Tuesday, June 26, 2007

President Yar'Adua and ... trouble!

hey people!





I am back in the village of Bwari, back to burying my head in law books, so you might not be seeing me for long periods (even if its just to prtend that I'm serious abi?!). However, this phase is ending in August by His Grace, so it's really nothing.

Will be posting any articles of mine that are in the papers and any other bit and piece I can - and will try to update the diary.

Meanwhile, this trouble I have to look for since I have two - three, in fact - raging opinions I have to share:

First, I think Yar'Adua messed up big time!!! I was already beginning to feel soothed by his approach after being raped for years under OBJ - but Yar'Adua ripped open that sore again with his puerile strategy. This more than anything is what proves that he is not his own man ... yes, he probably wanted to prove he also, like OBJ, cannot be pushed around, but therein - in not being able to insist on doing things your own tested and trusted way - lies the real weakness .

FOllowing that, my fears over my Big Bros, Segun Adeniyi, didnt even take a month to develop. His article in the papers last week was just WRONG. DOes something happen to them when they get to tht Aso Rock?!?! How come the same Segun Adeniyi who once advised government spokesmen that attacking journalists is never a wise approach, now turn around to do justr that?!?! He was a columnist just under a month ago!!! And his new job as Special Assistant, Media is about his boss, not about him ... he shouldnt do this to himself - and to us.

Also, there's this girl who contributes to the Arts pages of Thisday on Sunday, Joy Bewaji - who basically spends time lambasting other columnists (yeah, that has included me, so no wonder I am being sarcastic!lol) - but this time she was actually in a rare moment, praising someone, only it turned out ALL WRONG. I had said I would NOT comment on the Cest La Vie fiasco, afterall the storm has passed and Aunty Betty is a role model - but that doesnt mean that someone should try and pull wool over our eyes! What Aunty Betty wrote was wrong on SO many other levels I can't mention now. She has apologised and that is big of her, even though we do not know again, like Jeremy said, if the problem was 'editorial slip' or 'production mix-up' - for whatever it was she apologised, she was wrong, she made a mistake she shouldnt have - she's only human. Ka chineke mezi okwu.

But for this Joy girl to now say she did NOTHING wrong (you can check last sunday's paper on thisdayonline.com) simply because all her other articles have been 'inspiring'?! Just because she has done this and that? See, the world's biggest hypocricies have collapsed by just one Freudian slip such as this, and while I am not saying that is the case here (I have no right to make such judgements - at least not in public) I am just asking that no one should insult my intelligence.

Aunty did wrong. Aunty hurt another woman. Aunty pissed others off. Aunty apologised. We hope Aunty doesnt do this again. These are the material facts - let no one try to conflate them please.

How was your week?

Thanks A LOT for leaving comments even when I take soooooooooooooo long to reply them ...

Cheers,
Chude

p.s: my friend jude dibia, is doing a really creative thing for his new book, getting two brilliant spunky WOMEN, Mobolaji Adenubi (those in Nigeria's writing community know her)and Nonye Bethel to discuss his new book, Unbridled - which he wrote in a fmale narrative voice ..... It's from 2-4pm at the Terra Kulture this saturday ... Jude will be signing books I suppose! To see a blog-review of the book, cheack Adaure's blog. Cheers

25 comments:

Unknown said...

'This more than anything is what proves that he is not his own man ... not having your own strategy for doing things is just WEAK'.

well said....

... God help us with yar'adua...he needs a plan...

.... ur aunty betty .. i like her ... love her magazine.. she made a mistake....please lets forgive her...abeg....

God's grace with ur law exam and all...

my week so far... JOYFUL....LOL

Anonymous said...

i think aunty betty was very wrong. even if she's human, she went a bit too far publishing that article. i think it just reflects her true self..... my opinion***

Anonymous said...

hey,where on earth is Agbani Darego our very own miss world??

Anonymous said...

whats with all this 'aunty,aunty' business?
Anyway, i totally feel you on the Segun Adeniyi marra as I've been so skeptical about if he can make a difference when everyone else around him just wants the old way of doing things to continue...there must be something in the AC over there that messes with people's heads!!
I'm not too surprised though when you consider the NONSENSE Oluremi Oyo became,same with Akin Osuntokun...lets not worry ourselves, its their own, honour, name, intergrity and reputation that is at stake...there is life after power...its better to get chucked out than to change yourself to hang on to the job...if you know anyone who has mr.adeniyi's ears, let them talk to him cos he is really disappointing his fans...
that said, good luck with ur bar finals and kill that civil proc!

