The Prince and the World's Hypocritical Reviews

When I read Machiavelli’s The Prince, I discovered how hypocritical the world was. Long before I the epic work came to my reading table, there had been controversial comments about the book and how to a large extent its teachings deviated from normal ethical standard. But, later, after the interesting read, I realized that the world may have frowned at The Prince because of its blunt sincerity in documenting how human beings behave and how best is it to win them to your side as a leader either by conventional ways or dubious means.

Niccolo Machiavelli was a Florentine genius, a political theorist and philosopher of the sixteenth century, whose best known work – The Prince – shocked papal Europe upon publication. This was because The Prince veered off from abstract ideas of consolidating power, and thus said things the way it was. Machiavelli’s ideas and writing have been labelled as devious because of the blunt truth embedded in them. Yet, their practical applications have yielded success upon careful practice.

The Prince discusses various ways power is gotten in a Principality either by hereditary, or by force, or by criminal act, etc, and the various reactions the subjects show to these different forms. For instance, a Principality acquired by hereditary is not so difficult to govern. The subjects easily give their loyalty to the new prince.

The Prince goes further to bare to us that human beings are fickle and liars; they easily forget a good done unto them, but remember for a long time a wrong done unto them. So it might be advisable for those rulers who might not be able to please their subjects till the end of their tenures, to deal with their subjects from the beginning of their tenures and then begin to do good unto them towards the end. Because human beings have short memory, they will forget all the evil done unto them and speak well of the ruler.

The Prince says that human beings can be perfectly loyal to their leaders if only the later can abstain from their properties. Properties don’t only relate to furniture, cars, house, etc. Properties in broad prospective could also include wives or husbands; in managerial setting, salary could also be included. Thus, as a manager or ruler, to be successful in your career, it is better to recognize your subordinate’s properties and abstain from them no matter how tempting they may appear.

The Prince has taught me beyond the letters in which it was writ. Although, I had heard about it before my University days (then, often painted with darkness), it was in my First Year I got to hear about Niccolo Machiavelli formally and I read The Prince few years after. In the Philosophy text I read, Machiavelli represented the philosopher of the modern age, because his work – The Prince – disregarded the world’s hypocritical and abstract ideas and thus spoke the truth the way it appears.  But this stand caused him so many foes especially among the Catholics of the medieval period, and as a result of this, he was labelled as an enemy of moral doctrine and as an ill influence to politicians of his time.

Ever since the first version of The Prince was published in 1513, its doctrines have been shocking just as Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. While to some, it has been a compilation of crazy ideas which have brought deceit and lies to modern political corridors, rather than a consolidation of  the abstract truth our hypocritical world has glued together so it could appear vindicated in the sight of the God it claim to worship. But the truth stands that Machiavelli’s work - The Prince – has since had resounding effects on effective management and even wider prospect in preventing anarchy in a Free State. His take on whether it was better to be more feared than loved has in no small measure affected my thoughts politically and otherwise.

Read More »

We Have Become Ghosts: Poem by Ohikhuare Isuku

We died yesterday,
Even before our conception,
Even before our consciousness
Took flight to maturity

In our womb,
Our forebears stabbed us
And spilled our blood
To wet their paths

Then, they stuffed us
Like cotton wool
Into one wooden casket,
And dug for us a shallow grave

But now, we have become ghosts
With fiery eyes and breaths like dragons;
Our deafening cries shall
Rent the air from dusk to dawn;
We shall hurt these climes
Until our ghosts sublime.

Read More »

The Another Wind: Poem by Chidinma Ahika

What are those winds
That run like blessed fire
But with potency dazzling cold?
What are those winds
That roll rushing bold
Yet so weak and low?

The mouth-makers that
Polish our eyes with fresh banal;
The new champions that
Weary our longing with faded stews,
And come twirling around
Our eyes with old clothes sewn new,
They are the another winds.

The tales they erect,
We've learned so long a time to suspect,
But the new sweetness of this set,
Holds our hopes against neglect,
For their tongues are devices
That beat the cadavers of all we expect,
To fullness, to form, to flesh.

© Chidinma Ahika.

Read More »

Distraction: Article by Chidinma Ahika

There are thousands of students I shy away from. So many of them need to rekindle from the light that emits from my candour. Yet I toss every approach to neglect; all because I want to stay focused. It's been three sessions now; this universe that is flowered by collage of students starve from my touch as I need to bag that degree. It sounds egocentric right? Just as much as I thought!

