sustaining the programme.There is now a coordinated and well-funded portfolio of gigantic development projects being executed across the region.

No matter who wins the presidential election this year, Niger Delta remains a top priority agenda of State. We can't dare otherwise. I'm excited.

Linking our area up with Lagos and opening up the coastal communities, including Delta and Ondo States, means that our native Isokoland and Ilajeland be in for a new lease of life! You and Mom should be excited, too.

But the most inviting for me is the human capital development component - i.e. training and retraining, skill acquisition, work experience through study tours and internships, tertiary education, etc. Tie this to resource support through microfinance, and you be my friend! I'm excited.

After the elections, I look forward to making my own contribution to this unfolding transformation. I'll give it my best short, I promise.

Yes, Dad, our Niger Delta is finally looking up! And I'm excited.

Your happy son
Dayo

FOOD Insecurity

Dear Mom

I speak of foods & drinks - especially water! - as the most frightening lack in the land today. You see women basically manufacturing meals out of nothing for their families - especially our hapless kids! And you wonder, you just wonder.

It takes weeks to grow most basic staples and their condiments. And we can do this all-year-round in this country. It takes days to do wells and boreholes in any part of this country. And we have the knowhow, can procure or produce the tools/equipment, and have millions of idle hands waiting to be deployed. No, our leaders won't! And you wonder, you just wonder.

FOOD Insecurity debases all of us. As endowed as we are here, we should be worrying more about less fortunate countries, drought-ravaged lands, poverty-stricken communities, where Nigerian food aid should flood. Alas, we are the shameless and wasteful ones asking for foreign assistance in agric! I shudder at what
our so-called partners think of us, say behind us. Do our leaders care? You wonder, you just wonder.

Well, citizens must ACT in self-defence, self-actualization. Let the private sector and civil society step in! We know now that when they do, things change virtually overnight.

I speak of it today because I'm optimistic that 2011 elections will give us the leverage, willy-nilly. And like you, when you were here, I worry about the fate and state of women and children worldwide. It will be well, by God's grace. Amen.

Love
Dayo

I like This Build-Up!

Dad, Mom

For a very long time, we have been asking what happened to the new democracy we got back from the military in 1999. Somehow, we got the wrong players herded by the worst kind of "democrats"! The rest, as you elders say, is history. Now, we are rebuilding our democracy and we seem to have found TWO good hands slaving in the trenches: President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan and INEC Chairman Professor Attahiru Jega. I say they are patriots.

All events leading up to the 2011 elections are dramatic, will be dramatic, and even more dramatic, as we proceed. They will also give us enough trauma for our lethargy, before releasing upon us the soothing balm and tranquility we so richly deserve! I am thrilled.

You won't believe how so bad things have gone in this land, Dad, even with the high and mighty. No-one is sleeping with both eyes closed anymore - even in military barracks! Can you beat that? Sad. All these challenges are self-made, self-inflicted. No question. So, we say to our leaders: If you no fit go, comot road! So far, they've resisted. Not anymore - 2011 is the beginning of the last bus-stop. And e don dey happen! See the party primaries.

This build-up is warming my heart. Why? Because we have the best chance of changing our leaders and their spinners and their cabals and their fronts and their goons nationwide. It is even pitting families against themselves already. Change is in the air, change is creeping upon this long-traumatized land! Inexorably.

In a few weeks, we will dawn in a new democracy - A New NIGERIA!

Pray for us.

Love YOU Both
Dayo

The Scare of VIOLENCE

Dear Dad

There is no hiding the facts: violence is everywhere!

Why is there no end to violence? Because injustice is everywhere!

Why can't we stop injustice? Because of the winner-takes-all mentality everywhere!

Yet, Dad, there is enough to go round - each country, and the world. More than enough.

Just wondering if we know that you folks up there took NOTHING on your way OUT of HERE!

With love,
Dayo