Lutherstadt Wittenberg: My most avowed intent, to be a pilgrim

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Some background

I have had a long-held desire to visit Lutherstadt Wittenberg, in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, in the east of Germany. Germany has many historic towns, but in my many visits to Germany since 1995, I did not know that Wittenberg was in this part of Germany.

The discovery was by accident, in June 2010 as my whizzed past that Wittenberg station towards Bitterfeld on my way to a wedding in Raguhn, I caught a short glimpse from my train window and nursed a desire to visit since then. I could not get to Raguhn station because that week happened to be one in which the Deutsche Bahn, the German train company was conducting repairs on that line.

The interest

Whilst not overly religious, I have made pilgrimages to religious places, shrines and cities, interested in the history, the people and how the personalities involved changed the course of events. The Vatican, Fatima in Portugal and now Lutherstadt Wittenberg had made my growing list of pilgrimage journeys.

Wittenberg became the city from which the Protestant Reformation started after Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg in 1517. There is much to write about this, since of all the histories I could have studied in school, this one featured prominently in our curriculum.

Strangely, the English Reformation, the other schism that occurred soon after that this, when the Church of England renounced papal authority due to Henry VIII’s need to sire an heir, did not make the curriculum. I am a member of the Anglican Church.

The Lutheran Church is planning a quincentennial celebration of the Protestant Reformation in 2017, many activities will be centred around Lutherstadt Wittenberg.

Thought Picnic: Seated by duress

Occupation

A deliberation of space where the use of a fare becomes the exertion of latitude beyond entitlement meets the encroachment on the need of others.

When demand is made of access, a grudging and reluctant relinquishment of territory ensues. Within that might sit a resentment to the challenge to their expanse as an infringement on their privilege. For some, this is a sign of disrespect.

Consternation

There might be consequences, or is paranoia getting the better of one? However, it does not help that on the day one decides to visit a memorial and monument to man’s inhumanity to man; a concentration camp, someone walks by and hollers, Sieg Heil! The victory of angst over faith?

Yes, we heard him right and this was Berlin in 2016, the hour not even at the tenth. We live in times of turmoil, invisible but present, palpable and serious too.

Thought Picnic: Rediscovering human things

Having time to be human

Sometimes I wonder if it is technology that has deprived us of age-old fashionable things like conversation, letter writing, note-taking and dare I say, laughter. The kind of camaraderie that is fostered by sitting at a table for dinner with friends or playing traditional games like cards, Monopoly, Scrabble, Chess or Cluedo.

We do not seem to have the time to engage constructively and enduringly anymore. We are busy doing things, ensconced in Social Media, excited by traffic and interacting, yet not forming relationships that could stand the test of time.

The absence of enriching elements of contact and facial expression is depriving us of unique human characteristics that cannot be conveyed in typing or video conferencing. Though, there are some of us who have mastered alternative arts of communication.

The delusion of abstraction

The lack of presence appears to obfuscate the necessity to respect and communicate on friendly terms. Rudeness and insult are easy to deploy when no affinity exists and a feeling of anonymity presents with the without human proximity.

The Internet appears to falsely confer invisibility on people who think they have the quality of abstraction that absolves them from any responsibility until it is necessary to find out who they are. The footprints on the Internet are set in rocks when knowledgeable sleuths are set on the path of tracking down the culprits.

Finding fun the traditional

Being a blogger of almost 13 years, it has sometimes been easy to type away and watch ideas and thoughts develop on the screen, but my last three blogs including this have first been written longhand, then typed out and edited for publication.

A few things are achieved by this, as I copiously take notes, my handwriting hopefully improves from an illegible scrawl to a very readable script and maybe a bit more time is spent thinking through my ideas and thoughts.

To this end, I bought a pocket notebook, A Victor Hugo, Les misérables Mini Lined Notebook (Embellished Manuscripts) [Amazon] one, I use a uni-ball Jetstream pen with a quick-drying ink and all I have to do is find a place to sit down and write.

Technology brings simplicity and ease, it has its place in the scheme of things, but it must not replace the essential pleasures in life, the ones of physical presence and human interaction, laughter with friends and seeing your own handwriting on paper. Let’s find some old-fashioned things to do without being so tethered to technology and its distractions.

Thought Picnic: Being black and knowing

Being black in America

Observing the recent events of black people killed at the hands of law enforcement officers in the USA has been disheartening and very sad.

