Sorry it’s been so long. Life took over. Well, I need your help. Please respond to the poll below or comment and let me know what you think. Cheerio and have a swell week ahead.

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I was going through mail from one of my various free email accounts and saw this piece by Seth Godin about the US congress.  I am reminded of a parable I saw in the old testament. Now, as many people know, the parables of Jesus are more popular and rightly so. However, this struck a chord in me because it reminded me of what the Nigerian situation is like. I will quote it below…

Now when they told Jotham, he went and stood on top of Mount Gerizim, and lifted his voice and cried out. And he said to them: “Listen to me, you men of Shechem, that God may listen to you! The trees once went forth to anoint a king over them. And they said to the olive tree, ‘Reign over us!’ But the olive tree said to them, ‘Should I cease giving my oil, with which they honor God and men, and go to sway over trees?’ Then the trees said to the fig tree, ‘You come andreign over us!’ But the fig tree said to them, ‘Should I cease my sweetness and my good fruit, and go to sway over trees?’ Then the trees said to the vine, ‘You come and reign over us!’ But the vine said to them, ‘Should I cease my new wine, which cheers both God and men, and go to sway over trees?’ Then all the trees said to the bramble, ‘You come and reign over us!’ And the bramble said to the trees, ‘If in truth you anoint me as king over you, then come and take shelter in my shade; but if not, let fire come out of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon!’ (Judges 9:7-15)

Reading through it, it’s so obvious that the speaker could be Nigerian for all I know. For the (now superflous) explanation, here goes. We all in Nigeria, myself included have long left politics to the bramble bushes. Not because it isn’t profitable, but because we thought more about why we should leave our duties and go to pursue an unsure thing. I can only hope and pray that someday, the useful ones, with meaningful contributions – the fig and olive trees, the vines – will take their pride of place in our leadership.

Related articles

• Trees Are known By It’s Fruit (shirlblake.org)

Perhaps in another society where things worked, this shouldn’t be a biggie but here in Nigeria where everyone is a local government – providing electricity, security, water and so on, PMS is the lifeblood of our economy. An average home runs on a generator fueled by PMS. This same generator runs a pump for the borehole – dug by the same home owner. We do not have well structured and safe transportation so most people would prefer to drive their own cars. And so on. For a business, it’s a similar story.

Anyway, I write this just for a record to myself and I guess, my blog, that I said something about the subsidy removal even though it might not do much.

Here are a two reasons why I think this move is premature;

What Else Do We get?

For all those people comparing us to Ghana, the UK, the US and so on, here’s my answer. Removing the subsidy ordinarily shouldn’t be a biggie. But it is and here’s why. Electricity is ususally generated from LPG which for a long time has had a fixed arrangement which everyone is happy with. No problem there. But the fact remains that many homes, businesses and factories do not run on electricity provided by PHCN. For the most part, electricity used is provided by small generating sets and plants. Therefore aising the prices of PMS is bound to affect the lives and purchasing power for people more directly than in other places.

The transportation sector here is very fragmented and run mostly by individuals who are given to emotional reactions as evidenced by the spike in transport prices reported yesterday evening. If this sector were well structured, we wouldn’t have the situation where there is so sudden an increase that people now pay double the prices even though it is quite possibly an excess. This brings me to the second point.

Greed and Mass Panic

The reaction to the PPPRA’s announcement yesterday was typical – major hoarding, arbitrary price hikes, fear leading to panic buying. We’ve gone through this song and dance before with the other price hikes so why did no one think it would be different this time especially with the news that this price increment was going to more than double the current price? Usually, price changes are usually well thought out policies with steps listed out to counteract panic and shore up confidence. I guess this fact slipped by them. How else do we explain that the filling stations are selling PMS from the old subsidized stock at the new price with some refusing to sell and long queues snaking around other places? Or that prices at the shop two houses down from my own have risen sharply? Or that bus fares have doubled as well? We are a people given to excess profit where we can take it. This fact has been made evident time and again.

I can only shake my head and wonder how things will play out. Will we sit back and settle into the new price regime as we have before? Or will this mark the beginning of a new revolution? All that is left is for me to wish you a happy New Year. I hope your dreams and goals come to pass. Subsidy removal be damned

Related articles

• Oil-rich Nigeria ending fuel subsidies (ctv.ca)
• Fuel subsidy removal: Prepare for a showdown, NLC, TUC tell Nigerians (vanguardngr.com)
• FG annouces immediate removal of Fuel Subsidy (ogala.wordpress.com)
• Economic operators differ on subsidy removal (vanguardngr.com)

For the culinary inclined, today will be a day of boiling, frying, chopping, slicing and dicing. So here’s a kitchen warrior tale to help the day along.

Let me categorically state here before we move on that I don’t enjoy cooking even though I can. Pretty much like someone who knows math but doesn’t necessarily enjoy the subject. I realise this comes across as ironic or even at odds with the fact that I can. But there it is. I am an epicure though. This means that I particularly enjoy good food and I’m often quite critical. But the process of actually cooking is one I’d rather avoid or shorten. It is necessary for me to establish this so you’ll know why I’m somewhat excited.

Since today is the day for slicing and dicing, my mum went out yesterday and bought everything we needed to stuff any hapless person that will come over to visit. And this morning was Stew cooking morning. Of course, being myself, I decide that this special stew that will be tasted by everyone who comes to visit, not just the family, will be a good first experiment for swapping the tried-and-true steps for making stew in the house for a new method. This new method promises that I’ll spend less time, use less heat (therefore sweat less) and generally have more me time. It’s a win-win right. So here’s my new process outlined below.

• Prep the tomatoes, onions and other stuff as you would normally do and blend.
• Spread a sieve cloth (which can be bought from those selling school uniform materials in the market. About N300 per yard. I bought one yard and it served well.) over a bowl and carefully pour the ground mix into it. Be careful to make sure it sits in the middle of the cloth.
• Gather the edges in one hand and raise slightly to allow the excess fluid drain out into the bowl. After about twenty minutes, much of it would have drained off and the ground mix begins to look like a puree. (These last two steps actually sound more messy than they are. I promise)
• Set a pot or pan on the fire and let all drops of liquid dry off. Add oil and when it’s hot,put in sliced onions, curry, thyme and any other spices you may like.
• With a spoon, remove the strained mix and put it in the hot oil to fry. Since it’s dry now, you can easily fold off the clumps of tomato mix that get stuck on the cloth into the spoon. It doesn’t take long to fry till it’s dry (believe me, this is possible) after this.
• For cleaning the cloth, just add a little washing up liqiud (not much because the material is extremely light and there’ll be more foam than you can deal with) into some water, swish the cloth lightly around in it (it cleans easily), rinse thoroughly and spread to dry.

You should end up with something like this.

The big plus is that with this, I spent about an hour making the stew where I usually spent almost two with the first hour for boiling the tomatoes and generating a lot of heat. It actually turned out well and my mum was so proud.

So here’s to a new year spent with shorter times in the kitchen.