And I Found Home | Guest Post for English Language Day

"If there is one thing Jennifer Emelife communicates in this short piece, it is that the book and language present us with possibilities, and when we tap into these, there is no quantifying the fulfillment we experience nor is there any limit to our growth." - Editor's note.

Guest Writer: Jennifer Chinenye Emelife

I grew up in an environment where Literature was a wandering young pregnant lady with an attractive face but no home. People saw her on the streets, greeted her with a quick smile and even quicker steps. There were only a few young people enthusiastic about writing, and they didn't show it. But I had a number of friends in secondary school who formed a small reading circle.

Ramatu was the one who always had all the books. Amarachi somehow knew how to get them from her. I usually saw big Nafisa fondle one or two books during assemblies and each time it got to little Rafat's turn, I knew they were soon coming to me. That was how I got half the books I owned then.

SPEAKING IN MANY TONGUES | Guest post for International Mother Language Day

"An advocate for the inclusion of mother language, not only in education, but other important areas of development, Kola Tubosun shares his thoughts on mother tongue and the prospects in development, for International Mother Language Day." - Editor's note

Guest Writer: Kola Tubosun

Let me start from where we all agree: language is important, and so is education. Where the disagreement usually comes is when we insist that mother tongue education is the most important education of all. The ability to speak is a crucial aspect of our humanity. Not just speech, by the way, but language. Those unable to utter speech have found other ways to communicate through sign languages. But let’s talk about speech -- our ability to vocally communicate our deepest thoughts. Along with our ability to stand erect (monkeys have that, after all), it is the only thing separating us from animals. Whether one be an Eskimo in the north pole, an aborigine in Australia, a native American in North Dakota, or an Igbo man in Enugu, one thing that we all share is our ability to vocally respond to our environment with dexterity, creativity, and originality; the ability to speak in ways never before conceived by any other person. The ability to speak in one’s mother tongue only intensifies the peculiarity of that experience.

NOT BEYOND US: MY PERSONAL STORY | Guest Post for World Cancer Day

"A deeply moving survivor's story that shows cancer is truly #NotBeyondUs and that hope, in Akoth's own words, is essential to the will to live." - Editor's note.

Guest Writer: Akoth Otieno

I held my hand under the tap and let a stream of water run on it. I was struggling not to look at myself in the mirror because I was yet to make peace with the woman I was becoming. Underneath the pretty scarf on my head lay a bald no one knew existed. None of my classmates knew about the chemotherapy. I did not know I could get to a point where I literally have to count the number of seconds to my next fake bathroom break so I could cry my frustrations away. I did not know how I was to get past the next hour. I did not know whether I would make it past the day. But I was yet to learn what it meant to surrender. I was yet to learn to fight, yet to know that pain demanded to be felt and that the only way we could soak in joy is if we accepted our pains and learnt to live with them. I was yet to know that my pain could be used to someone’s gain. I was yet to learn that my story was not mine and that I needed more emotional support than I thought.

WE CANNOT STOP; THE STRUGGLE MUST CONTINUE | Guest Post for Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation Day

"Many myths have characterized the justification of female genital mutilation. In this expository article, Barbara walks us through history guiding us to see the consequences of these myths entrenched in improbable reasons and challenges us to rise to the call to end female genital mutilation. " - Editor's note

Guest Writer: Barbara Mhangami-Ruwende

The term Female genital mutilation (FGM) encompasses all procedures that intentionally alter or cause injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons and with no health benefits to women and girls. This harmful practice is concentrated in 29 countries in Africa and the Middle East and with less frequency in other countries around the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that there are over 25 million women and girls who have undergone FGM. This practice is legally prohibited in many countries, and it has been designated a violation of the human rights of girls and women. The health consequences of FGM include bleeding to death, frequent urinary tract infections, loss of sexual pleasure, infertility, complications during childbirth and increased risk of newborn deaths. The overall quality of life for women and girls is often compromised due to FGM. 

"I" IS FOR ISM, ANTISEMITISM AND HOLOCAUST | Guest Post for International Day of Commemoration of Memory of the Victims of Holocaust

"Comparative and expository. This article will get you thinking deeply. Opinions expressed, however, are that of the author and his alone" - Editor's note.

Guest Writer: Carl Terver

The #JesuisCharlie hashtag is said to be one of the most popular hashtag in the history of Twitter. What made this hashtag so popular? Belief is a strong force that the best psychoanalysts haven't understood the phenomenon behind it. It's a force so strong that compels the human mind to undertake the daring, to firmly hold on to ideals, to adhere to something abstract and even defend it. Following the Charlie Hebdo killings citizens all over the world campaigned in a protest showing their solidarity. Not just this, most people were in this campaign to also support the freedom of speech which the attack on the cartoonists sought to condemn. While these protests and rallies were going on in the whole of Europe and all over the world a settlement, Baga, in Northeast Nigeria was under gunfire, a deadly assault that claimed according to news report about 2000 lives compared to the 19 in Paris. In both incidences people died, there was the loss of human life. In Paris it was a clash of beliefs; in Baga it was the superimposing of belief, belief meted against.