I have watched anger, protest, hashtag and campaign to bring to the fore the urgency and the prevailing compelling message that Black Lives Matter.

It is more than a pertinent point to make and it was amazingly sympathetic to notice the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, write, “If you are a normal white American, the truth is you don’t understand being black in America and instinctively underestimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk.” [The Hill] How insightful!

Been black a long time

Then in Dallas, 5 policemen were assassinated in a black-on-white vengeance spree, the black chief of the Dallas Police Department, David Brown finds himself straddling the intersection of race, history, culture and community which has become a national narrative.

He was asked how he bridged these communities and he responded, “I’ve been black a long time, so it’s not much of a bridge for me. It's everyday living. I grew up here in Texas, third generation Dallasite. It's my normal to live in this society that has a long history of racial strife. We're in a much better place than we were when I was a young man here.” [NBC News]

The histories we live

I could very well relate to the highlighted part of his response and maybe more if I had the history and experience of David Brown, and he has suffered grave personal losses in that environment. Yet, I realise that being a minority in any setting comes with a communal history and personal history.

The communal history of David Brown evidenced in what he said might have dictated that he as a black man cannot successfully be a police chief with the burden of African American history that pervades, yet his personal history allows him to confidently operate in that office.

In the UK where I live, there is a spectrum of communal history related to being Black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME), the communities one belongs to, the motivations or accidents of being here, how that might define you and possibly dictate your personal history.

Understanding personal blackness

My parents came to study in the UK in the 1960s, successful as they were with their academic pursuits, they faced a communal history of racism which until today probably colours their views of racial relations in the UK. My father once wrote to me that I would be a second-class citizen in the UK and by inference implied I was a first-class citizen in Nigeria, yet, my personal history suggests I was neither.

My personal history refines the context. I am by rights a British citizen by birth, then I grew up in a multicultural setting in Nigeria. In my education and life, I did not have to run the gauntlet of the race and deprivation politics of the 1970s and 1980s in the UK.

My sojourn in Nigeria confirmed in me my blackness, such that I am quite comfortable in my own skin. I do not then strive with my blackness nor take too much offence when racially abused as it mostly provides an opportunity to educate. That probably means I am rarely agitating to be identified or recognised, my personal history and experiences have created my self-esteem and self-assurance in whatever environment I choose to exist in.

Not despising myself

I draw comfort from the words of a letter of a black father wrote to his son in the light of the killings, the shootings, the turmoil and the angst. [Time Magazine]

Quoting James Baldwin from “The Uses of the Blues” and I have obtained the full context, "In every generation, ever since Negroes have been here, every Negro mother and father has had to face that child and try to create in that child some way of surviving this particular world, some way to make the child who will be despised not despise himself. I don’t know what ‘the Negro Problem’ means to white people, but this is what it means to Negroes." [Time Magazine]

It does not have to be Negro, a contemporaneous word of the 1960s, it could be anyone, anyone can be despised, the hope is something in the communal and personal history of that person ensures that person does not in turn, despise themselves. I am blessed with the thought that enough was put into my development to accept myself for who and whom I am.

At that point, there is no bridge to cross, you are yourself, whole, happy, contented and thriving. It is not the end of the war per se because many others still fight that battles that define them from participating fully in our common and shared humanity out of what is man’s inhumanity to others.

Thought Picnic: The reality beyond the augmented

Another life of games

Some events just overtake the newswires in a way that you wonder what is going on. One such issue within the week of the morass of #Brexit with the Tories squaring up and the Labour Party falling apart, terrorist attacks and any other bad news was something called Pokémon Go.

By definition and I refer to Wikipedia, Pokémon Go is a free-to-play location-based augmented reality mobile game developed by Niantic and published by The Pokémon Company. It utilises GPS and the camera of compatible devices to capture superimposed Pokémon characters in different locations.

What has made it big news is the uptake of the game that has exceeded the records of other kinds of mobile telephony games in such a short timeframe.

Now, the only mobile telephony game I play is Sudoku, yet, I wonder about computer-based neologisms like 'gamer', indicating a person who plays games. Though I have also come across ‘gaymer’, apparently, a gay person who plays computer games. I am not a fan of neologisms that change nouns into verbs or convert activities into nouns.

