₦airaland Forum

My brother, you can download the software from their site but there is a snag, it cost a a couple of hundred bucks if you can afford that. You can join Rapidshare where you  get to download the software and many others for just 1900 Naira per month. They have a Nigerian agent.  rs81tech.com
Best regards.

P.S. Send me an e-mail at ajibola_olutisr@operamail.com if you encounter any problem
Underscore between ajibola and oluti

The enigma called Man
Man, the image of the Almighty, the breath of the living God. With the power to dominate, subdued and subjugate. Man subjugated the earth all right but at an enormous cost to his fellow man. Man turned what God designed to be a paradise into a living hell.
The Almighty blessed man with everything. He planned for man never to lack a single thing. For all this, He demanded obedience to a simple instruction. Everything I created I give to you but keep away from only one.
The creature called man listened to the voice of deceit; he did what his maker forbade him. Man instead of a sense of remorse, turned around and blamed another for his disobedience. Why do men fail to take responsibility for their actions?
A man would smile and pat another at the back. He would not baulk at stabbing the same man at the back. What is wrong with our nature? Why is the milk of kindness missing in our make up?
Those who climbed the ladder of success made sure the ladder cease to exist. No other must find their way up there. Many at the bottom don’t care to climb but want to lay their hands on the ladder. Pull down those sitting up there is their maxim. If I catch up with him I kill him, if I don’t I smash his heel. That is the way of man.
Why, why, why? Why is man never happy to behold the success of another? The one that succeed, schemes to stop another from finding the way?
Man created money to aid transaction, to enable him exchange among his kind without the encumbrances of trade by barter. What man created to serve him becomes his master. Man will kill, he will maim; he will go any length to acquire this creation to waste it on ephemeral things of his world. The world that is only but a fleeting shadow that shows momentarily and disappeared.
The injunction that it never profits to gain the world bounces off man’s brain like a ball kicked against a concrete wall. He pushed and shoves. He uses both foul and devilish means to achieve his aim. At the end, he ends up six feet below the ground.
Why is wickedness part of our make up? The Holy Book said everything created by our maker is perfect. Why then is man such an imperfect creature? A lion is a ferocious animal, so also is the leopard. This is known so we keep our distance. With men, no one is sure where he stands. An amiable and a benign character may turn out a deadly killer.
You cannot tell a man’s construction from his face. This saying of Shakespeare is true in all aspect of man’s interaction with his fellow man. The smile of a brother may well turns out to be a veneer covering the deadly poison of a rattlesnake. That offer of help from a friend may signify the beginning of a journey to the bottomless pit.
Yes, Man contributed a lot to the development of nature, but for every positive step, he replaces with five negative ones. While he enacted laws to protect the animals, he gleefully constructed weapons of mass destruction not to kill the animals but his fellow humans. He justifies his actions and calls it war. What is war but a political murder?
He pleads and cajoles his fellows to give him power with a promise to better their lot. He promises them the good life and a foretaste of paradise. He pretends to care,  decry their suffering and admonish their tormentors. Put me up there; I’ll guarantee you life abundance.
The day he gets there is the day he cease to care. Woe betides any who remind him of his promises to better their lot. Promises made but not fulfilled. He would stop at nothing to teach such ignoramus he is no more their mate. Why should he bother to fulfil promises made at the heat of electioneering? Who does not know such promises are made to be broken?
Those who don’t know where to draw the line he puts under lock and key mouthing slogan it is for the good of all. The interest of the ruler is synonymous with the interest of all.
O Man what a pitiable creature you are!