Anonymous said...

Mr. chudy.

Your recent post "me, yar'adua and ... Trouble!" reminds me of a recent discussion I had with a couple of friends on the multi-dimensional plane of the human mind vis-à-vis our line of thinking and thought processes... Be rest assured it wasn’t a research proposal or peer review session!

Certain points crossed my mind on reading your post, which I have highlighted and would share with you. After all, you authored them;

"Meanwhile, this trouble I have to look for since I have two - three, in fact - raging opinions I have to share"

Having raging opinions to share is not synonymous to trouble-shooting, except of course there is malice intended.

"Also, there's this girl who contributes to the arts pages of thisday on Sunday, joy Bewaji - who basically spends time lambasting other columnists (yeah, that has included me, so no wonder I am being sarcastic! Lol"

Sarcasm is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own - Jonathan 'Isaac bickerstaff' swift. (Dublin, Ireland 1667)

“But for this joy girl to now say she did nothing wrong (you can check last Sunday’s paper on thisdayonline.com, simply because all her other articles have been ‘inspiring’? Just because she has done this and that?”

All good pr articles exhibit one element ‘damage control’ they are never intended to take the blame or slack off the bunkum and neither did this article, which thanks to your vitriolic I have memorized.

“See, the world's biggest hypocrisies have collapsed by just one Freudian slip such as this, and while I am not saying that is the case here (I have no right to make such judgments - at least not in public) I am just asking that no one should insult my intelligence.”

These are apparently misguided and jaundiced views of the bone of contention, needless to say an offshoot of your apparent sour relationship with joy Bewaji – which if I recall was precipitated by your caustic and contumelious, use of derisive language in your past articles in thisday.

“Aunty did wrong. Aunty hurt another woman. Aunty pissed others off. Aunty apologized. We hope aunty doesn’t do this again. These are the material facts - let no one try to conflate them please.”

Succinctly put you are correct, but if that were all you had to say about joys article, then you are probably not a man admired for the depth of his perception.

Brgds

Olaitan Olaoshebikan

Anonymous said...

Thank God I'm not the only one who thought someting was wrong with joy's article. I read over and over, and I just concluded that the 'writing people' have no choice but to have each others backs regardless of what they've done. It was like joy was adding petrol to the fire. Anyways, I wish betty luck with her mag, hope she doesn't lose anymore readers. I stopped buying ages ago, that mag is a waste of my N600, articles don't make to much sense, the pics are badly cropped and never touched up, I can go on an on but there's no need for me to rant and rave.
Good luck with the rest of law school.

Anonymous said...

i do not like articles of this nature, it reeks of plain immaturity and myopia. you obviously are a spoilt teenager for refering to a married woman as 'this joy girl'. i read Mrs. Bewaji's articles every sunday and i cannot remember at anytime when she turned it into a medium for 'lambasting other columnists'. this obviously has nothing to do with the 'ce la vie' aricle. it's beef- plain and simple! do i sense professional jealousy? someone u had worked with in the past had referred to u as a 'growing monster' (i was told by a cousin who works for her). i don't know u, but with all that i have heard and read, it seems u feel u are an immortal specie when it comes to journalism. take it easy or else u'd have more enemies than friends before u clock 30.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Chude there was no where in that article that Mrs. Bewaji tried to justify Mrs. Irabor's degrading article. i had to read it again and it looks like good PR to me. and she never said Mrs. Irabor did nothing wrong. were u half asleep whilst reading? or is there more to this distasteful article of yours? i guess ur headline says it all: you are just out to make trouble. pity!

Anonymous said...

na wa o! u just throw missiles to anyone u like, including married women. i heard u've done same to mariam Arthur and others like that. what did u say Mrs. Bewaji wrote in that article that is wrong? am not a journalist like u but i don't know what was so wrong with what she wrote. you need to be careful though. it's not nice the way u handle simple issues

Anonymous said...

You are suffering from chronic oral flatulence and egoistic dementia to speak of my Mrs. Joy in such a manner; you seem to have grave issues with your masculinity, always looking for a woman to debauch, an antecedent you probably inherited from your afro centric forbearers, who by the way would promptly disown you for your sexually perverse orientation… Don’t you dare, ever or else your groin is mincemeat for the chops... If you have the balls publish this!