Realities abound

However, this is a digression because I read an article in the Time Magazine where Matt Vella writing for the Technology section analysed the Pokémon craze within the context of augmented reality. The Pokémon Fad Shows the Unnerving Future of Augmenting Reality [Yahoo! Tech], in the closing paragraph, he said, “The fundamental question AR (Augmented Reality) will ask of us will likely be: How do you coexist in a world where people literally see things you cannot?”

Maybe Augmented Reality presents this alternative world, but there is a more present world that we coexist in but dismiss, the one where you literally see things that others cannot. I have seen things that others could not and that terrified the hell out of me, besides having heard things that others could not too.

A vivid imagination

I wrote about an episode where a discussion between my aunt and our house boy covered bizarre stories of the paranormal, to my fertile and impressionable young mind of 10, I found that I had enough of a vivid imagination to bring these thoughts into my reality. That night, my parents having guests, I cleared the table and took the dishes to the kitchen.

As I laid them there, I was scolded and told to take them to the washing area in the unlit backyard whereupon in the dark there appeared a tall red-chested fiery beast, I thought I had seen the devil and I let out a terrifying scream. Everyone came running out to see what the tumult was, whatever I told them, they dismissed as I trembled, so completely shaken and eventually went to bed.

Blog - The damage done when parents fail to listen

Blog - Child Sexual Abuse: When parents are dismissive

A terrifying reality

I woke up in the middle of the night, sandwiched between two friends in bed when I heard two words, “Pufau! Pufau!”, this is the first time I have written the words, I do not know what they mean, but I always have goose bumps remembering this. Again, that terrifying scream, a dismissive father and a concerned mother came out to comfort.

As my father returned to bed and I sat in the living room with my mother, this beastly creature appeared again to me and I was the only one to see it and thankfully, that was the very last time I saw it, but that night was the beginning of a life-changing experience and the crash course lesson in the power of fear and terror.

Don’t dismiss it

Yes, children also sometimes see, hear, feel or experience things that others cannot, but not just children, it can happen to anyone and that episode is by terms their reality, a reality pooh-poohed, dismissed, rubbished or ignored. The child left bereft of comfort and support in what is a rather grave situation, life for that child can be hard.

This is not augmented reality, but an existential threat to mental health, the consequences of which can definitely be life-changing especially to outlook and confidence.

I know, the need to understand and empathise, the need to make some allowances for realities in the lives of others we may not understand or perceive, yet, the senses of the affected are heightened and besieged with stimuli that only they can respond to and describe in terrifying detail.

Dismissing the personal evidence will not eradicate the situation, it would rather accentuate the isolated circumstance that person is in. In such settings, help is needed and professional help at that.

The UK: The politics of kissing about

Kissing hands

The bureaucracy that undergirds the government in the UK is so quite developed that it is possible for a Prime Minister to hand over power to another in a day without creating a power vacuum, we have continuity built into the system because of Her Majesty's Civil Service.

Yesterday afternoon, just two days after it was confirmed that Theresa May would be the only contestant for the leadership of the Conservative and Unionist Party, and being the party of government, consequently the Prime Minister, the First Lord of the Treasury and the Minister for the Civil Service; everything was set to commence a new dispensation of government.

David Cameron went to Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation to Her Majesty, The Queen, Elizabeth II and The Queen invited Theresa May to form a government. The prospective Prime Minister, when invited thus, is said to have been invited to kiss the hands.

Kissing up

This symbolic gesture includes pledging loyalty and fealty to the sovereign and by terms a requirement to serve in Her Majesty’s government.

The first act of the Prime Minister is to form a cabinet of ministers, the Prime Minister occupies the first Great Office of State and the other offices of The Chancellor of the Exchequer and The Second Lord of the Treasury (Finance Minister), The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and The Secretary of State for the Home Department are appointed by the Prime Minister, along with other members of the cabinet primarily from amongst elected and sitting members of the House of Commons.

Ministers of the Crown can also be appointed from the House of Lords and where civilians (non-members of parliament) are required to be ministers, they are ennobled by appointment to the House of Lords.

Kissing teeth

There is no nomination, vetting and confirmation process as seen in Presidential systems of government, the Prime Minister can appoint and sack ministers at their discretion. Though a gentle let-down would be to ask for the resignation of a minister, if the said minister has lost the confidence of the Prime Minister.

The cabinet posts come at the invitation of the Prime Minister and it can be the opportunity to kiss the butt when asked to serve or to kiss the dust when a promotion or a retention is denied.

