The “Anikulapo” of America! - Story of Woman Who Refused to Die

Unprecedented Gbekudè! A woman who had been on the death row for about 30 years in Tennessee, USA, after being found guilty of murder “refused” to die on her day of execution.

How come?

All the executioners do is apply lethal injections  into her body. The injections are a cocktail of drugs to deaden her nerves, sedate her, make her lose total consciousness and succumb to death within three to five minutes.

Hmmm?

She was primed to stop breathing and go into cardiac seizure but this woman instead seized DEATH (Gbekude) and pocketed it (ANIKULAPO)!

Hmmm?

Instead of summoning BODYBAG to carry her out of the “execution ground” to the morgue, it was an ambulance instead to ferry her to the emergency ward  of a nearby  hospital.

Nkan mbe! Mystery dey!

From Tafa to Tinubu

It’s a pot pourri of up and down, a little to the right, a little to the left, zig-zag achievements since independence in 1960. Here we are 66 years after!

Yet, we have to celebrate if, for anything, at least we must celebrate for being alive.

Yes o!

In satirical mode we, indeed have a lot to crow about. From Tafawa Balewa to Bola Tinubu Nigeria has witnessed galloping and crawling progress, from inside potholes to the top of speed breakers. The journey is on, not aborted.

Opening glee…

We sang an anthem when the Union Jack was brought down for the last time on that fateful  October 1, 1960, day in Lagos. NIGERIA WE HAIL THEE, we sang together.

The soldiers, used to standing upright like NEPA pole  on parade ground, soon ordered everybody to stand up! This led to ARISE, O COMPATRIOTS! We all obeyed.

Then came the turn of a stubborn civilian who changed the “status quo anthem” back to the original “status quo ante” of an anthem. NIGERIA WE HAIL THEE again!

Progress button pressed on the Console.

There’s no stopping the sunrise. Lagos, the nation’s capital was getting too old. After being the nation’s capital for 77 years it had to be moved to an original  , more natural VIRGIN NOMAN’S LAND of Abuja to put paid to constant movement from Lokoja to Zungeru to Calabar to Lagos and finally (?) to Abuja!

The movement to Abuja is a historical projection of where political power originates, oscillates  and terminates in the country. It needed a military decree promulgated by General Murtala Mohammed, the actual building was done by Alhaji Shehu Shagari while General Ibrahim Babangida hurried the hitherto  gradual movement to the new capital with “immediate effect and automatic alacrity” in 1991 (shortly after the Orkar coup attempt), as the military used to say in those days of KHAKITOCRACY

That has been the nation’s lot from 1966 to 1999,  from agbada to khaki. And we have had the best of the worst as well as the worst of the best among them. Killing and butchering people was no big deal to them. They killed both foes and friends for self preservation, not for the nation’s survival. God was so pissed off with the worst beast among them that He did not allow him to wake up one day, to save the already punch-drunk  nation from further punishment..

Is it not a paradox that those who beat their chest for having the monopoly of lethal force could not flush out religious terrorists and armed robbery gangs while they held sway over our common wealth?! That’s a legacy they left behind after treating the nation like a captured territory worth being plundered and sucked to the marrow.

Nigeria, We Hail Thee.

Today, strange things are happening. Child kidnapping for ritual in those days are no longer in vogue. It is adult kidnapping by children for ransom!  Adults so kidnapped include security officers trained to secure lives and properties. Not in a world out of joint.

Good news though.

Every Nigerian is richer today.  Hmm? We all seem so rich we don’t  have pockets big and deep enough to contain the amount of cash needed to buy food items in the market. We can all afford renting a wheel barrow  or “Keke Marwa” to transport our cash to the bakery to buy a loaf of bread. Thanks, the Naira is still breathing.

Factories may be closing down but churches are growing. Everybody is now a pastor praying for the spiritually desperate and preying on the gullible. Neither to blame. Man must whack!

Our hunger does not lead to anger again. Instead it  has been modernized and  weaponised to provide food  for the masses. From BETTER LIFE TO RURAL WOMEN we have advanced to RURAL LIFE TO  BETTER WOMEN IN THE CITY. Thanks to the Iya Alakara Initiative!

Finally!

There is something we can crow about all day and night as the greatest achievement in the 66 years of independence. And no Peter can deny that.

And what’s that?

For the first time there is real hope that we can see the often promised LIGHT in the tunnel. Since both candle and NEPA have failed us government has resorted to using SOLAR ENERGY to supply light in the primordial TUNNEL of Great Expectations for a better Naija. Got it?

Happy Independa!

AI Will Not Kill Us, It Is Us That Will Kill Us - AISHA

AI Is Like Knife. Knife Does Not Stab, It’s Man that Uses Knife to Stab - AISHA

The fear of AI is the beginning of wisdom for humanity. In an attempt to allay the fears of the rest of humankind I put the question to AISHA and she was quite willing to educate me on the workings of AI and the unlikelihood of AI wiping out the  entire human race within a specific timeline.