THE CULT
Sound of faltering footsteps echoed behind Evangelist Solomon creating an eerie sound in the lonely night as he walked along the potholes infested Ikorodu road. The continuous dragging footsteps that follow his every turn made him shivered inwardly. For the better of thirty minutes, the eerie sound never stopped. Looking back will not do any good. He did that on three occasions. He saw nothing. He quickened his steps. For the past thirty minutes, no single soul walked the street except him. Why would everybody be off the road this time of the night? The town could not be celebrating another Oro festival after the fiasco created by the last one. Would they? No, the town would not dare do an Oro festival when the bad blood created by the last one is yet to settle.
Ikorodu town notoriety for one fetish festival or the other knew no bound. No month passed by without the town celebrating a festival, that disrupts commerce in the town. This time however, Ikorodu celebrated a more sinister festival that needs everybody to stay-at-home from nine o’clock in the evening to six o’clock in the morning. Evangelist Solomon did not know this.
Whenever an important chief in the town died, the Ogboni confraternity performs the Arula ritual before his burial. The Ogboni cult represents the most powerful confraternity in all Yoruba land. No one sees the Ogboni procession during this ritual and live to tell the story. Everybody in Ikorodu knows this undisputed fact. No sane man ventures out of his house during an Arula festival unless he already prepared his pounded yam and needed to buy soup in heaven.
“Why am I the only one on the road at this hour of the night?” The thought that something may be happening without his knowledge made Evangelist Solomon quickened his footsteps again. His heartbeats increased. He stopped. He stole a glance behind him. He saw nothing. To banish the fear already taking hold of him, he started to sing, “The blood of Jesus set me free,” He held his bible on his chest. The feel of the holy book on his body gave him a feeling of security.
“He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most high shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the LORD, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust. Surely, he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day…” The words of the Psalm calmed Evangelist Solomon nerve. If God be with us, who can be against us? He smiled at the assurance the word of God gave him.
Evangelist Solomon collided with a man carrying what initially looked like a calabash on his head. The force of their collision sends Evangelist Solomon reeling on the ground. “I am sorry,” he started to say and stopped when he beheld a procession of about twenty men clad in white cloth drabbled over their shoulders behind fallen man. The pot the man in front carried lay broken on the street.
No one said anything. The ritual pot bearer lay sprawling on the ground unable to get up. The procession behind him stood facing Evangelist Solomon as if a force held them to the spot.
Evangelist Solomon picked himself up. He dusted sand from his cloth. He did not suffer any injury. The man he crash into groaned in pain. He took hold of the man’s right-hand and drew him to his feet. He shook dust away from his body.
“I am sorry; I did not see you coming.”
The man shrank away from him with a look of horror on his face. He did not say anything but backed away from Evangelist Solomon as if he represents something from the pit of hell. He fled the scene without a word. He ran without looking back while his companions stood rooted to the same spot.
Why did the man look at him with that look on his face? Evangelist Solomon could not understand. Why those look of horror on his face? He heard a voice telling him to leave the place immediately. He turned around and left without looking back to see if the Ogboni confraternity still stood rooted to the same spot.
Evangelist Solomon prayed and thanked God that made him survived his meeting with the dreaded Ogboni cult that night. Everyone knows it is dangerous to intrude into the meeting of the Ogboni during their night ritual. He would not tell his Pastor. The man would worry unnecessarily for his life. The blood of the lamb covers him so no evil can do him any harm.
On a normal day, Evangelist Solomon wakes up early but that day he did not. The sound of persistence knock on his door woke him up. Who could that be at this early in the morning? He expected nobody. He got up from his bed.
A stranger stood at the door of his bedroom looking at him. “What is the meaning of this?” Evangelist Noah got up from the bed. “How did you enter the house?” Did he forget to lock the door yesterday? He could not remember. Evangelist Solomon rubbed sleep away from his eyes.
“Good morning Evangelist Solomon, I presume you did not recognize me? Tell me, did you deliberately collided with me to disrupt our ritual?”
Evangelist Solomon felt cold all over. Not only did he meet the dreaded Ogboni, one of them now stood talking to him in his own house. He rubbed his eyes again to confirm he was awake.
“Was it?” The man repeated.
“Was it what” Evangelist Solomon asked confused.
“Did you crash into me yesterday on purpose?”
“I did not collide with you on purpose. I was singing a song that so much moved me that I did not see you until I bumped into you.”
The man sighed. He turned his face away from the Evangelist. “Were you afraid of us?”
“I was not afraid. Fear seized me! Who will not be afraid of the dreaded Ogboni? I thought I was a dead man.”
“We were more afraid of you than you may ever be of us. A huge lion stood behind you with fire on his head. He looked ferocious enough to tear all of us to pieces. He looked at us with so much hatred in his eyes. We were afraid you will order him to tear us to pieces”
“Lion?” Evangelist Solomon asked, his face a mask of doubt. Did the man said lion? He said so. He did not see any lion.
“You mean you did know a lion stood behind you, protecting you?” The man asked his face could not hide his surprise. “Then you did not know the God you serve. I could not sleep throughout the night. Nothing like what happened with you ever happened before. No one sees us and live. You should have died. No only did you see us, you broke the ritual pot. I have made up my mind to serve your God. Our own god is powerless. All of us saw the lion. That was why we froze and I later ran.”
Evangelist Solomon stood rooted to the spot. He looked lost for words. He did not say anything.
The Ogboni man turned and left, leaving the door opened. So it is true that those that God protects can come to no harm. He raised his hands up in praise to the Almighty God. He would serve God now more than before and he would know Him as he never knew him before.
When we serve the living God, he protects and guides us. It is inconsequential that we realize this fact or not. What is important is that His banner is always over us.
“Those who know their God shall do exploit…” If you serve God diligently and devote your time to him, He will protect you even if you don’t realize it. To be able to do exploit in his name, you should know that He is able to do all and believe there is nothing impossible for him to do.
Though Evangelist Solomon devoted his service to the Almighty, he failed to realize the power God placed in his hands. He should have known that one thousand Ogboni cannot do him any him any harm.

