Oh shit. The Financial Times talks about my book. I need to call my mummy. 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

I can’t speak for other Bundeslandes but in Berlin, if Germany is playing, no police officer will show up because your neighbor is screaming too loudly during the match. This is the one time when it is not taboo to bring out your German flag (otherwise a German flag with football is suspect 😅)

I love all of the Späti guys in my neighbourhood. They are so nice and friendly, even the ones who have the typical Berlin face, that to a non Berliner looks like unfriendliness. Two of them always ask when I walk in, what perfume I have on. The older one, typical east Berliner, who never smiles, was the first to ask. He grunted and nodded, which if you know this kind of person, is a high compliment. The other one, of Turkish descent always jokes when I walk in. He calls to his colleagues: hey smell this guy, and ask him what perfume he uses. Then he tells them what I told him the first time, which he has never forgotten even though this is a very busy Späti on the corner near a large park. He does not know my name but every time I walk in he says: Tom Ford Noire Extreme mixed with Armaf Intense Man and we laugh, and ask each other how our day is going. Once you breach the cultural barrier that looks like unfriendliness in Berlin, there is a certain warmth which only Berlin can produce: a warmth that respects privacy, a warmth that says, hey, I don’t want to interfere with your life or know what you are doing, but I am here with you, in this wild sometimes cold city. I love that that feeling that is at once respectful and warm. I do not mind that Berlin does not make itself immediately legible. That you need to crack the code and prove yourself, that a smile is not superficial and meaningless, that warmth is earned and not frivolous. I like that in spite of how obviously foreign I am, there are spaces where I can be anonymous yet recognised, that they do not perform niceness because of how I look, that they will be as mean to me as they are to a person born here if they need to. Because to truly fit in, especially in a place where you are physically different from the local population, it is important that you get the full range of the culture. I do not want to be treated nicely because someone thinks they might be called racist. I want to see who people are. It takes a while to see it, but when they show it, they really show it.

For the @WSJ I reviewed @CarlosBarraganT's excellent new book 'Yahoo Boys'.

Between baby oil and powder Johnson’s has done a lot in the world.

I bet even people in Germany were happy they scored that goal. Their fans were a joy to watch and the players all looked like they were having a great time. And now Americans know there is a nation called Curaçao. Everyone wins.

In this short essay I make a distinction between exorcism and adorcism, what I have learnt from studying the philosophy of Bori, how I think of the memoir as a genre and my upcoming book.

Having state police in Nigeria is fine. In fact it should have happened a long time ago. But thinking that this will solve the current spate of kidnappings and violence is to not understand the nature of the problem. Have the state police, but know that you cannot solve a political problem with more bureaucracy. Those in power know exactly where every single militia leader is. They know who funds them. They know how they get their weapons. They know who is involved in moving gold, lithium, tin etc. and where exactly the illegal mining is happening (that is when they are not actively participating in and benefiting from it). They know where these illegally mined solid minerals end up. When governors want to find some random person who puts up a Facebook post about them, they are very efficient in locating and arresting them, even if they live in some shanty with no postal address. They know how to move their thugs to every single ward when it is time to rig elections - they have perfect logistics for this. So this is not a problem of manpower or intelligence. It is the result of people addicted to the easy gains of criminal economies. We still remember the bandit in Katsina telling Nigerians on camera that many of the weapons they use were supplied to them by politicians and that they were subsequently abandoned in the forest after the elections. Apart from Katsina, many other bandits (like Bello Turji for example) have frequently alleged that prominent former governors and local government chairmen in states like Zamfara and Sokoto originally gave them political protection, relied on them for elections, or used them to suppress local rivals, only to completely abandon them to live as outlaws in the forest once political terms ended. Also, have they not recovered the body of the General who was killed in captivity? Do they not know where the kidnappers are? Because too many politicians are complicit in the violence and mayhem, and because of how closely politics is tied to any action that will end this problem, there is so much reluctance to do what needs to be done to end this menace. And because elections are around the corner, also because those in power need the capacity (for violence and coercion) that many of these non state actors provide, too many of the politicians in power find the actions necessary for ending kidnapping and banditry too politically costly.

The same reason it is easier to get a European visa if you already have a US one. Also the same reason embassies ask if you have ever been refused a visa.

🤣🤣🤣

🇳🇬 should actually be praising and thanking Carlos for taking time to research and interview 419ers. However, 🇳🇬 people do not want to hear the truth about how deeply corruption and dishonesty has eaten into the country's psyche.

After watching this documentary I had more questions than answers. I left not knowing anything about her motivations, origins, or anything that might make any of the horrific things she did make sense. Also this is one case that tested my belief in the abolition of the death penalty. I still firmly believe that no state should be able to kill people (regardless of their offence) but watching this, I kept thinking if I was on a jury determining if she should get the death penalty I would have struggled.

I think a lot about money, how much of a wild, jealous animal it is. Once it enters a room, it consumes everything. Changes relationships, changes motivations, changes dynamics. There is not a single relationship I have had, professional or otherwise, that has not been adversely affected, once money became present.

Is this just the Temu Brazil team or is Morocco playing really well?

Children, women, men, politicians, recently retired generals. No one is safe in Nigeria. Even the army seems powerless against this new menace. And unless something drastic happens, this will get even worse as elections approach. Something is broken, and there are people actively taking advantage of the inability of the government to govern. Again, this is not a problem that you can solve with bombs. The groups are too many, too dispersed, and have too many non combatants in their camps, that just aerially bombing them all will kill far more innocent civilians than actual militants. There is no shortcut to ending this. As long as Nigerian politicians and their friends continue stealing money meant for development, as long as they continue abdicating responsibility, non state actors will keep exploiting the loopholes. Already these non state actors are fully embedded in local economies and communities, and only because of the long absence of any sort of meaningful development. If state governors had taken rural development serious, if there were schools and hospitals and roads and functional institutions, if our forests were not permanently abandoned, then the country would stand a chance. If the federal government had shown greater interest in the country's vast, highly porous land boundaries shared with Benin, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon, then maybe. All of this is greed, corruption and active collusion of politicians coming back to bite everyone in the rear end. Politicians are benefitting from the illegal mining, and from the criminal economies that are thriving in these rural areas. This is not just "insecurity". This is the result of the deliberate actions of those in power, from federal state to local government levels. Nigeria is just a large crime scene.

I read this too, and my first thought is, if humans were really being good humans, no one should die alone without any family or friends or even neighbours. What good is poetry rendered to a dead body, if in life they were all alone? True human kindness shows up in life, not at death.