Nature Vs Nurture : Why do we think the way we do?

Recently as part of a course in Peace and Conflict Studies, I've been doing a lot of research about conformity and the way we as individuals decide to predispose our minds to certain ideas, opinions and points of view without any sound personal justification. Now don't get me wrong, the premise of my argument is not that we don't have minds of our own, but simply that the role of nurture, and "groupthink" in the way we form opinions  today is highly understated.

I guess the idea to talk about this came from a picture I came across while I was doing research on the anti-gay bill passed by the Nigerian senate at the end of last year. I won't go into my opinions on that very controversial issue, ;) but some of the things I discovered were just.. too much.

Once again, this is not about the issue of the bill itself, but this was just a quintessential representation of the fact that in a society where "heretics" of the norm are admonished, condemned and not given a voice, this "societal moral compass" is now being ingrained into the minds of the younger ones in such a way that they do not have a choice but to accept what "daddy told them" or what "pastor said was right and wrong". I mean look at that little boy smiling like he really knows what is going on.

Some may find it hard to agree with me because of the example I've chosen but I ask you to hear me out. Is it right for a child to be exposed to such an environment before they are even able to form an opinion of their own? Granted Nigeria has never been the most liberal or avant-garde of nations and of course parents have a duty to teach their children morals, morals which inevitably coincide with theirs, but the forceful involvement of a child in such PROACTIVE bashment at an age when ideally they shouldn't even know the difference, I simply can't agree with.

Just some food for thought...

Clip of the week. Ridiculous ^_^

The Wickedness Of man

So I'm pretty sure everyone heard about the terrible incident that occurred at the Abia State University where a girl was gang raped by 5 of the male students there. Apparently they did it because she had "insulted" one of them. The only thing more disgusting than this heinous act of sin was the fact that the boys in question had the guts to record the whole thing and then pass the video around to their friends.
Well by the grace of God, the incident is being taken up with the appropriate authorities and they get what they deserve. It actually brought me to tears just to think about the fact that they would do something like this to another one of God's creations. What's worse is the fact that people see the 4 minute clip which was released to the public and is showing on different websites and they say "It didn't look like rape". Well the sad truth is that that snippet only captured a few minutes of an ordeal that went on for several hours, by which point the poor girl had stopped trying to fight them off
Sadly, reports from the administration of the university have said that there was no such crime committed on their campus, and the boys are yet to be brought to justice. I just hope this doesn't turn out to be one of those incidents that gets swept under the rug or forgotten about because people need to realize that they cannot do things like that and get away with them.
For now all we can do is pray and see what happens :(

Clip of the week ^_^ SOS! can anyone understand what this guy is saying PLEASE?

One of my favourite things

Hi all!
So since this is my first ever post on my blog, I thought I'd talk about something which I'm sure we're all familiar with and which we all LOVE to talk about; NOLLYWOOD. As an avid watcher and patronizer of our great movie industry, I think I'm in a good place to share my observations .

1) Movie titles

Some may consider this one of those things which makes our movie industry unique or even comical but sometimes it's simply ridiculous. I mean why call a movie "Goat Love" or "Yori Yori". We should be original, yes, but sometimes they simply border on ridiculous  and that's just NOT we want for our industry.

2) Speech

THE ACCENTS. What is with the accents?! I definitely enjoy the older Nigerian movies better and prefer the older actors like Liz Benson, Olu Jacobs and Joke Silva. Those were the days when no-one felt the need to put on a badly-done and often terribly misplaced (a guy returning from London comes back with an American accent) accent. I just hope we're not at that stage where people feel the need to put on an accent to sound sophisticated or make it in Nollywood. 

3)MUSIC

Hmmm maybe one of these days when I have the time, I'll post a theme song from a Nigerian movie. Needless to say, we have a long way to go in that area. Even the best, most well-scripted movie can be ruined simply because they thought it would be fitting to tell the plot of the movie from beginning to end, in the form of a song with neither rhyme nor rhythm. 

 But on the up side, Nollywood has indeed produced many amazing talents which have grown to make it on the international scene and make our great nation proud. Some of such names include Genevieve Nnaji, Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde, Stephanie Okereke, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Ini Edo who was recently made a UN ambassador. 

Picture source: lindaikeji.blogspot.com

Au même temps, the quality and standard of some movies coming out of Nigeria in recent times is so impressive it brings me to tears... literally. A good example of this is Chineze Anyaene's "Ije"

 which was nominated for 12 international awards, eight of which the movie won. As many of our actors take to producing and directing I hope there'll be more of this kind of improvement. But I think it's safe to say that for now even though there's still LOTS of room for improvement, we've come a long way and Nollywood is definitely headed for much more greatness. 

 :)