Many Nigerian bloggers have been on this “A letter to my younger self” stuff and I must admit, I like it! The basic idea is like this: "If you could write a note of advice to the girl or boy you were back then, with all the benefits of wisdom and experience you have now…what would you say?”. Well here’s what I would say.

Dear younger self,

It’s a beautiful thing to be alive, congrats. But the thing is that it passes by fast and you only get one chance at it; thus you have to make the most out of it. I write to help you out, to help you correct parts of our history which when you grow up to be me you just might not like.

1) Be studious, read your books, be a book worm. Read, read, read and read till you drop dead. Accept nothing less than a B in your courses. If you don’t understand something don’t be shy to ask for help from more knowledgeable people. Avoid procrastination and laziness; it’s good to be intelligent; in the long run it will really benefit you.

2) You'll be growing up in a temptatious world and it could be hard for you to overcome. If you must fall, know that there are chicks and there are chicks. Some ain’t worth it. Be like a lethal center forward; take all your chances with the classy chicks. Remember that a guy who can’t get some “real koko" is a lonely mo'fucker and can be prone to serious fuck ups. The only other option is to find God and forget bout “gettin’ some” till you’re married.

3) Try and have less embarrassing moments that you'd hate looking back at when you become me. You can do that by trying to be cool always. Learn from older folks and anybody/stuff with experience to share.

4) Stop being selfish and self centered. Be sociable, make more friends and be team player. That way you’ll really enjoy your school life plus it’ll make you an all round better person.

5) Don’t joke with your football. Make sure you are as good on the field as you are with Play Station soccer. That way you’ll live to reap the joys of playing football with the boys when you're older.

6) Make effort to be able to speak Igbo fluently so that you won’t get the chills when you’re amongst your kinsfolk. There is power in being multilingual.

Good luck little man
Your older self

When it comes to laying out thoughts, Ayo Akinfe of the cybereagles forum does it in style. He’s a ten-pointer specialist! You might want to call me a copycat because for the second time in a row I’m dropping three-pointers in a blog post. This time on what I’ve learnt from my months of blogging and surfing of Internet forums.

1) I’ve become an all round better writer and (a faster) reader. No be lie man. Being all words you can’t be heavily into this blogging and forum stuff and not have improved literarily. It makes me want to beat the shit out of the TRAE of 2003. God know say I don dey blow grammer/vocab small small. Words like hackneyed, pontificate, condescending etc have now become commonplace to me. Chei! Illiteracy na bad thing.

2) My conversation skills have been polished. If there's one thing I’ve learnt in my years of Internet chit-chat/dialogue it’s that violence begets violence. You can't correct a person by abusing him. Your advice might be right but not going about it nicely only creates room for more acrimony. You hit, he hits back, you strike, he strikes back; it all goes on in one childish vicious cycle. Thus the only means of better interpersonal relations is to be civil always.

3) I’ve learnt to respect women. It’s not that I was misogynistic before oh! It’s just that you can’t be reading all this female stuff and seeing life from their point of view and not feel a thing for them. You know sexual harassment stuff, domestic chores stuff, employment opportunities stuff, childbirth and parenting stuff etc. But I’ll be truthful; my newfound respect is partially because of the many “feminist” on prowl. Stick to the script most of the time and just fall out of line for a second and they’ll give your ass a mighty public whooping. At times they just love taking it to the extreme. Now who said force wasn’t a good way of instilling fear and respect into people. And so the females have made a perfect gentleman out of me…but I ain’t without flaws though.

Blogging and surfing of forums sure has schooled my ass…I’m like the happy schoolboy

So it’s my birthday today, I’m 23. Yeah yeah who cares; OBJ is 79 and is gunning for another four years. Ok I kid, I kid; dude is 69 and wants to be life President. Yep, we all got the third term blues. At times I wish I wasn’t so interested in politics and could just take the passive/siddon look approach. Anyways being that I am interested I’m going to roll out some of my observations on the third term issue.

1) Asking OBJ to continue for a third term in office is like asking Austin Jay Jay Okocha to continue playing and captaining the Super Eagles (defying age and despite all the bright young talent out there) for another four years. Agreed, Okocha is one of the best Nigerian players ever but without him we ended our WorldCup/Cup of Nations campaign on an excellent note and still went on to win bronze at Egypt 2006. Word is born Okocha is not indispensable to the national team. In the same vein in a country of over 120million people OBJ is not the only person who can run things well. And please don’t come with that stuff that the devil you know is better than the angel you do not know. What we’re fighting for is to get it into the Nigerian psyche that no matter how well (you think) you’ve done you should never overstay your welcome.

