I’m sure some of you are familiar with songs and memories. As in when ever you hear some songs it reminds you of certain periods, people or event in your life good and bad. It makes you want to shed a tear or smile. The songs I’m working with now on that level are “obodo” the remix by Nigga Raw, “imagine that” by Styl-Plus and “jogodo” by Professor Linkin. I heard those songs over and over again, like a hundred times each day at the various joints in the Gboko NYSC orientation camp. And I equally bumped my head, tapped my feet, sang along or danced to them like a hundred times (the thing about this kind of scenario is that at times you either get sick of the songs or you grow to like them by force). That says so much about the Gboko DJs’ taste and the variety of jamz they have in stock.

The Nigerian job market is one big fear and challenge for graduates; it fucks with you big time. For the guys as a graduate you’re seen as “promising” so you have it some what easier with the ladies, but it’s not the case when you ain’t earning. You loose taste in chicks because at this stage they’re more of an unwanted expense than a lover/friend/f*ck buddy/friend with benefits. Job wise yours truly has been condemned to teach in Benue. It’ll be good as I’ll get the chance to make an impact in the lives of teenagers and it’ll be a nice life lesson/experience (but I never was low on experience and I believe I’m an all rounder who does a good job of adapting to the posh or hard life extremes). But career wise it ain’t shit and it’s more like a one year waste.

In that light self-employment really is the way to go. It’s all about having a winning idea and adequate funding. But it’ll require patience, intelligence and hard work. Me I want to be on that ish, the “your own boss” levels. With that mindset it bothers me when I see people my age or slightly older than me still in school (early college years), still content to be largely dependent on their parents, and flaunting about living the extravagant life when they didn’t personally work for most of what they’re enjoying…E don do, pens down. Right about now the “in memory of the money” song will start playing. Can you hear it?

You must have heard about The Vatican, Neverland and the Kalakuta Republic. But it’s time to forget them all. Today I present to you the Cassava Republic…sorry I mean the Cocoyam Republic. It’s the land of the Wondering Wanderers nonetheless it’s not a place; it’s a state of mind. On this maiden tour of the Cocoyam Republic we’ll be exploring the issues of Orientation, Power shift and what to do when your company sucks.

I’ve always wanted to talk about this issue but the time was never right, but now it is. I’m really annoyed that no one ever took time out to orientate a brother, teach a kid a few things. In primary school quiet as I was I was always drafted into the debate team or one group or another. Little man as at then didn’t wholly grasp the relevance of a debate. Torturous as it was I went through all them stuff to make people happy. In my senior secondary years the words on people’s lips were JAMB UME and priesthood. Didn’t know what the heck JAMB UME was about nor did I understand the next line of action in the other lane: priesthood. How then did they expect a Youngman to have a purpose in life? I got to know the koko about JAMB UME in my final year and I’m still learning about the priesthood path. On to the university nobody properly schooled me on the course registration system or the result computation bureaucratic dynamics. Had to learn from my mistakes and some of them sure were costly. Sex education; forget it. The first time I heard the word sex from my parents was after secondary school when my Pops told me that I should be careful, because now if I “touched” a girl I could get her pregnant. Looking at all this someone might say I should not have been shy, that I should have asked questions and that way people would not have made assumptions. But my brother in this country children are to be seen and not heard. It’s not as easy as it seems. Presently most of the stuff I know is because I’m naturally inquisitive. The Internet has done a lot to feed my brain. People please take two and pass (teach someone). Life’s too short already; don’t make it worse for someone by letting them live in ignorance (ignorance which they’ll grow up to regret).

In these sharing of the national cake and rotational presidency days I wonder what’s up with hardcore power shift people. Don’t get me wrong power shift is a good thing; it lets a country get the best of both worlds at different times and it makes everyone happy. If fighting for South East presidency or for governorship to come to the North Central zone of a state it’s ok with me if you’re fighting because you know you’ve got a suitable leader to lead the country/state. But in reality most people are not fighting because they feel they’ve got the right leader, they’re fighting because they want a share of the national cake. Well politics is a dirty game so I guess it’s all good. But the part that really sucks is when I see a common man who has no links with any politician (Such that if an Hausa man, or a man from his town or Fidel Castro comes into power life will still be the same for him, he’ll still collect the same old poor salary) raising his voice and arguing loudly for power to come to a man from his place. Well what can I say, Nigerians love to talk politics.

