If BLD by Play, Lekki, were a man, you would stick a tyre over his head and burn him. If those actions were too reprehensible for your impossibly Christian sensibilities, you would still grudgingly recommend that he be put in front of a firing squad and shot, preferably to death. If you were less gung-ho about matters of justice and sought to know the reasons that drove the criminal  to sin, you would insist that he be permanently interred in an insane asylum. The BLD Lekki man is the sort of man that bathes in his shit and wonders why he stinks. He’s the sort of guy that shoots a man point blank in the head, and wonders why he’s dead.

I was driving down admiralty way in Lekki Phase 1 when I saw it first. It looked good but I wasn’t sure if its goodness was as a result of its architectural splendour, or its newness. I was most captivated by the open bar on the first floor because of a certain love I bear for open spaces. I continued driving down that road as the weeks passed always keeping a special eye out for the place. It was always empty.

I am wary of places that stay empty even at peak time. My father once said to me, “Afam, the quickest way to die of food poisoning and or terrible cuisine is to eat or drink in the restaurant that’s empty when it should be busy. If people avoid it, then there’s probably a good reason why.” I should have taken its profound emptiness as a sign but I didn’t. My curiosity got the better of me.

I showed up there at 9pm on a Wednesday night. I planned to enjoy the roofless bar, with a beer in hand but my plans were thwarted at the door because the bouncer insisted that there was a private party going on there. I was confused because private parties in bars - as I understand them - do not have guest lists of two. I briefly considered that the statement might be true, because if it were true, it would mean that BLD Lekki was a place that allowed private sex parties in full view of the public, and then the bouncer would have been saving me from harm to my soul. I am not such a degenerate as to participate in private sex parties of any kind especially those that are in clear view of both the main road and my mother’s office.

I thought about it a little bit more as I walked back to my car - Mufasa. I didn’t know whether or not I should be disappointed because of my dismissal from the place. I had an epiphany then. I realised that BLD Lekki is simply a very very bad place to do anything. Even though I did not taste their Chicken Wings or their prawn popcorn I knew that their rottenness could not only be limited to their service for gangrene always spreads.

If you would like to know about how their food actually tastes then read this review by Eat.Drink.Lagos

Hello good people. I saw something with a similar format on the interwebs and I thought it'd be a splendid idea if I did something like it. This one's fairly simple. I take a wellness or enjoyment activity and write about it in an objectively subjective way. I prepared this draft specifically for you.

Without further ado, I give you, Is the Juice worth the squeeze? Swimming...

What that? An activity where you launch yourself into some water, thrash around with varying degrees of success and crawl out again.

What's the damage? It varies. It could be free if you fancy a dip in the Atlantic (I don't advise this. There may be no crawling out of that one), a trollop in the lagoon (you may run into a few fish, and there's a small chance that you'll smell like a toilet after). It could be a few hundred naira, but I'll warn you. If it looks like it belongs in a laboratory, then it probably belongs in a laboratory. And if you're a hundred-millionaire it could be in the back of your house.

Possible results? A whole load. It's one of the best activities for full body toning, and it's a chance for you to display your truly bodacious body without looking like a pervert. Your speedos will never look sexier than when you're lounging by a pool that's blue.

What doing it really feels like? I'm a recreational swimmer. While I was at university I was chosen as the Male recreational swimmer of the year (yes this is a thing. I couldn't go to the awards ceremony because I'd eaten some Indian the night before and all I'll say is that pepper is always easier in than out), but all of this is a far cry from today. A length of the butterfly has me speed dialing the family physician and screaming, "Dr Kudaya send me an ambulance because I don't think I'm going to make it." 4 lengths of the twenty metre pool are enough to finish me. And then there's the feeling of absolute bedazzlement and wonderment when a truly obese person both outdistances you and outpaces you. Swimming taught me an incredibly important lesson: Someone's size is not a true reflection of how fit they are.

Highs and lows: The swimming pool on a scorching day will both cool you down and offer you a sense of relaxation that few other workouts will. A swimming pool that has children in it will have you considering neutering yourself.

Is the juice worth the squeeze? Absolutely.

Happy Days,
Afam

Also please share this. 

Dear human beings of earth,

My name is Afam. I'm a baby boy, in a baby world, life's fantastic and there's very little plastic. As you may or may not have inferred from the first line, even though I am a human being who's very familiar with the practices of you earthlings, I am not from Earth. I live in the Dami Dimension. You mustn't look for it, because you'll never find it. It's where you'll go after you've ruined that beautiful beautiful planet that you've got. Don't feel bad about it because you'll never know what you've got till you don't have it anymore.

I'm writing this letter to you because believe it or not, your cries about one Cecil the lion reached me all the way in the D.D (that's short for the Dami Dimension) and my heart broke into twenty million different pieces. I know. I was shocked too. My heart didn't break when I learned that Bill Cosby is a serial sex offender, and it didn't break when white policemen were shooting all the black people from Earth to Pluto. It broke when I learned that one lion called Cecil died. I shall now leave several lines of this letter blank. This is the letter equivalent of a few moments of silence.

