Another one bites the dust…

Cory Monteith. Michael Jackson. Whitney Houston. What two things do these names have in common? Fame/wealth. Undisputed access to tons and tons of money, acclaim, all that good stuff.

The second thing is illicit drugs/death. Whatever it is they snorted, smoked, injected or inhaled, it led to their death, and very early too. Cory Monteith was 31, Michael Jackson was 50. Talk about lives being cut short.

Exactly one week ago, when I heard Philip Seymour Hoffman had been found dead on the 2nd of February with a needle still stuck in his arm and heroin (a special type called ‘Ace of Spades’) in packets around him, I was sad, then angry, then sad, and angry all over again.

Sad – he died young, he was just 46. He was very popular too, an Oscar award winner, and recently starred in Hunger Games (which by the way I have never watched and don’t think I will ever see because I don’t like fight fight).

Angry – are there not enough examples to prove that drugs are a sure way to die early?

Sad – heartbroken for his family, his wife/partner and their three young children. His parents, and the stigma of being related to the person ‘who died with a needle in his arm’.

Angry – what on earth made him go back to drugs after 23 years of being drug free? Whatever could have entered him all over again? They say his drugs could have been laced with something else. Ok, but why take them in the first place? Why?

I’m sure I could go the sad and angry route a few more times, but I won’t.

Psychologists say anything you do for 30 days becomes a habit – this man had been drug free for at least 8280 days! Then according to a report I read, he started abusing prescription pills, graduated to heroin, and then on to this substance that took his life.

I chatted with someone recently, and he told me the amount of thanks and gratitude he got because he gave him a $5 tip. 5 dollars. Reports say just weeks ago the now late Seymour withdrew $1200 from an ATM to pay for these drugs. $1200 on drugs when the next man is almost throwing a party because he was gifted 5 bucks.

Here’s another reason why I am angry – a child is attracted by the flickering light of a candle, and they want to touch it. Most times we let them because we know once it hurts them that first time, they most likely will not go back to it again. ‘Most likely’ because children have the attention span of a goldfish! Bless them.

23 years after, did he forget? Did he become so wealthy that he felt that the drugs would ‘fear/respect his money’ and not harm him? What was he thinking? The Bible says that the things that are written are unto us for examples.

Just like I wrote the ‘learn from it, don’t be it‘ post when Cory Monteith died, I’m writing again  – say NO to drugs. Say No, and mean it so much that whoever asked you before will be convinced you are not interested. You shouldn’t even be friends with such people in the first place!

RIP Philip Seymour Hoffman.

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SOMEBODY HAS THE WRONG DOCUMENT!!!!

Our ‘Honorables’ tearing at each other….

Some days are good; others are sad, others are ‘not so good’ while some are downright nasty. Today is one of those. It’s amazing the way life goes; a woman gets pregnant, carries the baby for the full term successfully (without any issues) and then dies on the delivery table (for whatever reason). That’s nasty.

A friend of ours wanted to be a doctor, desperately. He got into university, scaled the first year examinations easily and then was faced with the ‘devil’ called 2^nd MBBS. One peculiar thing about the MBBS exam is that there are three courses, and you must pass at least two to move to the next class where you resit the one you didn’t pass. If you pass only one, you repeat the year, and there is a limit on how many times you can repeat a class. Ok? So my friend wrote the exams like four times and failed, in different degrees; bottom line is that at the end of the day, he was still in his original class…

He wrote the exam the fifth time and the day the day the results were released, he was in a village on one of these community outreach visits, teaching best health practices, etc. when his phone rang the first time, the second, third and ninth times, he nearly had a coronary, and didn’t pick out of fear. He finally did and was told he passed all three exams! To add to it, some oil scholarship they applied for years before had come through and his name was on the list pasted outside the Student Affairs Office! Talk about blessings in baskets. Home boy took permission from the coordinators, and then took a bus back to the campus, promising not to believe till he saw for himself. On the way, he had an accident.

Yes, an accident; I’m sorry, there was no way to sugar coat that. My story doesn’t end there though. The accident was ghastly yes but he didn’t die. He was rushed to the hospital lucid but bleeding profusely. The issue then became who would sign for the blood for transfusion, was there blood in the bank at all, what his blood group was, who would pay the deposit, on and on and on, till he died.

Let us leave the overwhelming lapses in the medical sector, forget about the tears I shed that day (and I’ve heard I have a lot of cry in me), and face the truth: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. We can’t keep running around the issues when our mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters and getting swallowed up by the day by monsters that range from unemployment, delayed (or totally withheld) pensions, corruption, police brutality, death traps (a.k.a roads), child abuse, even PHCN is an issue! At some point (and I daresay that point is now), we have to call it. We have to say we are tired of a lying and thieving leadership that tells the youth to eschew violence on the one hand but with the other hand signs away tax payers money to import weapons for the same youths. Bear in mind that we’re not even talking about the violence they perpetuate themselves.

In the recent past we’ve been inundated with reports of our lawmakers behaving like they didn’t read their job descriptions; as if they were elected (or rigged) into the National Assembly to take advanced classes in warfare, with promises to air the practicals on international TV! Or did they just get the wrong document?

The National Communications Commission recently submitted a budget of 13billion naira to the National Assembly; it was found out later to be in error and the actual budget, 800million. NCC said it was a typographical error. Are you kidding me? It must have been a magical typo to have successfully eluded a whole commission, from the person who typed, to the person that approved! Haba!

Still on budgets, Niger Delta Development Commission submitted their own budget with a whopping 90million allocated to marriages and funerals. Oh My God! Even if everyone in the whole NDDC planned to get married on Monday and die on Tuesday, they still wouldn’t need that much! After ten years of existence and the monies sunk into the Commission, what tangible development can we point to? What justification do they have to even include marriages and funerals in their budget; or did they get the wrong document too?

Still on the front burner is the fracas between the number four man in the country and the Chief Executive Officer of Ogun State over who should take the glory of commissioning a road that neither of them started, and took 10 years to finish. Let’s leave the major embarrassment both of them were and note that the Speaker showed up at the event in a convoy of 16 cars. Again, someone must surely have handed him the wrong document on how the human body should function because I am a fairy, and even I cannot divide myself into 16 cars!

I could go on and on and on but I won’t waste your time and mine, neither do I want to spoil your day. Enough is enough people, Wafi pesin go talk say, ‘it haff do’! Posterity will judge every young person who doesn’t register to vote and put an end to this insanity. Posterity will judge every young person who partakes of their blood money to the detriment of a vulnerable, less privileged brother or sister. Posterity will most definitely judge; because we live in out-rightly nasty days.