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The social media has been agog with the romance between an American lady, Ms Janine Sanchez (46), and her Kano-based lover, Mr Isah Sulaiman (23), who plan to get married in March, and thereafter live in America as husband and wife. The couple met on Instagram 10 months ago. They became friends and fell in love with each other. Moved by love, the mother of two took the pain to travel from California to visit her young lover and his parents at their home in Panshekara, Kano State, Nigeria. The young man's family and community are taking the matter seriously despite the oddities. Both parents of the boy have given their consent and are ready to bless the marriage. Isah's father has four conditions for his future daughter in law. First, Isah will remain a Muslim after the marriage. Second, he will continue his education after they are married. Third, the parents of Ms. Sanchez must give their consent for her to marry Isah. And finally, the family of the boy will seek and obtain security clearance for the marriage to go ahead. These conditions are rather bizarre. Isah is an adult. His choice of faith cannot be fixed by his parents, especially after he relocates to the US. His getting education in the US is almost a given, considering his age and the fact that he needs a life suitable for America. The requirement for the consent of Ms. Sanchez's parents is odd because though normal in Kano is unusual in America, given that Ms. Sanchez is an adult. The rather complicated aspect of the conditionalities has to do with the so-called security clearance. This will seem rather reasonable from the perspective of a father whose young son is about to marry a lady twice his age, and then follow her to America. If the purpose of a security clearance is to ensure there is nothing in the lady's record to suggest she may harm the young man, that will make a lot of sense. Isah's father who is a retired police officer may have a predisposition to security checks and had indicated that he would be going to the office of DSS for that purpose. The latest twist, however, was that the Islamic police (Hisbah), instead of the the DSS, in Kano invited the couple and the father of Isah together with his relative. It is not clear what happened during the meetings between Hisbah and the couple. Picture of the couple and Hisbah is shown      

The Hausa/Fulani dominated federal government cannot hold the rest of the country to ransom on the existential question of security. There is no way you can interpret the constitution and it will lead to the position that people should willingly submit to death in the hands of bandits and organized criminals. It is clear that the Nigerian army has not been able to protect Nigerians against organized armed violence. There is no doubt that the Nigerian police failed to protect Nigerians from organized crimes. Indeed, evidence shows that the police have been the authors of most crimes in the land. In such circumstances, it is eminently proper that the people must seek conventional and unconventional means of organizing for their security. I would expect the attorney general of Nigeria to focus his energy on how to use the laws of the land to help these efforts by different states to ensure safety and law and order in the various communities. If the AG uses the letters of the constitution to seek to frustrate these noble efforts, the affected regions should seek to amend that constitution. If anybody poses an obstacle to that, then the affected states should consider whether it is still in their interest to remain part of the country or whether they should move in alternative directions that will best guarantee the security of their communities. Somebody should be able to tell the attorney general the truth, which is that if forced to choose between the Nigerian Constitution and the lives of the people, it will be to hell with the Constitution. Any constitution that promotes your death is one that you must discard and repudiate in its entirety. I hope that the Governors of the Western States will stand their grounds and resist any blackmail from the federal government on the matter.  And why should anybody in the West worry about the Attorney General's threats? Just tell him that if he insists on his position, then the western States are prepared to withdraw from Nigeria. That will panic them so much they will leave you alone. What gives the North the courage to dictate to Nigeria is the belief that the West will never seek to break off from Nigeria. If there is any serious challenge to that belief, that is the end to domination. The North cannot cope with a situation where both the east and west want to leave Nigeria.

Yesterday, Justice Jude Okeke of the FCT High Court, Maitama, Abuja, dismissed a defamation lawsuit which Tony Ogbulafor filed against Emeka Ugwuonye. The case is TONY OGBULAFOR V. EMEKA UGWUONYE, FCT/HC/CV/1147/2017. You may recall that Tony Ogbulafor filed two defamation lawsuits against Emeka Ugwuonye. One he filed on behalf of David Aiyedegbon and then he filed another one on his personal behalf claiming that Emeka Ugwuonye defamed him in a post made on DPA wall. He was seeking damages of 10 billion naira against Emeka Ugwuonye. There is no problem in suing Emeka Ugwuonye provided you play it in accordance with the law.  But David and Tony are crocked men. They never play according to the law. So, while Emeka has been in detention, they knew that Emeka was unavailable to defend the cases and that it would compound his legal costs if he were to fight the cases all at the same time. Emeka requested them to give him time to come out to face them in court. But they refused and wanted to get a technical knockout against Emeka while he was in detention. Emeka showed Tony Ogbuluafor how the game of law is played. Emeka didn't even bother to deny the allegations of Ogbulafor. He gave them a false hope of easy victory. He knew they would behave like the proverbial monkeys that came upon a jar of palmwine in the middle of the forest. They would get excited and drink themselves to stupor and sleep off, and the hunter would come and put them in his kill-bag one by one. That was exactly what happened. Even without any thing filed by Emeka Ugwuonye, they lost Tony's part of the case completely. The judge told them that they could not show that what DPA wrote on DPA wall was untrue. If you recall, it was reported that Tony, acting on behalf of David, was seen handing an envelope of money to the police for them to interrogate Emeka Ugwuonye over the information he released concerning Chacha's case. They were disgraced in court yesterday. Emeka sent a lawyer to be in Court just to monitor the outcome. Emeka didn't bother at all. He was always confident that if the Court were to follow the law, Tony and David would run into the rock. And it came to pass that their suit was dismissed after 3 years of trying to intimidate Emeka. The judge told them that they went into a boxing match with a man whose legs were shackled and his hands tied behind, and that man still defeated them. Emeka laughed so hard when the news reached him in prison. He is confident that all the cases his enemies filed would end up like this. If you like this news, this will be the right time to send your New Year gift to our Founder. You should be able to afford a bottled water for him at least.  Chop knuckles.