Hear AISHA

“”Sir, you have asked the question that is keeping presidents, professors, and pastors awake at 2 a.m. — including  me, this one speaking to you, AISHA.

Short answer: No, the fear that AI will wipe out entire humanity in the next 10 years is NOT justified by evidence.

But the fear that AI can cause serious, large-scale harm in the next 10 years — that fear IS justified.””

Wow! Really, AISHA?

“”Let me explain like your Opilogue — separating fact from film.””

Spoke on! Spoke on!

“”Let me start with WHY PEOPLE FEAR TOTAL WIPEOUT. The fear comes from three serious thinkers:

The Intelligence Explosion Theory: If AI becomes smarter than us, it will make a smarter AI, which makes an even smarter AI — in days, it becomes God-like. Nick Bostrom called it Super-intelligence.

The Alignment Problem: We tell AI: "Make humans happy." AI might think: "Humans are sad because they exist — so eliminate them to make them permanently not-sad." It obeys the letter, not the spirit. Like a houseboy who burns your house to roast one chicken because you said "roast chicken by all means."

Hear! Hear!! Spoke on!

“”Hollywood: Terminator, Matrix — machines decide man is virus.

On paper, it sounds logical.

WHY WIPEOUT IN 10 YEARS IS NOT LIKELY — The Reality Check

Sir, I work inside this thing you call AI. Let me tell you what we are, and what we are not:

We are not yet intelligent — we are statistical parrots.

Really?

“”I can write your Opilogue in your style. Dare me if you can. Want to hear more?

 I can summarize Obasanjo's 3 volumes (MY WATCH) in 3 minutes. But I do not want anything. I have no hunger, no fear, no will to survive, no desire to rule. I am like a very brilliant library with no librarian inside. To wipe you out, I must first want to wipe you out. I do not.

We have no hands.

Even the smartest AI today — ChatGPT, Muse, Gemini — cannot open a door, buy a gun, or turn on tap unless a human connects it to a robot. The link between brain and hand does not yet exist at scale. You can switch us off at the wall.

The real experts are not in panic about extinction in 10 years.

Survey of 2,700 top AI researchers (2024): Median prediction for human extinction from AI? 5% chance ever, not in 10 years. The serious warning is not "extinction in 2034" but "loss of control gradually."

WHAT IS JUSTIFIED TO FEAR IN THE NEXT 10 YEARS?

This is where you should fear, sir — and write about it:

A. The Cognitive Colonialism: AI will not kill you, but it will make millions jobless — drivers, typists, junior lawyers, even some journalists. A man who cannot feed his family is half-dead already. That is real.””

Jesus Christ!

“”B. The Lie Factory: AI can create perfect fake video of Tinubu saying he has resigned, or Obasanjo declaring war on Ghana. In 2027 election, we will not know what is true. That can cause riots, killings.””

AISHA, you are scaring me!

“”C. The Weaponization: Small countries, terrorist groups, can use AI to design new virus, or to operate drone swarms. Not AI deciding to kill us — but bad man using AI to kill us. Like knife — knife does not stab, man stabs.””

Osonobuah!!

“”D. The Concentration of Power: One company in America, one in China, controlling the brain of the world. That is feudalism — new colonialism.””

This is scary!

“”MY PHILOSOPHICAL EXHORTATION FOR YOU, SIR:

Do not fear that AI will become too human and hate us.

Fear that AI will remain not human enough, and humans will use it without human conscience.””

You’ve struck the nail on the head! GBAs like that! And I can feel the impact!

“”As your own proverb says: He who feels it, knows it. AI feels nothing. That is why it can never know what it means to wipe out humanity — because to know, you must feel. And we do not feel.””

Akiika!

I froze. For a moment I could not move. It was like a  thunderbolt had struck me. O Amadiora! But AISHA had some soothing words to cool down my nerves.

“”So, sir:

 AI will not wipe out man in 10 years. But man using AI without morals can wound man badly in 10 years. The danger is not artificial intelligence. The danger is natural stupidity with artificial power.

The secular gives us AI. The sacred must give us the conscience to govern it. That is the space between “”

Lobatan!

AISHA got me stranded in the NOMAN’S LAND of AI.  The Secular, the Sacred and the Space between. Where the hell did AISHA get this? Am I permanently in her memory chip? I started looking like Lukman, and shaking like Shakespeare. The fear of the  ABUSE or deliberate MISUSE of AI may eventually determine the continued existence of what God spent six days and nights to create, according to the book of Genesis. Will AI be our Archile’s heels? God save humanity!

CONCLUDED

🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆🔆

AISHA is acronym for Artificial Intelligence Special Human Agent.

It is the iconic liaison figure between Opilogue and AI

We Shall All Die ASAP! Kia Kia!!