THE WALL BETWEEN US | Guest Post for International Day for Tolerance

"As the United Nations observes International Day for Tolerance, Viola Okolie lends her voice and calls attention to something we may be so quick to discard because it has become the norm - social media intolerance. Social media is a tool for change; if you are fighting on or through it, you'd better ask yourself, "Am I really fighting for change or simply fighting?"- Editor's Note

Image Credit: Blogofmanly 

As Nigerians prepare for the general elections billed to hold on the 14th of February 2015 where they are expected to elect a new group of politicians to steer the country in the right developmental direction, there is palpable tension in the air. If Valentine's day seems like an odd day to head to the polls, perhaps in choosing that day, the elections' umpire - The Independent National Electoral Commission - hopes to piggyback on the average Nigerian's sentimental nature and the worldwide recognition of that date as “Lovers' Day”, to conduct a hitch free election. Hopefully, the euphoria of all the Valentine's Day dinners and roses, cakes and dates would spill over into the next day and the day after and the day after...

ENGAGING YOUTHS IN DEMOCRACY | Guest Post for International Day of Democracy

"You are familiar with the challenges; you know the solutions. If you had no idea, with this, you now do. Now is the time to act. Do not read this and do nothing."- Editor's note.

Image Credit:damajority

Nigeria returned to the democratic path in 1999. But, 15 years after ushering the military out of the political space – a period that is on record as the longest unbroken spell of civil rule in the history of the nation – we can hardly boast of having entrenched basic norms and tenets of democracy in our system, leaving us a democracy only in nomenclature. Our ability to hold credible elections is still in doubt as both declared election winners and losers trade accusations of rigging, manipulation and impropriety after virtually every election. And with election results enmeshed in so much controversy, it raises serious questions as regards how truly representative government at all levels and across tiers really is. Also, the concept of the rule of law which presupposes that no one is above the law is anything but true in this clime. A significant cause of this seeming ‘movement without motion’ is because the same crop of people under whose watch the system deteriorated and the country began its descent into the abyss are either still in the thick of the action of governance, or are on the sidelines quietly pulling strings and calling the shots.

THE NIGERIAN DREAM | Guest Post for United Nations Day for South South Cooperation

"Is there a Nigerian dream? Is it perhaps fashioned after the American dream? If there is a Nigerian dream, what exactly is it? This, Julius believes, is what the Nigerian dream is--the dream of optimism"- Editor's note

 

A few years back, when my nationalism was at its peak, I was often involved in intellectual skirmishes with my childhood friend, Kumo Ikoko. I call it intellectual skirmishes because Kumo's points were so valid that sometimes, secretly, I yielded and sometimes the argument will be so heated that someone's emotionally charged remark would burst the balloons keeping the other person's ego afloat. I believed then that Nigeria wasn't just a cluster of very different people and even more diverse dreams flying around and sharply contradicting or threatening the next man's dream. Kumo believed so too. Kumo believed that for every nation to exist there must be something strong as its foundation, something sweepingly fundamental like a general religion, or something as essential and as healthy as an obsessive ideology or a singular national language other than that which was brought centuries ago. But these things, according to Kumo, where absent in Nigeria.

LET'S TALK ABOUT SUICIDE | Guest Post for World Suicide Prevention Day

"Take a seat, this conversation is about to begin...straight, simple, yet deeply reaching."-Editor's note

 

Suicide—the ‘S’ word no one wants to talk about; simply defined as the act of killing yourself because you do not want to continue living. But there is nothing simple about it. Many people around the word go quiet when the ‘S’ word comes up in conversation. What don’t they want to talk about or listen to? What is the truth about the ‘contagion effect’ that talking about suicide is supposed to bring on?

Suicide has hit closer to home for me than I could ever imagine. Within a couple of years, a close friend, friends of my daughter, my daughter and then friends, family and relatives of people I knew. I did get a chance to ask someone close to me how it was in the darkest moments. I wanted to know how the darkness engulfed the emotions. If a person thought about what life would be like without them in it. What it would be like for the ones that cared about them. What I found out was that even though the person knew how much he/she would be hurting others with the ‘what if’s’ and the ‘I should have ….’, it was the overwhelming need to end the internal hurting that takes over. The impulsive moment that can’t be turned back. 

BOKO HARAM, THE NORTHEAST AND NIGERIAN LITERACY | Guest Post for International Literacy Day

"Thought provoking. The words reach for you, unlock your mind and nail home their points."--Editor's note

 

“Praise be to God who created writing as a means of communication between distant men, an interpreter between neighbours, a vehicle of greeting between friends, a source of delight amongst the ulama (scholars) and of sorrow amongst the unlettered. Verily, had it not been for it, communication would have ceased and transactions would have been impossible.”