Home is your place of abode, where you reside or where you live. Your house is a building that belongs to you or which you own. Sometimes, your house may also be your home. Some other times, the house you use as your home may in fact belong to someone else (your landlord). Your right to your home is more closely protected by law than your right to your house, though your right to your house is longer in duration than the right to your home. One of the most important rights to your home, which you may not have to your house is called the right to peaceful enjoyment or right to habitability. Your home must be peaceful, enjoyable and habitable. But not necessarily so with respect to your house. Your house is still your house, even if it is not enjoyable, or even if it is uncompleted house or even if there is no running water in it. But your home has to be habitable. Sometimes, the place you call home may be a place another person calls his house. Let us assume your right to the home collides with the other person's right to the house. Where am I going with this? DPA is presently handling a case where a man said to his wife: "Pack out of my house!". And the woman started packing. As she packed, she called DPA and we had to come in. In fact, I just finished talking with her and the "owner" of the house. We reason it like this: even if the house is the man's house (alone), the fact is that that house is the woman's home. Since the man is claiming as the owner of the house, fine, the woman is claiming it as her home. Her rights are that of peaceful enjoyment of a habitable, safe and secure home. The man should leave the house immediately because his presence there makes the house unhabitable and unenjoyable to the woman. For now, let us deal with the peaceful enjoyment of the place (as a home) and later, we will deal with the ownership issues as a house. No man has the right in law to tell his wife to pack out because it is his house. That house is her home. She is not a trespasser or a visitor or guest that you allowed into your house for few days. That's her home. And she has right to peaceful enjoyment of her home. If your husband tells you to pack out of "his house", call DPA. It may not really be his house alone. It may be the house of both of you. But in any event, even if it is his house, it is your home, and as such you ought to have the right of peaceful enjoyment of your home. Never agree to pack out of your home regardless of who owns the house.

In Nigeria, there are many tribes. They hate one another. They envy one another and they seek to harm one another. Their failure to love, support and cooperate with one another has set the country of Nigeria backward. But the Nigerian tribes are not only the traditional ones we always knew - the Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, etc. There is an emerging new tribe. It is the tribe of Nigerians outside Nigeria, as against Nigerians in Nigeria. Hatred and mutual rivalry between Nigerians in Nigeria and Nigerians in Diaspora is a matter you can easily observe. You may not have thought about it. But there is now this new Nigerian tribe. In the 1950s through 1970, Nigerians traveled overseas to get advanced education with intention to return. So, they never crested a steady and permanent tribe of Nigerians in Diaspora. But now, Nigerians emigrate with intention to become permanently overseas based. Thus, we can speak of Nigerians permanently overseas. The same rivalry among Nigerian tribes apply between Nigerians in Nigeria and Nigerians outside Nigeria. There is an incredible envy. Those outside Nigeria occasionally see how those they left in Nigeria 30 years ago have become governors, senators, and very rich from public office-holding, while they worked so hard overseas only to end up less wealthy than their poorly educated cousins that went into politics in Nigeria. This became more clearly after 1999 political transition in Nigeria. In 1999 when the military had their last transition to civil rule. Nobody in his right mind believed that the military were serious about handing over power to a civilian government. So, only the unemployed and unemployable were willing to respond to the military governments call for civilian participation in politics. The transition went through and the unemployed and unemployable became governors and ministers, to the chagrins of the better educated and employed people, especially those who were based overseas. At the same time Nigerians in Nigeria envy their cousins in America and other major countries of the world for their knowledge and urbane existence. This rivalry is so vicious and you see how the two groups undermine each other.  There are certain attitudinal dynamics between the two groups. They have divergent interests and are needlessly opposed. Each group even has pejorative terms for each other. Perhaps we need to study this phenomenon more closely and seek new ways to improve understanding and cooperation. There is definitely need to organize the Nigerian Diaspora.