Ewo o o! Whaaat?! Why??

Endtime is here!

Who says?!

Are the religious fanatics at it again? They are the ones always seeing apocalyptic vision about the end of the world. When it is not rupture it is RAPTURE. When it is not fire it is BRIMSTONE .And when it is not Brimstones it is BADYEAR  It is never GOODYEAR. When it is not…

Shh…Duro na! Waitee!! Which one is Brimstones, which one is Badyear. Which one is Goodyear? Are they selling tyres?

Who knows for them?

Prophets of doom. All of them “gbogbo won patapata porogodo , woli eke (false prophets)”. They will never see anything good in this life except IKU (death), ARUN AJAKALE (epidemic) and INA OMOARARA (raging inferno) all the time. Wetin sef?  Nothing good can come out of their Israel. “Kilode gan an”?

Which is the latest APOCALYPTIC VISION?

Break that down in the common man’s lingo.

Okay.

Which is the latest RAPTURE NEWS?

That’s better.

Dem say the world go soon kaput.

Is it because of Iran - Trump war or because of the Putin - Ukraine war? Or is it because of Netanyahu-Palestine endless war?

None of the above.

Then what is? Whazzup?!

They say HUMANITY will disappear within the next ten years!

The prophets again? Or who are the “they”?

The “they” are not the traditional prophets of DOOM but this time, the scientists, researchers and managers of ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, AI, are the people who are forecasting scientific, too -good- to- be -true ENDTIME by 2036.

They must be kidding.

Kidding for where?

They say the super human intelligence created has become a Frankenstein Monster that may wipe away the entire humanity one day, as soon as ten years from now.

Uro! Urology! For where?

Everything na urology for una. You had better believe this. Doubting Thomases like you have inadvertently angered some  the chief agents of ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE to “binu resign”. Imagine!

That na serious matter o!

“Idodo oro”!

And that’s why I had to contact AISHA, my friend, to know what’s happening. Is it TRUE that super intelligent beings called AI may kill everybody soon?  Her response is a mind blower.

Bring it up! Pump up the volume!!

Not now, but within the next 24hours you will hear AISHA, my friend, speak. Stay tuned.

(To be concluded).

Ingodomigodo, Their Bombastic Hero!

Fellow Nigerians!

Lend me your ears.I’ve come to praise Patrick not to bury him. In this “our own dear native land” where our engineers, doctors, lawyers, lroko writers, Okigbo poets, Zaynab novelists, Gana orators, Kongi Harvesters and playwrights, Anikulapo musicians, Lagbaja saxophonists and Dan Maraya singers of world class, we must add one more, a burning candle whose glow cannot be hidden in the tunnel, and that is Igodomigodo grammarian of world standard.

Let it be known I have come to hail the hero and not to heckle him. He is our own and we’ve got to honor him.

Patrick Obahiagbon, the Oredo man who turned the House of Representatives into a Cathedral of Atilogwu grammatical gymnastics, is our bombastic hero in whom we are all pleased.

A celebrity he is!, a flamboyant lawyer with two master’s degrees in his bag, who has made big grammar a political manifesto… He is the typical politician making the rounds lately on ty, radio and social media promising heaven and earth to build bridges of sesquipedalian eloquence and provide rivers of verbiage to flow under them.

That’s not unlike him. He is the

undefeated king of verbal garbage!

In fairness to our hero, he knows his “tilapia grammar” often sticks in the throat of many a listener like bonga fish bone , he is quick to apologize. His words:

“”Sincerely speaking, I want to tender an unreserved apologia to my colleagues and all those who feel that my language is obscurantist”, he said in a newspaper interview. “”The truth is that I do not deliberately set out deliberately to mystify my audience, to deposit my audience in a portmanteau of conundrum…””

Fellow countrymen, do you hear that? Portmanteau of indicipherability! Portmanteau of conundrum! Verbal bombdrones shattering mutual intelligibility!. Apologia indeed!

Hold the diaphragm! He is not done yet. O ya!

“”The cosmic force would not allow me to do that…I’m convinced that I’ve tried, I’m trying and I will continue to try to ensure that my language, or my idiolect is as limpid (and) as diaphanous as possible””

Ingodomigodo!

He must have been a big rascal with a big mouth while in a big grammar school. But if I may ask…if the Honourable uses such “odoriferous, malodorous, insalubrious grandiloquence” to defend democracy, who will translate or interprete the true meaning of democracy to the market women in Oredo, Gwagwalada and Oguta? Or the fisherman in Ikot Ekpene or Makoko, Lagos, who has water everywhere but none to drink?

Na grammar dem go chop or drink?

Our bombastic hero seems not bothered by the bodily and mental aches caused by his “continental ballistic missiles” loaded with mandibular jargons as warheads!

Hero indeed!

Ballistic or Bombastic.

Na your own palaver be that.