Was it not some months after my admission I made a blueprint where I exalted academics above extracurricular activities---not its death? I thought some way I would manage the latter but not trample on it. Today, the system I live in has subtly made the social inherent proclivities of me, like in all other human personalities, inconsequential. To make a First class I must or should sacrifice 'all'.

What are these other 'all' my soul has become a murderer to? They are my talents and natural dispositions. As far as I'm concerned the cramming talent; the ability to predict exam questions or prepare theoretical theses (to be dumped at the closest bin by the lecturer) are iota of the greater circle.

You may not understand if you are out there. And if you are in here you still don't understand then maybe it's because, sorry to say, you have been indoctrinated in full eclipse. I once was, I still partially am, and I pray someday I would be free.

'Suffer now and enjoy later' this is the scam we bought for an exchange of our potentials manifestation. What can be so abominable, injurious, and cataclysmic than the abortion of dreams, ideas that would change the world, and natural sociological tendencies? We forget that if at all we should suffer now, it should not be at the destruction of ourselves; yes, our gifts are what make the core of us.

Four years in subconscious delay or decay of our contributions and manifestation to the world is a dangerous thing to do to oneself and community.

'The end would justify the means' was the ideology I once used to embrace myself. What if this means actualises this intended end and then decimates the entrance of another more glorified beginning? What if this means becomes the monster towards other alluvial pastures? The end alone should not justify the means. Instead the means should justify and account for itself.

I love to write; Okiez likes to sing; Efe is a dance lord; Isaac can talk for Africa! And what do we do with these God given gifts? I bet you would guess right. We shove them off and call them distractions and flow with the trend. We try not to bother about developing them or question how our conscience will qualify positively for the test of abortionists; for the foetus in us are decaying by the struggle for academics, for great grades. The foetus that would affect Nigeria; that would help lives we have been taught to name bastards in the guise of distractions. Yet those out there wonder why we turn out to be mechanics after graduation.

When scrupulously assessed, we are refined to function in a school and not adjust to life according to our psychomotor domain and entirety of our prowess in whole. The mind is the system's emphasis which is an error to be corrected.

My prayer is that those who rush to come in here should over dose themselves with that which is vaccinated against this indoctrination, and thus react appropriately. A balance is what true education is all about not full time academics. These distractions are part of the instruments needed for change. I pray we all come to accept these necessary distractions one day!

© Chidinma Ahika

Read More »

Why I stopped Being a Football Fan

Some years ago, while leaving for the place where I usually read at night, I met an airtime vendor in front of my Hall. He wore a black singlet with green stripes around its sleeveless edges, and the way the singlet molded his body, his chest muscles pushed out and the packs on his stomach traced noticeable outlines on the singlet. He was of the kind of height which is considered average, and because together with this he was stout, he was no doubt ladies’ favourite. That night, he wore three-quarter jeans which went slightly pass his knees. He sweated on his forehead because he had affected an obvious agitation in attending to his customers.

I had just passed the busy common room, filled to the brim. Students hung against the windows of the common room with broken glass-panes. The noise from the common room was threatening: it poured out, past the bar and bursary, unto the veranda of the frontage. But it was the magnitude of heat emanating from that common room that scared me, and while I was wondering whether it was worth the stress for those dedicated football fans to mill themselves in a heated room with poor ventilation just because a match was being aired, I met this airtime vendor of a man.

After he had sold airtime for me, he asked if I was coming from the direction of the common room. When I nodded my head in the affirmative, he asked what the match’s score was. Other time, I would have answered a simple ‘I don’t know’ to this question, or just keep quiet and watch the agitated soul run back to the common room to get the score for himself. But this night, for a reason I didn’t know, I told him I didn’t like watching football, and then added solemnly that I was not a pious football fan, when he gazed at me for a long time as if he were pitying the young man I had become. He spoke at last; his accent flared with disappointment: ‘In this age, what sort of a young man doesn’t like watching football?’ This statement struck me; it made it seem like not being an ardent football fan was a crime of the same magnitude as felony or murder. So that night, while walking slowly to my destination, I pondered when football and I parted ways; when I stopped being a football fan.

