This is my diary and it records matters that matter to me but may not matter to you.

Why then do I attempt to bore you with matters that matter to me?

Don’t mind me jare. I am just an old trouble maker who like the sound of my voice like my friend and brother, Dele Farotmi would say of himself. Besides, I would not seize to torture anyone who care to care or care not to care with the matters of my own heart.

I guess that is why I gave an advance warning the day the dairy was christened VITAL OBITER…

Now to the Particulars of my Abuja PAIN. Note this is the koko. It is the VITAL, which I have in a cunning manner withheld from you in the last two weeks…

You know Social Empowerment Advocacy is my thing and I have pitched my tent with the precious African children to advocate for their rights and protection.

Like many programs I have attended since 1997 and particularly since 2003 when I started working within the development space, the Abuja program, was foreign donor-agency funded.

The program sought to strengthen bodies saddled with the serious task of providing services to persons affected by Sexual Abuse, majority of who are our precious children.

I, the Roving Public Lawyer do verily acknowledge the immense contribution of many foreign donor agencies, who have been of support to advancing the welfare and security of the Nigerian child. I salute their great, philanthropic and humanitarian exploits to Africa and this diary has no knock for them today. To have a knock for them will be to be unmindful of where our precious children would have been today but for their efforts. Though I am not unconscious of the fact that they also have their own interests…

The PAIN and the KNOCK today is to my fellow countrymen and those who are in rulership over us by our consent…

Did I just say consent? Well, I think that is in another news o and the very fault of my OBITER mind and his tendency to sucumb to the temptation of digressing…It seems things are not COZY with CONSENT these days…Well, please note there is a huge difference between COZY, COZA and CONSENT except they are Cs in their beginning…Well, that depends on who you are talking to…Well let me leave Matter for Mathias or better still, I leave matter for DAVIDO, TIWA and WIZKID…It is not that I am their fan, anyway…I am just a nosy, old Roving Public Lawyer, not minding his small business.

Here is the question to us all and I ask this from the very core of my PAIN, when will Africa raise her own children by herself?

When will Africa and my country, Nigeria in particular join what the Roving Counsel call ‘the LEAGUE OF THE NATIONS OF THE FUTURE,’ who focus on the welfare and security of their precious children, providing Social Protection in the areas of health, food, education, shelter, sanitation and hygiene and all?

When shall we stop making begging our core strategy for caring for our precious children, our FUTURE?

Do we not know that those who pay the Piper dictate the tunes and those who help us raise our precious children own them for a lifetime?

To my shame, I recall a story I heard in the course of my work within the development space. One of our Governors was being advised on budgetary allocation for the eradication of polio in his state. His response was instructive and revelatory of the mindset of our paramount rulers. He was said to have responded so casually but confidently and I will take poetic licence (poetic anger) to add ‘callously’, ‘why should we worry about that? Leave it to UNICEF.’

This is a Chief Executive Officer of a State o. He doesn’t control UNICEF budget but he would rather leave the health of the precious children in his state to a source he does not control. He is making as his cardinal budgetary principle a source that should be complementary if anything…

But curiously, my country people, he does not do that for the almighty SECURITY VOTE and his brother senators will not do that concerning their mouth watering salaries and delicious allowance and the most recently approved 37 billion Naira National Assembly reconstruction. Sorry, did I say reconstruction? No o, that is a terrible slip. It is renovation. At least I should have enough decorum to call it want the honourables call it.

Don’t mind me.I hope this HATE SPEECH thingy will not catch up with me one day sha the way I am going in this my DAYARI! It is just that it is the humongous nature of the cost involved in that matter that is making me think it is a reconstruction and not renovation. Anyway God knows which it is and the house addresses of those behind it to reward them according to their labour of love for this our own dear native land.

Today I ask my dear native land, Nigeria and her rulers, who is funding the welfare and security of the children of the first and second world countries?

It seems they know what we do not know…These precious children represent their FUTURE and they cannot relinquish the funding of their FUTURE to other nations in the name of seeking aid. I guess with oracular precision that it is for this reason and reasoning that one of their leaders, who I love to call ‘Abrahamic’ Lincoln once said, ‘the fate of humanity is in the hands of the child…’

They have to be in control of the development of their precious children, set the pace and determine the outcomes thereof in a world where time waits for no one…

The nations of the future focus on their precious children but the nation of the past focuses on nobody but on what shall we eat, what shall we drink?

Do we not know that the hands that give are always on top? And we wonder why we are where we are in comity of nations.

Seest thou a nation or continent, who outsources by way of begging, the Social Protection Services of her precious children to the hands of foreign private and public donors, she shall continue to stand in obscurity of all forms of development…

A man is alive and wealthy, yet declares his precious children orphans and his household an orphanage and begins to solicit for help from neighbours or go to the street to beg for alms from strangers as his core strategy for raising his SEEDS. Something, somewhere is wrong with that man and his observers? And I think that somewhere is in the head, the seat of his brain…

Does the man not see that 13.5 million of her precious children are out of school, the largest in the world and 50% of all the children out of school in the world?

Does the man not see the emergence of One Million Boys and thier likes all over the nation?

Does the man not see that her precious children are living behind schedule in their majority in access to basic needs of life not to mention advance needs?

Does the man not see that this 59 year old ugly social experiment has become the leading source of our retardation and it is obviously not working?

Is it not time for the man to shed the toga of shame and at least begin to match foreign donations one hundred percent?

Ti oju o ba ti ole, o ye ko ti ara ile e ke!

‘Who is this man?’ Are you asking me like David asked Nathan, the Prophet?

Please don’t ask me JAMB question jare. You all know the man. We all are ‘the man’, who are in the saddle or watch those in the saddle mortgage our PRESENT and FUTURE, our PRECIOUS CHILDREN for a pot of pottage by which the bellies of our rulers are puffed up.

Come to think of it, what does a Roving Public Lawyer know than to rest his ranting when the ovation seems to be loudest, assuming that there is any ovation in the first instance…I hope my mind is not playing tricks on me o jare!

The DAYARI is kuku full! Hallelujah! next week I will reveal to you the part of my diary, where I wrote about the NBA Presido Aspirant in the Pocket of Naira Marley.

Do have an INSPIRED weekend.

Here is your Dearly Beloved Roving Public Lawyer, Taiwo AKINLAMI