I worked in entertainment news for six months. I enjoyed a certain proximity to the people many call stars. I cannot say that it did much for me or my ego. Their resume’s weren’t so impressive that their names dropped from my lips at the first opportunity. In spite of my snobbery, there were a number characters I thought note worthy. Toke Makinwa was one of them. She said no to some scandalous segment I was planning. I can’t remember what it was exactly, but I know it was nothing good. It was one of those things that would have stoked a fire better left doused.

When I went about asking people about her, one said, “She’s the worst sort of social climber: one utterly without taste. A shameless social climber.” I have read this opinion and worse in the comments section of many a blog. However it isn’t a sentiment I could ever subscribe to. If people remained where they were when born then life wouldn’t be worth living at all. It would be an inconvenience; utterly without purpose.

It is this sort of thinking that inspired On Becoming, Toke Makinwa’s book. In the prologue she writes, “Welcome to a world of me, on a mission to find out who I am. I am Becoming.” It is this sentence that gives the book its agency, its definition, and its freedom. The vagueness it implies allows her to talk about almost anything.

We must never forget that we are her enablers. If we did not demand to know the sordid details of her failed marriage to Maje Ayida, then the book would not be the 4th best selling memoir on amazon.co.uk’s kindle store, or the 24th best selling memoir on amazon.com’s kindle store. Under the broader biography section which doesn’t distinguish between e-books and physical copies, it is in the top 100 of both markets. Furthermore the people that bought it love it. On amazon.com it is rated 4.9 out of 5 stars, and on amazon.co.uk it is rated 4.8 out of 5 stars.

In Nigeria, we have cultivated a culture of silence. The horrors of life are locked away in irretrievable boxes and forgotten. They repeat themselves with alarming frequency because we do not share or acknowledge that they happened. When they are mentioned, words that encourage endurance and continued silence follow. With this guidebook it is no wonder that we suffer many tragedies in silence and shame. Failure, Divorce, Mental Illness, Sexual Harassment, all swept under the carpet with one totalitarian brush.


This is one of the reasons why Toke Makinwa’s book is good. She talks about her relationship with clarity. You’ll read what happened, what she was thinking while it happened, and why she let it happen. The prose is not beautiful, and the grammar is dodgy, but it is not vindictive, or bitter, or hateful. You do not come out of it hating her ex-husband. It is far too introspective for that. There are parts of it that could have been left out. The revelation about her itchy nethers after sex with Maje was one of them. It distracted from the narrative and did nothing for the plot.

Even more note worthy is the fact that it is as much about her relationship with Maje as it is her relationship with God. In true Toke fashion it doesn’t come across as high handed. She never assumes the moral high ground. Instead she writes about her struggles with her faith while all of this was going on, and it makes for a compelling story.

However, the book is not without it’s problems. It could have been deeper. I do not believe that it is possible to condense two decades in a hundred pages. She leaves several story lines unexplained and unaccounted for. In the absence of detail readers have no choice but to speculate.

Its biggest failing is that it too is “becoming.” It is on its way to becoming a more complete book, but it remains a must read in spite of all its flaws and maybe even because of them. More often than not, it is a shallow look at the shallow marriage of a middle class working woman in Lagos. Be that as it may, it is the most honest Nigerian book about the failure of a marriage this year. It is the first sound in a world of silence and this is its most commendable feature.

Happy Days,
Afam.

If you're pre-diabetic and in the mood for a party fit for vampires of cake and calories, there's only one club in Lagos for you. Velvett. Not to be mistaken for the fabric that you only see on Lagosians who have a definite love for sweat patches and body odour or velcro, the reason I nearly murdered my last tailor.

Opened in the Harmattan of 2014 by the fatter, older, infinitely blacker, less hair having, but just as single Nigerian version of Russel Brand, the restaurant cum bar cum nightclub can be found bang in the middle of Lagos' Little Lebanon (it's definitely little something vaguely Middle Eastern. I can't tell where exactly. That A I got in my Geography A level clearly had a great impact on my life.)

This place has everything: A cash money stealing ghost that's taken up permanent residence in the drinks menu, vibing and vibalicious Afropolitans, shooting stars, the 30 year old guy that failed to adult (we love him anyway), and the impossibly beautiful girls of the yet to be formed theatre and dance troupe, Ruffles R Us.

As far as I know, this joint is utterly devoid of bouncers because they drove off in DJ Cuppy's new G-Wag. It does however have a password: I will chop your money like wan-tin-tin.

So run on down this weekend. It's lit!

Happy Days,
Afam

 
In 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. said “there is nothing more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” This is particularly true when you’re a media platform. It is important to understand that the words you publish break far more quickly than they’ll make. As Napoleon said, “a journalist is a grumbler, a censurer, a giver of advice, a regent of sovereigns, a tutor of nations. Four hostile newspapers are to be more feared than a thousand bayonets.” All of this amounts to power, and power is a dangerous thing in the hands of the irresponsible.