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Cecil and I shared an incredible bond. I didn't know him before he died, but as we all know, the bonds of friendship and love defy death and taxes. He now has a permanent place in my heart where he'll stay forever and ever.  Even though I'm quite content with his newfound place in that achy breaky thing that pumps fire around my body, I was incredibly angered by the news of his passing. My angers are many and my feelings are strong. They're so strong that I fear that I'll be driven to insanity if I do not vent.

The first problem I have is his name, Cecil. I do not know why lions should be named. We don't own them. They aren't pets. Yet we've got this lion whose only connection  to humanity is that he lived in a game reserve where he had to deal with people staring at him while he went about his business. And let's not forget that he was part of an Oxford study that I'm quite sure nobody asked him about. He didn't say, "Shoot me with that tranquilizer dart baby! It turns me the hell on." Cecil wasn't our friend. Cecil was an animal in the bush. Before I move on I should probably say that if Cecil had a choice, Cecil wouldn't have wanted to be called Cecil. Cecil is the name you give your son when you're so fascinated with the idea that you have a son, that you fail to think about his immediate future. When he's six some child that thinks its clever will call him Cecilia, and people will continue calling him Cecilia until he goes to university. Now, Cecil's probably weeping in animal heaven, screaming, "but my name isn't even Cecil. It's RRGGOOOAARRGGHHHYYYY."

But human beings are awesome. We call a lion Cecil and then we have the nerve to complain when another human being shoots him. Bad human beings. Bad. Who gave him that name? A majestic creature like that shouldn't have been called Cecil. If you didn't want to call him his birth name, RRGGOOOAARRGGHHHYYYY you should have given him a good name like Gbenga, Napoleon or George. I'm particularly fond of George. If you had called him George he wouldn't have died the way he died. You damned him and his descendants when you decided that his name was Cecil. Do you know that he was bullied by the other lions? They would walk up to him and say, "Oi Cecilia haven't you got anymore breast feeding to do." And this hurt Cecil's feelings very much. That's why he was lured out of the game reserve in the first place. He was feeling very depressed because the other lions had just bullied him. He needed to eat his feelings." If he'd been called George he would have been remembered that an antelope in the game reserve is infinitely better than a piece of meat on a stick.

The second problem I have is how all of you have become Cecil's best friend now that he's dead. Where were you when he was alive? Half of you didn't even know that there were lions in Zimbabwe, and all of a sudden you're weeping for Cecil? That's so low. It's too low. And the worst thing is, in a week you'll have forgotten that lions are worthy of your attention. You'll go back to watching Kim Kardashian's baby bump. The point I'm trying to make is, I'm tired of your fake outrage. If you care, do something about it. Get a turkey baster and baste every lioness that's of age. I'm sure the African Savannah will thank you for it. Some of you are shaking your head at all of this thinking, " the death of Cecil alerted us to the lion situation in Africa." Stop it. Stop it right there. Cecil shuldn't have had to die for you to suddenly feel annoyed that some people were going about paying hard cash to shoot lions and behead them. Do you know what the most annoying thing about hunting African big game is? The people killing them legally are doing more for them as a species than you are. A legally shot South African lion goes for about $30,000. That $30,000 pays for things like baby lion day care and counselling for the alpha lions. Can you imagine the sort of pressure they're under? Do you know what it feels like to walk the Savannah knowing that every other male lion is waiting for the chance to kill you and your kids? It's hard out there!

My third problem is the issue of sovereignty. Let lions be lions and men be men. Cecil's spirit was so strong that it managed to get in touch with one woman like that.  He said the following to her, "Let not the actions of these few men defeat us or allow darkness to enter our hearts. If we do then we become one of them. Raise your vibration and allow this energy to move us forward. What happened does not need to be discussed as it is what it is. Take purity my child, I am finer than ever, grander than ever before as no one can take our purity, our truth or our soul. Ever. I am here. Be strong and speak for all the others who suffer needlessly to satisfy human greed. Bring light and love and we will rise above this."

We should listen to the spirit of Cecil and leave his killer alone. I won't write his killer's name here because before you know it some crazy person will start murdering lions in his quest of global notoriety. So please stop sending killer-san death threats, and please allow him to continue his dentistry in peace. If you can allow the guy that arrested Sandra Bland to remain a police officer then you can definitely refrain from threatening that poor sweet man with the serial killer smile.

My fourth problem is with hunting. I don't feel comfortable with the idea of killing for sport but as liberal as I am I find it difficult to fault it. You see, I'm very comfortable with men being with men and women being with women. I'm also very comfortable with men becoming women and women becoming men. If I say, let people be who they are as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else then should I not extend the same hand to hunters? They aren't killing people, and lions are not so rare that they cannot be redeemed. You may say that hunter-kun deprived the good tourists of the chance to feast their eyes on Cecil but when you consider that most of them can't really tell one lion from another the point becomes lost in an endless sea of emotional human platitudes.

My last point is perhaps the most important one and that's that there are several things that are more relevant to your humanity than Cecil the lion. There's ISIS and Boko Haram. There's Samuel Dubose, who was shot for driving while black. There's bleaching and Cancer (many of you will be killed by the latter in a manner so horrible that you'll pray for death by bow and arrow). There's the ebola vaccine and there's global warming. And there's the chance to actually do some good for the conservation effort. Please visit these websites: http://www.wwf.org.uk/ , http://www.bornfree.org.uk/
and lay off the internet terrorism.