A piece of advice for the latest Ango in town by El- Caleel

A December advice to intended Couples 

 

From November till date, I’ve been receiving wedding IVs. Congratulations to the intending “wed birds”.

I intend to write a simple message to the aspiring Husbands and Wives.

It should be brief, but may end up as a slide.

Dear Aspiring Husbands & Wives,

The untold advice is, in the bid to propitiate your wedding event invitees, never make your wedding so capital-intensive that it’ll significantly decrease your bank account balance. I mean, it shouldn’t destabilize your financial stability.

Marriage begins after the wedding. Trust me, marriage comes with compelling responsibilities you’d never be able to shy away from. If you spend your last kobo to make a colorful wedding, you’d be shooting yourself in the leg.

There are several premarital buckets through which you’d easily spend more than you could actually afford:

The first and foremost is trousseau (Kayan Lefe). Typically, to appear classic before people you hope to appease, your trousseau should carry stuff like at least 5 English Wax (Vlisco), Golden Necklace set, a couple of Dubai Oudh perfumes, then the remaining “regular contents” of trousseau. This should arrive at approximately a whooping N1.7million at least.

Secondly, UNNECESSARY EVENTS! 

Luncheon, Arabian Night, Mother’s Night, Till Dawn etc. Organizing these events is one hell of a thing. You rent an average hall at N80K for low key event, pay N50K to a not-so-popular DJ, pay N30K to an MC, then another N30K to decorate the hall. This one, you have not started buying rice, C’est Bon, Chicken and C-Exotic yet o. Roughly, just keep another N300K for one of these events.

Your budget is currently N2 million, Oga Colourful Wedding.

Thirdly, your bride is also hosting a separate event, mostly Mother’s Day. You cannot just be feeling groom on high table without giving any contribution- you no get shame? You simply give say, N100K.

The expenses for a Colorful Wedding are too much and unnecessary.

At the end of your wedding, both the people that would pass positive comments and  the ones that would pass negative comments will remember just one thing- YOU ARE NOW MARRIED!

They’d barely remember all the financial stress you subjected yourself to. This is why you should spend on only the things that are necessary for the wedding, then save the balance for the marriage proper.

For the starting days with your wife, it should be a healthy living both physically and emotionally. Create some comfortable and serene environment within the marital home. Great meals with both starters and desserts, “spare money” to fully fuel the generator in case NEPA are not supporting the new ministry, etc. These are ways to start living.

If you spend more than you can afford in your wedding, you won’t achieve this.

Las Las, immediately the wedding is over and you enter your marital home, you’d be “managing” as you’ve been “managing as a bachelor”. You’d be thinking of how to pay back your debts!

This is not healthy, emotionally!

The newly wedded couple should both be emotionally, socially, financially and physically healthy as they settle in their new blessed home! That’s what you both deserve!

If you can also afford it, go for a honeymoon in a resort. An average one shouldn’t cost you more than N180K. Just cancel that Luncheon asweah! 😂

I wish you the best in your preparations, and yours shall be among the most blessed of marriages in sha Allah!

Good night!

Brotherly,

Ibrahiym A. El-Caleel

 

 

Something should be done to save ABUTH Shika

Save A.B.U Teaching Hospital 

 

Nigeria should spend more on social infrastructure, including access to vaccines, and maternal health care - Bill Gates

Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital is in a dire condition and this isn’t being talked about. I don’t know why, the place is sadly silently becoming one of the worse place for a patient to live.

I understand the efforts the personals over there put, but in all honesty, the prestigious hospital is going down low and for so long now. No wonder even the Doctors went on strikes sometimes back.

Over a year ago, I made a report of what ABUTH was becoming. The situation has now worsen over the years. From lack of bed spaces to inadequate power and terrible dirty toilets & general surrounding and an overwhelming crowd of beggars welcoming whoever visits the hospital.

The condition is so horrible that patient’s sometime pay to fix their beds, at times sick kids are asked to sit on chairs or the floor because of the lack of these provisions. It’s so bad!

In wards, patients contribute money in the hospitals to buy diesel or instead remain in darkness. I was told this. I once narrated a story a Doctor told us, they had to perform a surgery operation, but they couldn’t find water in the hospital.

The toilets are so dirty and at times barely cleaned due to lack of water or so. The environment is just too dirty, not even for a hospital.

This is the same hospital that its management returns some part of its yearly allocation when there lack some modern machines, staff are poorly motivated, and it’s indeed terrible, if this happens to be true.

People are dying. I heard last time when the Minister of health came to Zaria, the Elders chose not to talk about the situation of the hospital. Let’s talk until the Govt and authorities do something. We have regrettably lost more than enough.

The Federal Government should look at the health and other human development needs. Efforts have been made by the National Assembly towards increasing the annual health budget! More is to be done if we are serious about ending medical tourism.

Simon Kolawole in his article “What can be done in 4 years” said: drugs, bed, equipment, and most of these can and should be taken care off if we have a serious Govt.

Is this too a much difficult thing to do in few years?  



Muhammad Malumfashi tweets @m_malumfashi

Nigeria and the dividents of democracy - A. Mati

BEYOND PARTY TRIVAILS AND 2019

The popular phrase “dividend of democracy” has being used since time immemorial, which is widely believed to be delivering on campaign promises that should leave people better than they were met in all gamut of life. However since the country’s sudden somersault to democracy in 1999 after years of military junta which many still share in memories. Through those years, power remained largely in the northern part of Nigeria. However, this part of the country is bedeviled with so many negative indices that kept drawing drawn the Region and the Nation at large, indices show that the Region has the highest number of out of school children especially girls which invariably result to higher level of illiteracy and hence poverty. 

Looking at the build up to 2019 elections, a lot of rhetoric’s are gathering momentum, some of which are far from reality, while some only confirm the already existing facts which is at public domain, whatever way it may take, what seems obvious is that either some of these government's policies are not properly implemented or they were never design to help avert some of these painful indices. However, I am opportune to work with a Non-Governmental Organization that focus on Girl child' education, seeing the strategies employed to bring interventions in some remote communities in Northern Nigeria. It is quite absorbed when I saw how girls in villages making some progress and changing their life for better. 

The journey of my experience began in a community that resides 2 to 3 kilometers outskirt Zaria inKaduna State, having in mind that I am to supervise the professionals hired to train the-out-of school girls on some basic entrepreneurship skills; phone repairs, bag making, soap making among many other skills. I saw how girls of ages between 15-20, mostly married were making some nice bags, while others were repairing phones, and all others. After having been to the community for some days spending much of my time interacting with the locals on issues relating to politics and how they perceived the intervention programs, quite amazing what I learned regarding how community involvement and community ownership can make a huge difference in terms of acceptability was interesting. 

The phrase “dividend of democracy” banged in my head and that made my heart ponder on what I read regarding the Present government “NEXT LEVEL” APC manifesto which has the photo of the President and his Vice with a phrase “Good for the Common Man” and the PDP Presidential candidate policy document titled “LET’S GET NIGERIA WORKING AGAIN”. Have we really enjoyed the dividend of democracy? 

The writer can be reached @ahmadmati1 on Twitter.