We all spend a lot of time on social media both for fun and for work. For the physical world, most of us grew up receiving various instructions from parents and relatives on how to deal with people. You are told not to trust strangers, not to follow people you don't know well into a lonely place, not to accept things from strangers, etc. We grew up more or less informed about risks we face in the street or the physical world. But we do not receive similar instruction in respect of the social media world. Many of us still do not understand the social media world and the unique risks we face in it. In the physical world, like in the streets, you know you can be mugged, you can be robbed, you can be raped, you can be assaulted, you can be killed. Also, we are able to assess our unique disposition to certain risks, and prepare to avoid them. Example, a beautiful and attractive young woman knows not to work alone in a strange neighborhood. Also, in the physical world, we are conscious of time element to risk. Example, being out late in the night exposes you to more risks. But in the social media world, not only are we unable to understand the unique risks we face, we are ill prepared to deal with those risks. The truth, however, is that we face even greater risks in the social media world than we do in the real world. Just as there are people out to harm you in the physical world, there are more people out to harm you more in the social media world. So, you really need to understand this and develop some means of protecting yourself. The harms or dangers you face in the social media are not only that someone would scam you and obtain money from you or that someone will lure you with lies into a position where he can harm you physically. These kind of dangers are easily detectable these days. However, there is a type of danger you face in the social media which is difficult to detect. It has to do with emotional harm. Your emotional wellbeing is very important and quite essential for your overall good health. We are all entitled to feel happy, contented and satisfied with our lives and to feel hopeful and confident about the future. If we often have to feel sad, angry, frustrated and restless and insecure about our lives and our future, we will not be in good health. Indeed, persistent emotional stress can reduce your life span and lead to early death. So, the most harmful people to avoid in social media are those who make it their duty to make your life miserable and to take away your happiness. There are very many such people in the social media. Indeed, social media encourages such bad people to hide behind the anonymity of the social media to try to harm you. They derive pleasure in harming you. They roam around the social media looking for someone to harm. Such people are usually miserable and insecure people. They believe they can cure their own misery if they can make you miserable too. I can give you example of this with my own experience. To protect some DPA Admins from some vicious emotional vampires, we decided to use the page name Rambo. We can direct DPA without allowing the vampires to reach our wives, husbands and children to harass them. So, whenever you read from Rambo, all you can be sure of is that you are reading from DPA Admins, but you cannot be sure the particular Admin. That way, we don't feel personally hurt when the emotional vampires seek for blood to suck. Yet, despite the fact that they don't know for sure which Admin they are dealing with, the vampires will still leave the substance of the post and go for the person of the poster. They don't know where the poster lives, but they try to assume he lives in Nigeria. They don't know the educational and professional background of the poster, but they want to tell him that he is not an expert in this or that. But if you don't know who the particular Rambo is, you have to agree that you really cannot tell about his expertise: you must deal only with the content of his post. A good person will focus on what is on the post and determine whether it is true or false or reasonable or unreasonable. But the emotional vampire will ignore the post and focus on the poster, his tribe, his religion, whether he is a Democrat, where he lives, who he likes or don't like and whether he might have accepted money to express a particular view. For instance, when you accuse me of having received money from APC or Buhari for the view I express or when you accuse me of supporting terrorism because I held the view that an American President needed Congressional approval to use military force or when you accuse me of hating Trump just because I disagree with his policy: when you do this, what do you think you are doing? You are just being an emotional vampire seeking to make me unhappy and to drain me emotionally. How do you protect yourself against the emotional vampires on the social media? Avoid them at all cost. Don't engage them. I am lucky to be an Admin in DPA. It means I don't have to go to any other group to socialize. I can socialize here. And as an Admin I can effectively avoid a vampire without having to leave the stage for him. Now you have to understand why I do not hesitate to eliminate any vampire I come across in this group. Once I detect that you derive pleasure in draining people emotionally, seeking to make them sad and miserable: once I detect that, I want to keep you far away from our group. So, for all of you, learn to stay away from the vampires that roam around the social media. Never allow them to drain you emotionally. Never allow them to suck your blood. They will make you sad, miserable and sick. Throw them out. Don't bother to argue with them. In DPA, you can disagree with my view. You can disagree with my analysis. You can disagree with my conclusions. Your disagreement makes me happy. But once you leave my views, my analysis or my conclusions, and start focusing negatively on my personality, you are a distant history. We know what we are doing.