Have you ever been in a situation where you know that the company you work for sucks? And to make it successful some staff would have to be done away with and fresh minds recruited. But the thing is that you’re in good terms with those that you think should be sacked and you wouldn’t want to see them out of their jobs. Plus when you go out and your company is being talked about on reflex you defend it/prop it. But in your heart you know the company sucks and that your competitors are way ahead of the game. Worse still you wish you were working elsewhere but you can’t leave because you’ve got no where to go. Ever been in such a situation? What did you do or what would you do?

The Cocoyam Republic…it’s all in the mind baby, it’s all in the mind.

It’s holiday season for the kids here in Naija, a whole two months of it (mid July to mid September). Young boys on my street are now tapping leather from morning to night! Israel and Lebanon are knocking each other out while the world watches; another unresolvable political murder has been committed, this time in Lagos. And yours truly is dragging his fucked up ass to the radio on the regular in the name of work. On that note I kick off my situation report of sorts.

I’ve been doing my thing in the Production department. We do the jingles and adverts, produce programmes and part produce the news etcetera. It’s been alright…I’m getting that knowledge and boosting my CV. One of the good things about this is that you get to meet and work with the stars. Groupie heaven you might say. Gospel artist and Kora award winner Sammy Okposo came by to promote his latest album; ABJ’s own Sixfootplus did same to promote his sophomore album. And upcoming producer turned Ragga artist: Uchie the African Rock star did as like. The director of the Orji Uzor Kalu for President Team: a certain Alhaji (it’s the usual “one Naija” political move. Northerners have Southern hype men and Southerners have Northern hype men) also came through to do his thing. But he blew it big time. He was talking as incoherently as a member of a rented crowd in a political rally would do if asked to explain his political stance. I’m sorry to say but if the eloquence of ones’ campaign manger determines ones’ results at the polls then Orji Uzor Kalu stands no chance in 2007.

Shit is also great cos I’ve been getting a feel of how radio stations work from the inside. Of particular interest to me is the airplay dynamics. A lot of upcoming artist do come around to drop their demos…singles in hope of decent spins to send them on their way to stardom. In fact Ruggedman’s new singles were dropped over two weeks back. I’ve always been of the opinion that we don’t give our local artists enough airtime and I still am. But I’ve been able to see things from the eyes of the On Air Personalities and DJs who do the actual spinning. You see life is all about the money and some complain that it’s unfair that the artists don’t drop a little something-something; especially when the artists goes major. It’s like the “monkey dey work, baboon dey chop” thing. Styl-Plus be touring and getting groupie love while I’m here stupidly spinning the cuts. Anyways it’s a two-way thing; the OAPs make the artist and the artist in turn make for the OAPs to have a job. With skill and dedication ice can always be sold to the Eskimos.

With all the rough drops and liners I have here I’m thinking of doing me a song. Don’t know what a liner is? Maybe this will help you. “Do re mi fa so la ti do”. “Hi this is Jay-Z; you’re listening to Mugu FM 41.9, don’t touch that dial”! You know get a tight beat and rap or sing over it for the verses while using an artist’s vocals as the chorus or part chorus. Have you heard Cassidy’s “I’m a hustler” or 2shotz’ “which level”. Yeah that sorta thing, you just might hear a TRAE and Daddy Showkey song someday.

I better stop here before I’m become the latest employee who gets the boot for blogging. Last line, thanks to Tom Hanks we all know that the Godfather answers all of life’s questions. But do you know what the Godfather said when he was presented with a rotating chair (chair on wheels) for his birthday? He declared it the “greatest thing since sliced bread”! And man he wasn’t far from the truth. If you ain’t sitting on one on the daily than take it from me that you ain’t sitting; you’re standing. Peace!