Theresa May has made some interesting ministerial appointments, some that have had us kissing the teeth with Boris Johnson becoming the Foreign Secretary, how incredulous. Yet, we could be kissing the lips with Philip Hammond replacing George Osborne as the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Kissing dust

Michael Gove has been made to kiss the dust having kissed away opportunity by the way he betrayed Boris Johnson in running for the leadership of the Tory Party, though it goes without saying that Boris Johnson has a way of kissing up and falling upwards when others in the kinds of holes he has dug himself into would have no political mileage left in their careers.

Earlier in the day, we thought we had kissed goodbye the smug Jeremy Hunt as Secretary of State for Health, it was a false rumour, he retains the power to deliver the kiss of death to the NHS.

Kissing babies

Whilst we watch how Theresa May charts the course of her leadership, it is unlikely one is eager to kiss the ring with these personalities swanning around Whitehall. There’ll be a lot of kissing going on before the politicians begin to kiss the babies again in 2020.

Child Sexual Abuse: When parents are dismissive

Very sad

“Don’t be ridiculous, you are lying.”

That was a mother’s response to her daughter who reported her being sexually abused as a child. She was 13 and this continued on an almost weekly basis for three years. This was Becky Vardy, the wife of Jamie Vardy revealing why her mother from whom she is estranged was not at her wedding and how the sexual abuse made her suicidal. [DailyMail]

Readers of my blog will be very well aware of the fact that I have written a lot about child sexual abuse, not only the act, the violation, but also the consequences. Consequences that many of us still live with and just have to cope with.

Difficult communication

It is difficult to imagine how hard it is for a child to go to their parent and tell them of being sexually violated by trusted people in our communities who could be relations, family friends, neighbours, teachers, clergy or professional people to whom our parents have entrusted our care.

The reaction of the parents to that shocking revelation can have lifelong consequences from estrangement to even suicide on the part of the child. The responsiveness of the parent can be the determinant of many things if they can get beyond the embarrassment, the shame, the indifference, the disbelief, the denial, or the dismissiveness to engage the child beyond just removing the treat and attending to the physical and mental healing of the child.

I was not dumb

In my own case, I never had the opportunity to tell my parents of the fact that I was being sexually abused because we never had the situational circumstances to have that kind of conversation. In my father’s demeanour towards his wards, he was strict, overbear and at times quite violent as a disciplinarian. Whilst it might have helped keep them in line, it also made him literally unapproachable because it engendered an atmosphere of fear.

In other areas, he could be critical, excoriating and dismissive, even as recently as a few months ago, when intimated of certain health challenges I had, there was a comparison and an almost indifference resulting in challenging why I had the frailty I had. There are too many instances of this lack of engagement that has affected our bonding.

To this day, except if he has read my blogs, he is still unaware that I had my first sexual experience at 7 and since then, there have been lifelong consequences. I was not dumb; we have just not gotten to the point where the talk is possible.

Scarred by religion

On the part of my mother, that is a different story. Steeped in religious excess that has affected everything else, we have not really found anything to accentuate the positive, rather we have constantly been at war with the seen and the unseen, the assumed and the implied, the fatuous and the bizarre.

It has been a trek through a wilderness full of beasts as we sought an oasis of peace, at times it was in itself a blessing and relief to be absent from all this.

Neither parent offered an inlet to converse on the things that affected me apart from the need to measure up to expectation and excel in comparison to others. Self-expression was operating within the bounds of their regulated control of activity I engaged in, bolstered by threat and punishment.

We find ways to cope

Then some expect us to have some convenient relationship in the twilight of their lives? Even if there was much to forgive, there is a lot more than cannot be undone, we have to seek safety in others who give us more reason to go on.

In the case of Becky Vardy, a loving husband and family, hopefully, a marriage that stands the test of time along with the psychological help she has received. To many more, maybe friends who give value and support that they do not come to any more harm than they have experienced before.

I started this blog to talk about the dismissiveness of parents to the sexual violation of their children, whatever else I have written between is part of the narrative and gives perspective to the spectrum of attitudes that form the reaction to such cases.

Child sexual abuse is damaging and its long-term effects are unquantifiable, we all find coping and self-preservation mechanism to get beyond it, others may never understand why the victims of abuse end up the way they are, act like they do. Still waters run deep, what you see at face value does not half reveal the story in the person.