In the years that preceded this very one, I had begun to nurture a keen likeness for football. In 2008, when Chelsea and Manchester United played the UEFA Champions League final, I was in Class Four in Secondary. In the morning of the day the match was played, after the assembly tradition, there was an exhilarating argument in my class over who would win the big one that year. Because the most powerful in class supported Chelsea, the whole class seemed to pitch their abode with the club as if that would sign off their wining. Because I hated to go with the crowd, I openly declared my support for Manchester United. Before now, I wasn’t emotionally tied to any club, although I had begun to watch football many years before then. When I came to join my brother in Secondary, some nights, we followed the Corpers in the lodge we lived in to Viewing Centre and paid to watch matches, yet I wasn’t a fan of any club. But my brother had become a Manchester United fan, and it may have partly influenced my decision that morning in Class Four.

In the night the match was played, the lodge we lived in was empty: corpers, our teachers and co-students moved out of the lodge to Viewing Centres. We watched the match in a guest house in the beginning of our street. Where we watched the game was a large round shade built of thatched roof at the middle of the guest house. With iron poles as supporting pillars and a cemented floor, the sides of the hut were left open, guided only by iron balustrades. The TV was placed in one corner of the hut-house, while the crowd surrounded it like a half-moon. The crowd was not as large as the one in the common room I would experience years later and there was no heat emanating from the venue because of the perfect ventilation. It was a venue in which ardent fans bought large Manchester United and Chelsea posters, and spread them side by side on the floor between the TV and the fans.

Manchester United won that match via penalty kick-out and also won my heart. I started becoming a religious fan: I could go to watch their matches for money or simply ask those who have the media to get football news what scores were and who was topping the league. Little by little, I discovered I had become emotionally drawn: when Manchester United won a match, I felt uplifted, when they lost, I would feel a sharp pang on my chest and become moody for a long time. It began to affect me psychologically, and like a bad relationship, it was difficult to cut the chains off.

I think I finally broke the link between football and I the last UEFA Champions League Final Manchester United played with Barcelona, in which they lost to the Spanish giant two goals to nil. I had left my comfort zone to watch that match that night, having high hope my erstwhile club would win. I felt heartbroken when they lost; it affected me for many days and I became scared the disappointment would never wash off. Then later, when I finally escaped the spell, I decided to retrace my steps and stopped being a football fan before it would ruin me. I realized that no matter how wonderful a football club maybe, it must suffer defeat. And since the defeat affected me negatively, I decided to leave the football-sphere.

I seldom watch match now, but the ties with Manchester United has not been completely severed. I still feel excited when I hear that they are doing well. But that bitterness which covered me in those days when they lost has completely gone. 

Read More »

Benevolence: Poem by Chidinma Ahika

The Author: Chidinma Ahika (2017)

The breath of me breaks
the secret of my brackish being;
Ghetto spoils deny my form of sumptuous fledge,
Whilst my soul melts in platter of sorrows:
Why does the world maroon my tattered whole?
Pray dawn, come spur my dark clime.

Bitterness of this sphere holds strongly,
Against my sheen, deep in putrid,
That dogs in Lekki areas boast of diets
More ideal than my kingly meals.

Every man to his pocket;
Every eye to his plough;
None so benevolent to part his sum;
None so artful to tend my plight;
My beggarly self to providence love alone.

© Chidinma Ahika.

Read More »

The Ruins of Ajaokuta Steel Complex: How We are Affected as Engineers

My Course-mates and I at Ajaokuta Steel Complex, 2016

My course mates and I visited Ajaokuta Steel Complex in the autumn of our University life. Field Trip was a course in the final semester of the last year which would affect our CGPA. The course tasked us to visit some industries in order to know how Mechanical Engineers function in such industries: what their job specifications spell out, as well as how vital these job specifications affect the day to day running of these industries. We visited Ihovbor Power Plant around the City’s outskirt, not too far away from the University. Then, we visited Seven-Up Bottling Company in Isihor, which is few minutes’ drive from the University’s Main Gate. But the most striking of our sojourn was the Field Trip to Ajoakuta Steel Company Limited, located close to the bank of River Niger in Kogi state, Nigeria. The journey wasn’t striking only because of the warmth we felt from familiar laughter and talks from common folks; it was most striking with sadness (for me) because, there, in the 800 hectares Steel Complex, we found out that irrespective of the classes of degrees our laurel institution gave us, Nigeria offered to us (on her blistered palm) a shattered hope for us to struggle over like hungry dogs.

I remember the morning we set out for that memorable journey, we did not see the sunrise above the clouds; the heavens spread out in ashy mist as if it were barely dawn. The rain threatened the earth with its prickling silver rods. The atmosphere was chilling by the time we left the Main Gate. The windows of the long bus owned by the University (which we boarded) were shut and the tiny rods of the silver rain beat the glass panes, slanted at varied angles. I sat behind because firstly, the arrangement placed me there, and then secondly, I loved the back because I could have a free view of everyone everywhere without having to turn around.