2) The NTA we’re seeing these days is slowly turning into the NTA of the 1998 era. Then everything was pro-Abacha. Abacha for president this, Nigeria needs Abacha that. Nowadays if the NTA is your only source of news you’d be fooled to think the nation overwhelmingly supports OBJ third term bid. But after thinking the issue over being that the NTA is the government’s baby it’s to be expected. Compare the NTA-OBJ situation to a large household. If something really bad happens within the household like a scuffle between sibling A and B and sibling B is left critically injured you don’t expect the household’s spokesman to come out publicly and rubbish siblings A’s image. Surely he’ll be admonished but being that blood is thicker than water it won’t be a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water. The case would be acknowledged as an unfortunate incident but the dirty incidents won’t be washed in public, everything would be dealt with on the low low. Nonetheless NTA still owes it to the public to always portray both sides of the story.

3) The NTA issue can make you want to cry, but thank God for little mercies like the independent press. Yes kudos to AIT, Channels television and co for correctly feeling the pulse of the people. Political discourse phone-in programs on the stations lets us know that unlike the claims of Mantu and co Nigerians as a whole are anti-third term. There are other news outlets like the radio, newspapers and the internet but being that television is king it’s good that our leaders some of who don’t know better can at least know what the word on the streets is by simply switching channels.

Picture originally available at foolscap

I’ve said it before and I’m saying it again: “The average human being has Mondays to Sundays, but for me...everyday is a traeday”. But when you talk of traedays April 17 is prime. Yes I’m turning 23 in ten days time. Kinda early to announce it but hey I don’t post that frequently so better early than never :). But this year I’m indifferent about my birthday. I’m not brooding about getting old and my failures thus far nor am I hyper excited about it. I’m taking it in my stride, its going be like any other day….well sort of sha. And being that there are so many tagging games going on in the Nigerian blogosphere I’m getting with the trend. Yes I’m tagging myself :). TRAE name seven things you’d love to achieve in your 23rd year.

1) Win the lottery and get myself a pimped out handset with all the works (camera, radio, MP3 player, GPRS etc), a laptop to die for and…a nice little car.
2) Be on the come up for real…i.e. commanding a steady monthly income of at least 100k for starters.
3) Get myself a down ass chick. i.e. a girlfriend who’ll always be there whether we’re flying okada (motorcycle) together to the park for a picnic or we’re on the plane together heading to Calabar for the weekend. Yes Rihanna, I’m ready to make you my girl. Holla at your boi!
4) Serve Nigeria and then move on with my life. I.e. undergo the NYSC stuff definitely in the September 2006 batch but if I miss that and end up not killing myself then in the March 2007 batch.
5) Live to see OBJ abort his third term plans and then have worthy presidential aspirants step up to the challenge in the April 2007 elections. You know really sharp and smart people with positive attributes. E.g. NAFDAC’s Director General Dora Akunyili.
6) Be at the stadium for at least one of Nigeria’s qualifying matches for Ghana 2008 dressed in full green white green regalia. If possibly an away match, Uganda versus Nigeria in Kampala would be lovely.
7) Get a verse on one of the hit Nigerian singles in the near future (i.e. being featured or being a guest artist on a song). Or alternatively cutting my teeth in the events management business. Specifically by taking part in organizing a tour, concert or show in Nigeria.

I know all in all I might be dreaming as if I’m to achieve any of my targets it’ll most likely be when I’m past 23, but it never hurt anyone to dream once in a while.

Now back to reality. I’ve being reading Chidi Afulezi’s diary. He’s a US born; Naija bred guy repping Owerri in the USA. Nwannem a nam ekele gi (forgive my written Igbo). The entries in it were made between 1999 and 2000. By today’s standard that was a damn good blog, probably the first ever Nigerian one! He should be like 34 now, possibly with wife and kids and earning them big bucks from his engineering stuff. On the real does anyone know what the brother is up to these days? Is he now writing else where? Anyways I’ll shoot him an email, hopefully he’ll get it.

Sorry to spoil the lovvy dovvy stuff with politics. But it was the best picture available to me as at press time :). Anyways I’m anti-third term. Why? Read the placard. One!