These words are instructive because they were written in Nigeria’s northeast, now held in the thraldom of the sect known as Boko Haram. The name Boko haram easily translates as “Western learning is forbidden” and, amongst the pedestrian elements who form the bulk of its members and the common folk to whom it is of the greatest danger, it forbids all learning beyond the Islamic as prescribed, naturally, by the sect. Schools have in consequence been burned and bombed, students killed and raped and all elements of education and literacy have become the targets of Boko Haram. Over 200 girls have remained in captivity for several months now, having been kidnapped from their school in Chibok by Boko Haram. The Nigerian State has failed to #BringBackOurGirls

GETTING COUNTED FOR HUMANITY | Guest Post For World Humanitarian Day

"Short, engaging, directed at us all but with focal point on our youths, this write-up for World Humanitarian Day reminds us all of our responsibility to the society and to give whatever we can, no matter how little. And of course, to do that while we still have the time"- Editor's note 

Image Credit: ifrc.org

It is no longer news that the world is faced with myriad of challenges. Every country in the world today is faced with one problem or the other. In the Middle East, terrorism holds sway as thousands of lives are being cut short by the Islamic State (ISIS) group. Russia and Ukraine have been involved in a terrible duel for months now and this has also claimed a lot of lives. Thousands of civilians and military personnel have been sent to the great beyond over irreconcilable differences between two nations.

THE FEAR OF BEING ALONE | Guest Post for International Youth Day 2014



"More often than not, we get uncomfortable about things and people that are not in tune with that which we have made comfortable in our personal realities and this influences our actions which in turn have (heavy) consequences. We need to step outside our comfort zone to reach for those who need our help."- Editor's note

Image Credit: tapestrysb



While growing up, I had a girl in my class who was smart, intelligent but had a shockingly low self-esteem and was afraid of being alone. She was always begging for two things: love and acceptance. She would write people’s notes for them while they went on break, trying so hard to get accepted in cliques she’d tell fake stories that put her in a sympathetic light. She had emotional issues and anxiety disorder that manifested in her actions no matter how hard she tried to cover. Soon, despite her efforts to fit in, she gave up from the rejection she got and withdrew. Last thing we heard was she’d transferred to another school.

For The Child That Wins Bread | Guest Post for World Day Against Child Labour

"This article took me back to my own childhood experience and there's a smile on my face at the memory. However, reality tugs at that smile and images of children, child-workers fills the screen of my mind. As you read, remember your childhood experiences, whether good or bad, and strive to contribute to freedom for the child-workers in our environment. Say an empahtic "no" to Child labour."- Editor's note.



Image Credit: UNICEF

I was in primary four I think. After school I would get back home, take that annoying compulsory siesta and then watch the rest of the day go by. Some of my schoolmates on the other hand, were luckier--they had this really fun after-school job where they stacked trays with all sorts, placed it on their heads and waltzed into the horizon.

Sear the Rod, Soil The Child | Guest Post for International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression

"Sear the Rod; Soil the Child will get you thinking along with the writer, and will stop you short with a reflective stare when you are done reading. Why, despite the numerous bodies 'fighting' for the rights of children do we seem to have little or no improvement? Find out the grassroots of the aggression children suffer. As you read, set your mind free, and decide to do the same for a child."- Editor's note.

A most deviant, yet cursorily time-honoured motif of our age, perhaps an ethnical canon – The child is no caution for old storms – pays homage, as with every semblance of distorted religious insinuations, to infringement – No struggle, no childhood. To be a child is to grow from a battle-broken soil of innocence. In turn, these are premises accountable for the very anticlimax that defines public delusion. However, the belittled but certain truth remains: any such phenomenon that fashions terror to the child as a convention of growth is aggression. Any form that inspires aggression from within a child also is aggression to that child. It is rather all too maddening to measure the toxin, to try to weigh it against pardonable shades. Subtle or stark, it interprets as barbaric nursing, the kind that sets the land to be haven for unspeakable visions of violence and injustices. A nation ignores it at its own peril.

Our Children; Our Treasures | Guest Post for International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression

"Our Children; Our Treasures is a call to each soul to reflect once more on the role we all play in safeguarding the rights of the children of the world, and a challenge to rise and do all that is needed to keep these treasures for they hold our future in their hands and in their hearts."-- Editor's note.

The children of the world are one of our most valuable assets and at the same time, one of our most vulnerable. Having the same basic human rights as every other human being is the God-given right of the children in our societies. What are human rights? Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, whatever our nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status (age is a status). We are all equally entitled to our human rights without discrimination. These rights are all interrelated, interdependent and indivisible. Our very humanity and inherent knowledge of "right" and "wrong" implores us to come together with great urgency and take action to protect, nurture and care for the children of the world. They are our treasures; they hold our future in their hands and in their hearts.