Myne White

I did a post last week on my trend where I complained about the dearth of good critique on Nairaland. I said in the post that you should send me your e-mail so I can attach the correction and the comments my software (StyleWriter) did on your first chapter as an attachment. Maybe you don’t want to share your e-mail. If this is the case, good luck. I’ll delete what I did. Below is my own comment on your first chapter. What I wrote is my honest opinion. You may want to disagree with some of my comments. That is what critique is all about.
Best regards.


I based my critique on your first page, which now formatted are more than two pages. As much as I would love to read further, I am limited by time, but the SyleWriter corrections covers the whole of your first chapter.

MECHANICAL and/or TECHNICAL CHALLENGES:

Passive voice: Write in an active voice so that what is happening in the story is happening now in the reader’s mind. Show don’t tell. Often writers use psychic distance in their books, and more often than not writers create it through author intrusion.
e.g Then suddenly, she turned around and realised she was lost. “realised” is a filter. Do your best to delete all of them. The author is telling the reader what the character is thinking. You are filtering what is occurring in the novel from the character through you the writer to the reader.

Your punctuation should always be inside your quote.

Start a new conversation on a new paragraph

Write your novel in double space and indented at .5 inch. See what I did to your first page. To indent, go to FORMAT on Microsoft Word. Under INDENTING, go to SPECIAL and pick first line. The indenting should be .5 inch at the default. If it is not change BY to 0.5”

Let your reader get a clear idea of what you meant.
When you said “Gladys… she lived with her other and three younger brothers … Do you mean she lived with her older brother and three younger ones?
You said, “The older lady had written …” Older than who?

Some tips to make your writings better:
1.Use active voice. Eliminate (if you can) words like ‘was’ ‘is’ ‘were etc. from your writing. Especially ‘was’ This may be difficult at first; when you get the hang of it, your writing will be super.
2.Paint the picture of the scenes in your mind before you put them on paper.
3.Eliminate needless words e.g ‘in order to’
4.Stay away from ‘had’ ‘have’ etc.
5.Ditch all adverbs***** “Moses laughed heartily” should be “Moses laughed”
6.Ditch filtering words like, ‘thought’ ‘wondered’ ‘considered’ ‘hoped’ ‘realised’ etc.
7.Do a complete search on weak words.
8.The longer the sentences, the more the mistakes.
9.Avoid ‘ing’ words. Change ‘the sun was rising’ to ‘the sun rose’
10. Avoid dialogue tags e.g ‘he complained’ ‘she moaned’ ‘she teased’ Use action instead.
11. Eliminate intruder words like ‘notice’ ‘remember’ ‘was’ “The room was dark and cold” to “Billy walked into a dark and cold room” “laughter was in her throat” to “she laughed”
12. Don’t tell the reader somebody is a jealous tyrant. Show him by his action. Don’t say he is fabulously rich. Show him by the way he lives. Describe his surroundings.

Thanks a lot. I still believe we need a forum for critique. I hope our moderator will do something about that. I read the first page of your book. I edited the page with my StyleWriter. You’ll be amazed with what it did to the work. The comments cannot be pasted to this post. It just refused to move with it. If you can send your e-mail to ajibola_olutisr@operamail.com I’ll send it to you as an attachment with my own comments on your first page. Look at that my blog again. You’ll see the difference after using the StyleWriter.

Mivoh,
Are you serious? Where is the creativity you talk about with glee? It is gone with the wind. This country is dead my friend. The soul is gone with SAP. Since then, things are no ‘longer at ease’ and everything is ‘falling apart.’ I agree with you that we are abundantly blessed but the inept and corruption infested leaders we are saddled with since independence is responsible for the dearth of our creative endeavour. A hungry man cannot be creative being. When hunger comes in through the front door, creativity flies out through the window. Until we pass that level where we’ll no longer think of where the next meal will come from, we would not be able to explore our creativity to the fullest.

Fellow Nairalanders, my search through all the postings in Nairaland has not produced a place where works of fellow writers can be critiqued. Since this is a forum for writers and those who are interested in writings, there should be a forum where our work can be posted to be critiqued. I propose we start something here. We can start by posting the first page, synopsis or first chapter of our work for others to look at and tell us their opinion. Together we can grow together. What do you think my fellow

Nairalanders.http://www.tellstrangestories..com
http://www.lulu.com/author/content_revise.php?fCID=3867622

I am interested in the third category i.e the re-writing if the offer is still open. My e-mail address is ajibola_olutisr@operamail.com