Chude! said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Chude! said...

@ my stories,
okay i have adjsted that part about being 'Weak' - it goes against my resolvce to have faith in this new president!lol but yeah this really scares me. it is not my place to forgive aunty betty o; this is about the way the 'damage control' is going, not about the article itself. dont say sorry and then go round de-emphasising the apology.

@anon,
i see ur point - then again, like i said, the issue of 'true self' is not sumthing i cam comment on in public.

@dare,
odiegwu! wetin concern agbani for this matter kwa?!lol

@anon2,
iots really disappointing. nna tank you so plentiful - how you take know say na me and civil procedure?!lol

@olaotan,
well you would have to ask those who admire that very 'depth or perception' what was put in their plates of food that morning!!

@anon3,
now you, i REALLY wish you had put ur name in here!!!

@busola
LOL. Oh dear, Joy really is upset isnt she?! Okay, my dear Busola, dont put her in trouble. There are only two or three people who 'I worked for' in the past - others I still work for/with, and out of them three it is very easy for those who know to know who thius 'one' you refer to is and why ... be wise, my sister - some battles arent worth it, especially when ther're not even urs.

@joy�s crew generally,
Anyways, a number of people have asked me not to publish the comments - afterall that's why I have comment moderation, but I have decided against that. Afterall, I did say i would be looking for trouble so why should I not be man/woman enough to take as good as I give?!

Note though that after one or two days I will delete it, because I have learnt the principle of doing away with foul stuff � they get to you if you let them stay too long. Now, iny case, I do have good reason to have deleted those comments in the first place: when you read the comments of this 'focus group' you would see that they seem to know quite a lot about joy, including the fact that she had written something very puerile about me sometime ago. Even more laughably they go ahead to make the very same points she did when she sent me a rather childish text yesterday, amongst which is the fact that I have no right to write about her like this because she is a married woman with children! You can make your conclusions from that. But really - what�s all this �Mrs. Bewaji�, �Mrs. Joy� and �she is married�?!

As to the accusation of sarcasm and 'biff' etc - didnt you read the piece?! I made it very clear that I was being sarcastic and I have biff against the girl! No question about that - that might make me small-minded at the point in time or show that I am not 'forgiving', but, excuse me, that's why I make it very clear that no one should expect flawless conduct from ma. Go find your space � go, go!

This I will say though, for the purposes of clarity: that piece was not about Joy - no matter how good it might mke her feel to believe otherwise. When she did write the piece on me, no matter how she tried, I refused to react to it in public or for that matter in private. When she took that 'biff' as far as going against the interview that she hounded me for weeks for before I granted, I still reckoned she wasnt worth the trouble. I have been itching to say something about the Cest la Vie article, because perspectives were being confused, and I found that opportunity - Joy just happened to have stimulated that reaction. But I have no qualms in expressing the fact (heck, I even tried to be lighthearted! How big of me!lol) that I think little of Joy. I am the kind of person that loves to love everyone and be loved by everyone, but as you go on you find out that there really are good people and bad people.

Whatever sha, what really worries me is that she and her friends bring her husband and child into this meaningless, pointless 'battle'. It's unfair to her family, and it's really in low taste.

Anonymous said...

Chude, what pisses me the most about you sometimes is you claim to be vibrand and fearless and then hold back when it comes to the real brave stuff! afterall you write for a competitor, so why aree you afraid to say what you really think of aunty betty? we all know she is a nasty person - why are you saying you can't say those things in public? oh so you can say them in private right - and that makes you what? sensible and careful? bullshit! funmi, jeremy - all of them came right out and said what they thot! like someone else said here, you journalists all just cover up ur own asses - dont even criticize the Bewaji person; even though her articles week after week irritate the shit out of me - at least on that i am happy you came out and said it straight - you havent shown here that you are made from better stock!

Anonymous said...

what's with this she is a married woman bullshit.I did not see the point that made for those defending the Joy lady.what Betty Irabor did was wrong plain and simple,there is no justification for it.I am glad most sensible people saw through the charade.
Amarachi.

Anonymous said...

well said Seun. The fact that the Nigerian media would even give Chude a space to rant his nonesense is indicative of how low Nigerian journalism has sunked.

Whats all this nonesense about aunty betty this and aunty betty that? arn't u suppose to be part of a new/future generation of Nigerians looking to bring about change? Isn't continous subscription to the language of seniority holding us back?