POET'S RAGE and DEAD TEMPLES (#4 of Co-authored Poems for World Poetry Day)

POET'S RAGE

Image Credit: ashlylorenzana

If my pen could sputter bullets
How I would riddle your frame
With a thousand heated words!

If I could ink, now, scalding acid,
Would I not drown your greedy throat
That your tongue may lie no more?

If only I could rhyme you death
And enjamb your stolen laughter
With spells of lingering tears!

WHAT CAN BE MORE STICKY and WHAT CAN WORDS DO? (#3 of Co-authored Poems for World Poetry Day)

WHAT CAN BE MORE STICKY

Image Credit: julianrees.com

What is the magnet that can bind
white and black fingers in heart-shake?
What is the string that can tie us scattered broomsticks
and make us one sturdy broom
sweeping oppression and poverty away?

What can be more sticky
than this phenomenal ‘aragum’
bonding our diversities, gluing tongues and tribes
to settle pending rancour
in this flaming fiery furnace?

In these words the heart is poured – gentle, petting, stark
sheathing daggers drawn from the world of abandon
calling back the conscience...
Words marred by ambiguity yet uniting thoughts
upturning the ban, the exile of peace?

In the exile of peace, we become refugees
in our own land – nursed by fear
With the renaissance of words we regain hope
The words are the deep lines of every free verse
The words are the rich melodies in every rhythm and rhyme

I'm awed, mouth agape. How words rebuild
The broken emotions of fallen nations!
O' potent words that thaw our fears!
Please brighten our visions!
Cleanse our memories and water our love!

CO-AUTHORS FROM WRR COLLEGE OF POETRY
This poem was co-authored by Iyeomoan Emmanuel Ehizogie, Dumejes Momalife and Amatanweze Tochukwu Offorbuike) 

NIGERIA and Border Lines of Change (#2 of Co-authored poems for World Poetry Day)

NIGERIA

Sited at the confluence of Lokoja

With her legs spread across Niger and Benue rivers

Adorned with lush greens and blessed with natural endowments

You swam through colonial rivers

Until the staff of freedom you possessed

THE SECOND INTIMATION (For World Poetry Day)

Guest Writer: Oyin Oludipe

GETHSEMANE

Bust sleepy vault-coughs, blackened drapes

Presage the end of time…or night, prayers,

Surge-bending invaders of the shady phase

Roost, witness to the dancing blades –

Confluence of coal-skin pyres as vision

Shrunk to visionary, truth was stain

Upon visor-faiths and earth was bearer

Of heavy waters of the shivering pore,

Intestate tunes of poem and plea – labourers

To that new sedition for reason

It ran the course of dirge to waive

The smoke cruel, to purge sterile plumes

From intimate corners of thought,

Glaze passions in the cup of woe to sham

Redemption, rituals of birth till it rack

Lips for the entombed world of bones

And all that world spun bold against the fall

Of utterance, filled spaces of the night

With lighted beings to blur the litany in the wind 

POETRY (#1 Co-authored poems for World Poetry Day)

I.

Ink

flowing

on a page

slithers with ease

on a smooth surface

Paper and pen in sync

executing perfect twists

Making this turn, and then that one

bearing message for all and sundry

wielding words on an errand, poetry!

II.

Toddling voice sweep through the hurricane

In society of shut-eyes drowned in gradual spate

Witness of swift, shivering waves toss to and fro

Feet slack in mud of doubtful faith row

Tempests, shadows, frailties, all lost in hopeless souls

Life wounds quickly heal

The dumb now sings

Street now palace

Abandoned have fame harassed

Oppression in pockets of the weak

When ink flows in a non-stop streak

III.

Like a tree with many branches

You touch men with your verses

To some, it's pure lashes

Others receive and change their courses

...You are poetry

the voice crying from the wilderness

Like the river with more than one wing

You flow into the heart of every being

To some, you're fresh like the morning spring

Others hear but refuse to go with what you bring

...You are poetry,

the voice crying from the wilderness

IV.

'Tis virgin wine. Wash your throat with little sips

Let it lull your mind to a lucid sleep

Lie down on this slate. My words paint lurid dreams

Let our minds hug in this word-filled realm

Where creative words take form is where you lie

At the soul of craft and every riddle

On this plain is where love lives and dies

In here, fantasy grows real and fickle

To the lonely soul, 'tis a friend so longed

Its poetry, the soul of the sweetest song

the first stanza of ten lines  

CO-AUTHORS from WRR College of Poetry
This poem was co-authored by Sam de Poet, Emmanuel Emperortee Theophilus, Oku-Ola Paul Abiola and Modestus Nkem Okennwa)