What parents must do

It behoves parents today to create channels and opportunities for their children to talk about the most intimate things that affect them. The greater responsibility of the parent goes beyond provision; it involves most particularly the mental and emotional health of the child. Ignoring that will always have dire consequences.

Communicate and make it easier for the child to communicate. Do not wait, expect or assume that the child trusts that you will deal with issues in the best of ways, you have to pave the way for the child to trust wholeheartedly that they are safe with you, in every way.

Reeva Steenkamp: Sorry, still no justice for your murder

The rebuke and the circus

The greatest rebuke one can ever receive is one given to you by your professional peers when they question the decisions you have made and advise you to review your original conclusions.

Nowhere is this more obvious than to have the decisions of a judge firstly reversed on appeal, but to have the same case sent back to the same judge for reflection, review, and reconsideration.

The popular circus of Oscar Pistorius and the bit-player wielding the gavel in the person of Judge Thokozile Masipa returned to the glare of global media again today.

When the circus first came to town, it was incredulous that having had an introduction to Latin on the spectrum of offence resulting in the death of a victim and we need not go over that, Oscar Pistorius was found guilty of culpable homicide and a few minor offences resulting in a five-year jail term and a probationary period of three years for the other offences.

The appeal for justice

Oscar Pistorius did not languish in jail, he was out in about a year and fighting to stay free. Meanwhile, one can only commend the tenacity of the National Prosecution Agency that would not give up on the case, but appeal the judgment to a higher court.

When the court returned a judgement on appeal, it suggested Judge Masipa erred in her reading of the issue and concluded, Oscar Pistorius could not have been oblivious of the consequences of his actions, therefore, it could not have been culpable homicide, but murder. Oscar Pistorius’ appeal to the constitutional court failed and he returned to the court of Judge Masipa for sentencing. [Independent][CriminalLawZA]

Now, Oscar Pistorius has been sent to jail for the murder of Reeva Steenkamp for six years, just a year more than what he originally got for culpable homicide and nine years short of the recommended prison term for murder.

Mercifully unjust

It is clear that Judge Masipa has in many ways been sympathetic to Oscar Pistorius, in both the first case and this new sentencing, serving the needs for justice in her conception for Oscar Pistorius and seriously at the expense of the victim Reeva Steenkamp who died a horrific violent death at the hands of her boyfriend.

Justice, in order to retain its humanity, must be tempered with mercy, however, where the victim has no voice to state their case or grievance, it behoves the judge to give the greatest consideration to the voiceless, especially where the perpetrator has hired the best legal guns to shoot down the prosecution's case to smithereens.

For whatever Oscar Pistorius might have lost in career, in earnings, in freedom and much else, it cannot come close to having deprived a young woman with all to live for of her life in what was essentially an evil domestic violence situation. I have no cause to believe Oscar Pistorius’ explanation of the events of that fateful Valentine’s Day of 2013, everything he did was reckless in the extreme to be completely unforgivable.

We mourn still

However, for whatever reason yet unfathomable, he finds favour, grace, mercy and compassion at the actions of Judge Masipa, it feels like Reeva Steenkamp has become a side issue when the whole reason why we have had this odious circus was because Reeva Steenkamp was mercilessly slaughtered.

For the kind of justice that Oscar Pistorius has received, we might well say Reeva Steenkamp has now for a third time suffered an injustice, first at the hands of her boyfriend and twice at the hands of Justice Masipa.

We in our hearts mourn Reeva Steenkamp knowing she has been wronged again, just as many other women in South Africa and beyond have suffered fatalities in a domestic setting and are literally invisible as their murderers traipse off into the sunset getting away with murder.

Reeva Steenkamp – Rest in peace, it seems we would never get the justice you deserve and that is a deeply sad shame.

#Brexit: A royal fuck-up by caddish toffs

In utter disgust

Nothing spells disgust as the troop of inveterate spineless public school educated Englishmen who have shirked and absconded from responsibility when they have been met with the challenge and the call to duty.

It is appalling beyond words and utterly contemptible that we by the hand and machinations of a few little men consumed from schoolyard rivalry projected on the nation in a barefaced dare redolent of Renaissance duel, that has gambled away fortune and future for uncertainty and flux.

