Ruyi's World of Books & Stories

Not everyone should be writing for the public. Sadly, the democracy of social media and the internet is such that we must endure the co-presence of all sorts of opinionated intellectual dilettantes who can wear the toga of "public commentator". There are always the giveaways. You will always recognize the dilettantes through their slippages and errors of the rendering. In the Nigerian context, you recognize them when you see the inexperience, the ignorance, often powered by an intractable, self-assured arrogance and presumptuousness. There is the presumptuousness of thinking you have lessons and lectures for an entire race. My advice to the Igbo... My advice to the Yoruba... My advice to the Hausa-Fulani... Anyone you see wielding lectures and lessons for an entire race is an inexperienced dilettante who shouldn't be writing for the public. In the Nigerian context, those who are wiser, cleverer, and more intelligent than an entire race; those who are bet...

Distance can hurt but life remains a choice. A man can win if only he can bend circumstances to his favour. I was on a good run and my happiness was taller than the pair of legs that carried me. With more grounds to cover, and the sun at its peak, I went past a bend down a street where I stumbled on a creature. Coincidence is part of the game of life. We can play to win. The creature was an old friend whose name was Jim. He was translucent. I could clearly see what life had done to him. He was like a ship given much to bear. After covering a huge distance, began to sink. He was in the lower estate of life where good things are luxury, and securing them is often elusive. Jim was barely forty but he looked as if he was in the pool of old age. Looking pale and drawn, his pair of legs could barely carry him.  He was a slice of his past. In the past, Jim carried himself about as if unable to hurt a fly. The world was at his feet. Always well dressed, with bloated ego, he was be...