Before anything is published on TroambyAfam, we think about it, we explain it to ourselves, and we defend it. Before we published the Sugarbelly timeline, Afam spoke to his tutor in journalism school, then he spoke to Mama Afam, and then he spoke to Wale Lawal. And before we published the Adesuwa and Bobrisky Interview: Somebody failed Ethics Class, conversations were had. We took care to ensure that our position was defensible and our choices justifiable. At the point that we clicked the button that says, “post” we were ready to say, “this is why we did what we did.” These processes are necessary. We may not always get it right, but at the very least we’ll weigh the noughts and crosses and we’ll explain. When an argument that we may not have considered wins the day we’ll print a retraction, and an apology. This is accountability. We acknowledge that at that point we may have done more harm than can be rectified with an “I’m sorry”, but we’ll apologise all the same and take care to not repeat the action. This too is accountability.

However, there are parameters. On a good day, this blog will be looked at 500 times. The damage we can do is limited, but if we were to by some stroke of luck go viral, then that damage would be amplified a million times or more. If we were as large or as popular as Linda Ikeji, or Bellanaija, our process would not be as simple as consulting our code of ethics, or speaking to friends, families and fools about an article. There would be a chain of editors, and a practice of lawyers. It is shameful that websites as large as the afore mentioned two do not agree. Their actions are far too frequently deplorable for the truth of it to be any different. Actions have always had a tendency to say more than words are able. In the case of Linda Ikeji’s blog, there is some leeway. It is a gossip website and almost nothing more. In the case of bellanaija the same brush cannot be applied.

Bellanaija is at the best of times a source of well curated news stories and a collection of some of the best social pieces you’re likely to read in the Nigerian media space. Afam has written several articles on the website, but as keen as he is on their vision, even he cannot deny that at the worst of times it is trash. Because they are often reasonable, we hold them to a different standard. If they are to regain their once illustrious reputation they must make better choices. They cannot forget that behind every news story there are real people with real problems. Before they publish anything they must ask themselves if the article is in the public interest. They must consider the accuracy of their sources. They must not publish rumours simply because they are out there. They cannot invite the world into the lives of a family who are not in the public eye simply because there is an allegation that one of them is involved with someone that is.

The Troam team is firm on this. We aspire to be better than trash. We are not borne of the gutter. If bellanaija chooses to descend to those depths it is free to. But if it does, it would do well to remove all the rhetoric about inspiration it wears like it’s the most fashionable perfume. Nobody likes a liar.

The troam team.

Dear friends, enemies, and Afamzers, who we love dearly,

It is our greatest pleasure to announce ourselves, the first employees of troam by Afam. We dance in the forests of Lagos like flickering candles and run wild like the flower children of the 70s.

Source:Wikipedia

In a moment of complete sanity our resident madman realised that the only way he could cope with the work load of the blog was if he forked out some cash from his exceedingly paltry earnings and paid someone else to do the work. He doesn't pay much, but we cannot deny that the extra cash goes a long way.

Now that we've got that poor excuse of an introduction out of the way, we'll get on with the October review.

In life we must never forget to celebrate the good. If we do the world will be colourless and horrid. Eyes will not shine with glee, and beers will be shared with sighs and wailing. The good things, no matter how small, are our only respite from life's tyranny. So we'll take a moment to appreciate the good things that happened to the blog in October.

The blog was read a thousand more time than it was in September, a delightful development if there ever was one. Every view is like a kiss on the cheek from someone you hold dear. As we work to improve our consistency and quality we can only ask that you subscribe to our newsletter and share us with your friends every now and then. In fact, do it everyday if you can manage it. Any action that you take to see us grow would probably send us on a rocket-ship to Summer-land, the sunny place where hearts don't get broken and heads swim in the sky.

A great many things happened in October but nothing that we say or do can overcome our present realities. It is 10pm in a restaurant called Blowfish and if there are smiles, we can only look on in envy for it would mean that we look upon faces whose hearts did not bleed when they learned Donald Trump won the United State's presidential election.

We are filled with despair first for ourselves, brown as clay, Nigerian's who feel like the world just got a great deal smaller and infinitely more hostile and only because our hair's kinky, our lips are thick, and our passports are green. And we despair for Hillary, with all the feeling that mourners are known to display when they look at the coffins of their friends.

It is indescribably painful that we live knowing that the most powerful man in the world was elected on a mandate that implicitly supports racism, misogyny and fascism. It is heartbreaking that Hillary's 40 years of dedication, sacrifice, and service were not enough to defeat a selfish, lying, grotesque joke of a candidate who took up politics as a hobby a year ago. Our grief is palpable. It's almost physical. We hear speeches asking for unity, but the feelings the election stirred are not easily forgot. His victory smells a lot like our history, centuries of oppression, colonisation, and slavery.

For us at The Ramblings of a Madman by Afam, it feels like a break up because that's what it is. Be that as it may, the struggle for a kinder world does not stop with this loss. We must cherish the lessons learned and find a way to move on.

The Troam Team.