Sixteen is the age most of us fall in love for the first time but at this age, Joseph, not real name, who outwardly appeared to have a comfortable life in a prestigious school took his own life. Boye, not…
Biko, so you think your mother is a witch – Peju Akande
“Who sat and watched my infant head, When sleeping on my cradle bed, And tears of sweet affection shed? My mother” So goes the first stanza in the popular poem for mothers by Anne Taylor. I used to weep profusely…
Parents, please respect our children’s teachers – Peju Akande
Growing up, my mother had a pattern for discipline; she would say, ‘I’m not your mother!’ This establishing statement had the intended effect of mentally separating our biological connections. That done, she would chant repeatedly while delivering powerful strokes of…
Naija people, why are we like this? – Peju Akande
I am not a prophet o, but next time you go to a comedy show, watch out for the cucumber jokes. Like many of us on social media, I was assaulted with the sex tape of a beauty queen with…
Live alone, die alone! – Peju Akande
When the Bible says in Genesis 2:18 – ‘It is not good for man to be alone,’ I take this to mean man in his generic form, as in man and woman. Truth is, it is not good for anyone…
Father forgive them for they were once bullied – Peju Akande
Bullying, according to Wikipedia’s definition is – the use of force, threat, or coercion to abuse, intimidate, or aggressively dominate others. The behaviour is often repeated and habitual. I can still recall several incidents of being bullied particularly when I…
Is a dead child better than a missing child? – Peju Akande
‘Soni is missing,’ so starts the novel my partner, Toni kan wrote in his fast selling crime story, The Carnivorous City. Toni’s book is fiction. In reality, people disappear every day, in this city, in this country; people just vanish…
Watch out, we are raising very Selfie-sh children – Peju Akande
Some years ago, the word selfie did not even exist. But all that has changed. Selfie is defined by Wikipedia, as ‘a self-portrait photograph, typically taken with a digital camera or camera phone held in the hand or supported by…
Almajiri is not just a northern problem – Peju Akande
A few years ago, photos of Muslim youths in Kaduna who had taken selfies with the bodies of massacred Shiites, their victims, as background, went viral on social media. You could see their glazed eyes, their yellowing teeth and rotten…
Some parents don’t have sense o – Peju Akande
I love children but I’ll never assume I am better at caring for them than their biological parents or guardians. Like our people say, you can’t love Ojo’s mother more than Ojo himself loves his mum. That said, I was…