A Lagos Beggar And Other Absurdities

 By Chris Anyokwu 

There she was on a typically busy highway clutching a doll swaddled delicately in finery and passing it off as a bundle of joy heartrendingly exposed at dawn of life to the coarser aspects of human society: the unbridgeable class divide between the haves and the have-nots.  

Some Lagosians, habitually or customarily empathetic, were moved to dole out some money on account of the “adorable baby”, knowing that millions of people the world over are childless; some ready to give an arm and a leg to have a baby of their own even a deformed one.  They always need a child to call their own; a child that would address them as “Dad” and “Mom”.  And as a result of this, some desperate couples go out of their way to adopt a child from orphanages and motherless babies’ homes.

Nigeria: Let There Be Light!

 By Chris Anyokwu

The man of God, Pastor Humphrey Erumaka, had taken the microphone that beautiful Sunday morning during the worship service and the congregants, as usual, were looking forward with taut anticipation and great expectation to receiving a “Word From God”, on, say, prosperity, healing, salvation, or, total deliverance, a church favourite in the age of feel-good, easy believism. 

Nobody saw it coming and when he announced the topic of the day’s sermon as “Let There Be Light”, you could hear the church exhale a collective sigh of relief.  Thank goodness, the message is familiar; at least, it’s likely to be about the Act of Creation at Genesis.  But that’s where the man of God played a fast one on his congregants, again.  As it had turned out, the message had absolutely nothing to do with the Hebraic myth of creation or the house-keeping fumblings of the Primal Pair, Adam and Eve.