Weird MC, one of the numerous artists that have made it to the moon…hey Weird who’re you giving the finger to?

So I’ve been nine to fiving at a radio station for a week now. How’s it been? Ok…yeah ok. The highs: for a starter the free fast steady Internet access…yeah definitely that. Funny thing is that in Naija it’s the exception rather than the norm. The experience and knowledge being gained…priceless. It’s really a good way to set going in the industry. The music…music-library, damn! Songs I’ve being dying for are now suddenly all at my feet. God bless me! As for the lows…my friend you don’t wanna know.

During the week Chxta came through; second time meeting up with him. Along with his buddy funny-pimping Oria had fun moving round the city center. Something I hardly do, not that I ain’t outgoing but I’ve got other shit to deal with so I often don’t bother. See the pic below…cool!

Children of the corn: Oria, Chxta and TRAE

A man’s giving a speech at an occasion and he wants to talk about his wife and all that comes out is “and to my beautiful/lovely wife…”. Might not bother you but me thinks giving props to your wife with the only or first compliment being that she’s beautiful is kinda dumb…worldly. I know when it comes to marriage/relationships I’ve got my priorities in ladies well ordered. But for every other runs the dick/eye does the ordering. You know as men the first thing we see in a girl is beauty. If that’s covered then we look at other things…intelligence, humour, manners etc. Poor girls, gots to look their best 24-7 and touch their toes for pot-bellied guys. Talking about beauty fuck all the guys who say that Kemistry is ugly. For me she’s the best female Nigerian rapper I’ve ever heard. A listen to her song “shake ft Terry G” confirms that.

Stereotyping and tribalism is a bitch. We might not want to admit it but we’ve all got it in us to some extent. Hate it when Nigerians go into the tribalism debate. It’s all childish and unproductive cos in essence no one tribe is better than the other. It’s like arguing which are better, red or green apples. Blame the stereotypes in us on our parents, the society and the media that brings us up. Somebody tell me what the fuck you feel when you read this from a teenager on Nairaland in a thread where the aim is to declare your tribe:

uhhh?? Me Igbo?? Tufiakwa! (no offence to the igbo’s oo). But i am not Igbo.

Tufiakwa = “God forbid” in Igbo.

Yeah you sure did hear me right; I’m on some rhetorical bullshit with my diary. As a matter of fact this issue has been bugging me down for months, as you might have read in my other blog posts. But this is how it finally all came to this.

I was at my sisters on Saturday watching TV (Saturday morning family television on DBN) with her kids, when suddenly this Bournvita advert came on. You know the basic kids stuff, some kids in the classroom with their teacher and questions and answers flying back and forth which at the end informs the viewer of a promotion and how to possibly win some prizes from it. Well the crazy thing was that the teacher was this strikingly pretty model material girl: Chioma, who only about a year ago was receiving lectures with me in the economics department of UNN. As a matter of fact she was our departmental association’s Vice President and a one time most beautiful girl on campus. Most importantly though a bomb shell she was very down to earth. Damn, I guess this is my first case of the “I used to know/grow up with that star blues”. Anyway fuck all that, what really bothers me is that she’s raking in the big bucks and will probably be financial independent of her parents possibly very soon while TRAE is still dreaming of his first pay check, moving out and making it on is own as “man”. Damn I wish I grew up in my sister’s generation. Back then (early 90’s) when she was around my age and we were living in London she had a part time job and at least it was sorta ok teenage-pocket money wise. But here I am now going money and independent crazy, you might say I’m lazy or haven’t searched enough. but if you look at situations closely, the sort of jobs which one might consider pocket money jobs for teenagers over there are the sort of jobs people here are doing as their primary source of livelihood.