Deserters most vile

We are here today with Nigel Farage who spent 17 years earning a handsome purse in Europe as a scoundrel and a scallywag, uncouth, uncultured, intemperate, a rascal, and a truant extraordinaire who for all he did not do for us in the European Parliament has never been called to order, easing himself into retirement from the leadership of Ukip.

Before him, we had Boris Johnson, the bumbling scatterbrain of a nincompoop, the ebullient and charismatic leader of the #Brexit campaign, refusing to step up and put in order the turmoil he has wrought by his escapade which for all intents was to become Prime Minister at the expense of his lifelong rival, David Cameron.

The day after the #Brexit vote, just as the markets slid and the pound plummeted with no clear guidance of what the future holds, David Cameron threw in the towel and before us we had a rudderless, listing and a precarious situation at the most trying of times for Great Britain in almost a century.

These men and I use men lightly would have been typical of deserters, cowards with neither cojones nor liver who in the heat of battle turned their backs on the frontline and hightailed to the bosom of their mothers quaking and trembling like leaves that it would behove the generals to have then shot at dawn and never remembered for anything but their cowardice.

A disgrace beyond countenance

These men are a disgrace to everything that makes the English proud and gave us the history that dogs our present existence as we strive to punch above our weight in the world. However, in just 11 short days we are diminished in status, in influence, in capacity and in leverage.

We had no #Brexit plan, it is in fact almost laughable that we do not have any experts to negotiate the best deals for our post-#Brexit status, we might have to hire immigrant expertise to fight our corner. So much for #Brexit, it was a wasteful exercise that exacerbated division, accentuated anxiety, heightened uncertainty and complicated issues, many of which are unanticipated and frankly idiotic as they materialise.

A royal fuck-up

How did we end up with such a royal fuck-up orchestrated by some of the people who are supposed to be the most privileged, best educated and self-assured? Never has such a great nation been bequeathed to a generation so lacking in honour and gratitude for being chosen that they have brought it so low that what we have left is empty boasts, bluster, bombast and baloney.

Europe is not going to bend over backwards for us and the sooner we realise we’ve shot ourselves in the foot with #Brexit, the easier it would be to get treatment for the wounds.

Shame on all of them. If a man cannot stand when called to stand up and be seen, we might well have their dogs for company, the loyalty of the animal might just begin to pay for their perfidy and treachery.

Other reading

Blog - #Brexit: He traded his kingdom for horse shit

Blog - #Brexit: The Brexiteer is Brexecuted

LegalNaija: Blogging clarity into Nigeria's legal jumble

Trust but verify

Maybe there is a case for becoming a bit bookish about knowing how to live and work in Nigeria. Possibly making your decisions based on something more concrete than what you heard someone say and that idea has been through so many revisions before it got to you with no semblance to the original thought or import. Rumours should not equate to fact, even if eventually proven true.

If accosted, in a country rife with the abuse of rights and process, would you know your rights enough to fight your corner through the system and expect not to have been persecuted and prosecuted unfairly?

Much as we can be religious and leave much to chance, gut feeling or the sentiment of belief or clan, the many times we have entered into arrangements that fall through because the detail necessary to make binding agreements were not pored over with the necessity such requires.

This blog began on a whim as I asked on Twitter what I should write about and @LegalNaija challenged me to write something about their blog.

Taking you through the minutiae

LegalNaija is hosted at http://www.legalnaija.com/  and they have been active since 2012, they provide a disclaimer on their front page that reads, “Posts and comments by the publishers of this blog do not constitute legal advice or create an attorney-client relationship.”

However, the kind of information you can glean from the many things they write about can give insight into how to ride through much of the Nigerian bureaucracy which at the best of times can be a haunting nightmare, leaving you out of pocket and with nothing to show for it.

Simple things like reading and vetting your contracts before you sign anything; as if we should be told, but in many cases, we rarely ready the small print, it is sometimes suffused with indecipherable legalese leading in unexpected pitfalls when things fall apart. Nothing wrong in reminding us of such simple things.

A tip, an insight or an idea

On the blog, you have explainers on fundamental rights, operating businesses, seeking legal redress, bills enacted, laws and much else that a blog like mine cannot begin to cover.

However, I can introduce you to LegalNaija and ask that you follow their Twitter account @LegalNaija, there is no telling what snippet of information can be that insight or idea to ensure you don’t end up in a needless and expensive legal wrangle – and I tell you, Nigeria is one legal minefield even to the savviest of legal experts. I commend them.