But you are right though, that Joy woman talks a load of shit. And as for the commentators who are berating you for calling a married woman a girl, they should just get over it.

Angela.

Anonymous said...

i believe people have the right to express their views and therefore see nothing wrong in what chude has written. if anything at all, he has sugar-coated his displeasure at the article of the highly insensitive and obviously uneducated 'aunty'betty irabor. This view is also shared with everyone i know who read the article. apology or no apology !!!i literally almost FELL off my chair after reading it.
As for his 'beef' with mrs joy B, i would suggest that he sticks to the morals of his profession and not use his talent to seek revenge..

We are all Nigerians..For Heaven's sake, lets collectively try and make our country a better place..

Anonymous said...

@ annon 1:00am,
whatever else you may have against genevieve,there is NO truth whatsoever in your assertion that the pictures are not touched up or are badly cropped!!! thst is such an obvious and sour lie-it makes me question evrythng else you've written! They make use of some of the most talented photographers in Lagos today;Kush,TY Bello, etc...dont even go there!!
If anything else, their pics are the ish

Lola said...

wow, chude, i really wish here that i even read the article causing so much furor. There seems to be so much behind all of this but i won't touch all that cuz.....well, it ain't important to me! :o) but i feel ya about the girl/married woman ish. who cares? why does she have to be bring her husband and kids abi na u born am? abi na u force am marry? i hate when nigerian women do that. just because you are married doesn't make u infallible.

'k bye!

Chude! said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Chude! said...

@Seun,
since you have called and apologised, i might as well leave all the other issues alone: suffice it to say generally that even if aunty betty (yes, i said it again!) slapped 10 positive people in the face, in criticizing her, i have to be careful. like someone else it was very obvuious i was only sugarcoating my displasure - but the displeasure was clear. I make absolutely no apologies for choosing my battles carefully. I call Mrs. Irabor Aunty Betty in flesh, nasty or not, I have no reason to treat her with any less respect simply because i have a blog. (and no i will not delete your comment - dont worry, it didnt annoy me when i first read it - and it would serve me well each time i need to be 'courageous' eh?lol)

@amarachi,
thank you.

@angela,
first let me make it clear that this 'aunty' article that pains you so much wasnt published in the media - it was only in this blog. you would have to ignore the joy-crew's hysterics. what is nonsense about calling Betty Irabor aunty? by whose standards do you compare? standards of societies without our heritage that places premium on age? the fact that i am representative of a new generation that is the future does not mean IN THE LEAST that i should become so caught up that i forget where i am coming from just because of where i'm going. our society places premium on age - i do not like it, but i do not necessarily hate it. it also has its uses. that's the problem of youth sometimes - we equate disrespect with vibrance. it's actually folly

@anon1,
revenge? my dear if i had wanted any kind of 'revenge' - forgive me this ego trip - but Joy would have more than a harmless blog entry to be worried about. the fact, like i said, before is that she was simply incidental to what i really wanted to talk about - which was the betty apology. altogether, i would call her insignificant to the piece - and for that matter generally. be well.

@anon 2,
i am assuming you either work for the magazine in question or you stay outside the coyntry? because if you are talkming of kush and ty bello and good quality pictures, then i celieve the magazine you have in mind is a different one. thanks for dropping in sha

Chude! said...

@lola,
sparring partner, see me see local trouble o. the joy girl has been under my radar for years now since she wrote the silly piece. a piece that i actuallly ignored completely. hell who was to know that after all the nasty things she wrote she even read my blog that dedicatedly? her text came barely minutes after the post!lol. na wayas. here i was gossipping to my readers jeje when dem carry winch come meet me! anyways, well said about the marriage thingie - like i said, it's just low. meanwhile, you dey hia or you dey yonder?!

Anonymous said...

I havent read Ms Bewaji's article, so let me go and read and make my comments. Without reading the article though, what is all this rubbish about Joy Bewaji being married? What does that have to do with ANYTHING biko?

So she's married so people shoudn't cross road for her again. Absolute bullcrap. Kolo mentality.

Chude is free to express himself, we are also free to criticize him and THAT GIRL JOY if we so well please. Nonsense

Chude! said...

Thank you o!!!lol

Anonymous said...

hey Chude. The first time i saw the 'C'EST LA VIE'article, i was shocked! couldn't believe she published that! lets call a spade a spade.SHE WAS WRONG. I feel sorry 4 Yinka. as for you, say ur mind. dont hold back.