It happened that the back seat, where we sat, turned out to be where the fun which lighted our journey, originated from. Here, scapegoats were selected from other sections of the long bus for goading. Wonderful comedians like Achievement Jacobs (the self-style Speaker of the House), Friday Abolorunke, Austin Evbuomwan, Samson Eguaoje, Oju Marvellous, etc were pivotal in the generation of the required fun which sustain our journey towards the North. Snacks were shared and happiness wet our cheeks like wine. We longed for what we wished to see, oblivious to us that it would turn us stale: some of us for a while, while others (like me) for a lifetime.

Our buses moved carefully past the horrible Ekpoma express way filled with puddles upon puddles of rain water, and accelerated past the great Ewu hill (where my friend – Isaiah – hails from). The course-mates in the second bus, from what we later learnt, were having their own nice time, playing cards and teasing whoever presented himself as scapegoats. By the time we got to Auchi, we saw the sun; the earth was dry and the windows were opened to allow air into the bus. We sang music we originated to mock those we felt like mocking. Other times, we stopped along the busy highway to ease ourselves and then continued our journey.

We got to Okene roundabout and turned left, heading to Ajaokuta Steel Complex. The sun was mild, and it had inclined against the western sky by the time we got the large car pack of the administrative block. It was painted with a colour I cannot say was completely brown; it appeared like brown mixed with pink. The concreted car park was sprawling, and because the sun was diffused, we posed for different photographs. We were happy because we had gotten to ‘the cradle of Nigeria’s civilization.’

But after the meal at the company’s café, we began our mournful sojourn into the deeper heart of Ajaokuta Steel Complex: towards the waste that spread out 800 hectares against the western sun. We passed the Oxygen plant originally intended to produce Oxygen for the Blast Furnace. Grasses had grown to inhabit the foundation of the magnificent structures; their paints were peeling off, and reptiles roamed around the little woods which formed beneath them. The Steam Power Plant was still generating power for the National Grid. It was the only section which was functional in this large land filled with different structures. The Power Plant took cooling water from River Niger to cool the condenser and then discharged the hot water back into the River. We visited River Niger, and walked around the tall Water Treatment Plant. Half of its root was buried in the River.

We visited The Training Institute, filled with many lathe machines, millers, grinders, etc. It was a large building with Mango tress heavy with fruits. We plucked enough that we ate, and kept for the journey ahead. But like most sections seen earlier on, this Institute was silent, devoid of humans as if it were made for ghosts and reptiles.

My sadness deepened; the same sadness which had originated immediately we were giving a welcome talk by a Mechanical Engineer. The Engineer had given us the brief history of the Steel Complex; how it was larger by far than the largest University Campus in the country; how it originated, first from the conception of NSDA in 1971, then the contracting of the project to TPE of Russia in 1973, the completion of its feasibility study in 1979 and then the historical laying of the foundation stone in 1980 by the then civilian president, Shehu Shagari. By ’94 when TPE contract was terminated, the first phase of the project (targeted to produce about 1.4million tonnes of iron per year) was 98% completed. It was only the Blast Furnace (the heart of the Steel Complex) that was by that time (till now) not commissioned.

It wasn’t the history of Ajaokuta Steel Complex that shocked me, nor its largeness which spread useless under the fading sun; it was the revelation of what could have been if the Steel Complex was in good working condition. Ten thousand Engineers would have been employed alone, and then many more skilled and unskilled labourers would have been recruited. The revenue generated would have boosted Nigeria’s GDP. The downstream sectors of the Steel Industries would have been affected positively, and millions of well-paying jobs would have been generated, thus unemployment would have been a tale told in the days of yore. Above all, industrialization would have swept the length and breadth of the country.

Our journey back to campus was a defeated one, especially for me. Thinking of what would have been if Ajaokuta Steel Complex was functional, the gloominess of silence possessed me like a plague. The boisterous and happy mood my course-mates and I left campus with had also relaxed considerably. Perhaps, it was because of the fatigue of the journey; or maybe they felt the disappointment I felt too, because some students openly cursed the country; expressed their disappointment for the decayed infrastructure at Ajaokuta Steel Complex; regretted being Nigerians, and why they were born in a country where the leaders are not only corrupt, but vision-less, confused and above all wicked.

                                                     Author: Ohikhuare Isuku

Read More »