Damn life sucks. All this depression is leading me to a 419 state of mind. Like Modenine said there’s gotta be four hundred and nineteen ways to come up with the right (money making) scheme. It’s that bad man that I’m scared for my relationship…or is it friendship. I know I’m the shit (ha-ha) and my girl likes me and all that, but man I fear she could bail if she gets a better offer. You know, Nigerian girls and all that marriage and financial stable boyfriend shit. Love sure doesn’t exist in their dictionary. I guess I better strike before I’m struck. Like Terry Tha Rapman in his song “I’m a Nigerian”:

The pressure’s too much I can’t take this no more/
The condition I’m in is turning my girl into a whore/
If a rich man offered a million bucks to sleep with my wife/
I’ll be like sure, take her, gimme half the price/

Back to this Salary stuff I was at my villa/home town last week for a burial. I did have fun and I guess I’m really catching up on my people’s culture and tradition, save for the language problem. But the fact remains that in a few years time there’s gonna be expectations big time. You gotta have some money to “share” with your family and properly rep as a man. Aaaaaaah!!!

Anyway enough of all the worry. Do you guys have any idea of the kind of privileged information on societal going-ons that one can get from being a member of an Internet forum! stuff that the regular guy out there can never know of, will know of much much later or will eventually know of in very small detail. I sure do feel blessed having africanhiphop.com, nairaland.com, cybereagles.com and a host of others as part of my life on the internet. That brings me to football. Thank God the Eagles were able to scrape a draw away in Rwanda. But we sure have issues to deal with if we are to make it to the WorldCup in Germany next year. For one Kanu has gotta hit the bench a lot more often…nice jersey though, like the way the names are printed on the back for every match whether competitive or not. Now we’re starting to look organized like England…Whatever man, let me just enjoy this football-crazy month. We got the U-21 WorldCup, the Confederations cup, the WorldCup Qualifiers and possibly the Unity Cup, hell yeah!

I guess I’ll do anything (even code HTML, don’t know much though) for money…food, like this guy here. Lol.

May 1st was worker’s day and being a Sunday the actual public holiday is being observed today. As expected workers the world over good and bad alike are celebrating and resting. But my bad, I beg to differ cos I ain’t about to praise workers, I’m about to give them a bashing. To be specific, the workers in the Exams department of UNN (University of Nigeria, Nsukka).

While there are many hardworking peeps the world over who are unemployed and desperately seeking employment (I for one. I’m at that stage of my life where I feel I’m wasting. I should be flexing my intellect cum muscles and copping a handsome salary). Others are underemployed and don’t feel happy about it. Yet they do the available work given to them diligently. Yet others as in the case of the Exams department workers in UNN obviously have lazy employees in large numbers amongst them.

The Exams unit is a section of the UNN administrative system in charge of computing student’s results and determining what class of degree they graduate with. Right now my academic status is that I got a reference so I’m doing that external candidate shit. But all looks good and Insha’ Allah I should be serving in the NYSC (National Youth Service Corps) in the March 2006 A batch. But the problem is that the folks at the Exams unit, specifically the man in charge of computing results for my department is one lazy fellow. Maybe I should start by telling you about the nature of the Exams unit.

Just like a large part of the school structure the Exams unit is backwards and uses old school methods to run things. Their office is full of results and students files from many years back untidily arranged. And it baffles me why they don’t want to embrace technology and computerize the results computation process to make their work easy and more efficient. Especially when the school has lots of idle computer systems lying around. A result of having two obsolete cyber-cafes out of the existing three. That’s why computing results is a rigorous process which can be full of flaws and at times subject to fraudulent manipulations by some students in an attempt to graduate with better grades.

These problems coupled with his lazy mentality combines to frustrate would be graduates to the extent that people who should be going for NYSC service in batch A often go in batch B or later and others often spend weeks or even months hanging around the Exams unit just to pursue their results computation. The man in charge of my department results doesn’t help matters at all. He’s hardly on seat. He spends a good amount of time perambulating about the office discussing and joking with others and occasionally breaking off to inhale snuff. I know the amount of students milling around the office to get their results computed can at times be intimidating and distracting. But keeping a solemn face and leaving the office at the slightest provocation will not help matters at all or get his job done faster.

Positivity at work is the key, along with embracing technology and modernity to carry out one’s job faster and more efficiently. I just hope the new Vice Chancellor and the school authorities are aware of the mess that is the UNN Exams unit. God help us all!

Homer J. Simpson, a classic example of a lazy employee…lol.