₦airaland Forum

damiso: I saw them and I know alot of people who have lived there say its a cold (not weather) place.I have never been so can't really say much about it as some others studies say Scandinavian countries are the best places to live in the world.


I guess there are pros and cons to everything with all societies best seeking what model will make their society an habitable place for all its citizens.

The feminist movement in the west is now redudant in my opinion as all the causes they are fighting now are just odd.

As for Nigeria what the feminist movement fought as a group or cause (like the civil rights movement) have more or less been achieved e.g. I keep saying it that I grew up in Lagos and grew up surrounded by achieving women. My mum inherited from her father, she made decisions as the first child of the family and her brothers never told her to go and sit down as a woman. I had headgirl and headboy in my secondary school and it was never implied that the headboy wss superior to the headgirl.No exagerration here most of the girls I finished with got even better jobs than the guys.

So I don't think the issue is generally one that can be fought by touting 'I am a feminist' as the issues we have are multifaceted which needs to be dealt with by reorientation and education.

Britain is a largely equal society as I said and still women make up less than 10% of the CEO's of FTSE 100 companies.Its a level playing field as top graduates from Top Universities are often 50% of each gender.What happens at middle management is biology. Does not mean the men are better but women are the ones who give birth and unlike in Nigeria where stay at home mums are demonised , alot of middle class women do take career breaks (also they can afford it sha ) during their child bearing/rearing years (by choice not cos they were coerced or bullied into by their husbands I must add) and as such that kinda has an impact by the time they get back into the workforce.New legislation is helping to balance it out a bit as parental leave can now be split by both partners.

So in otherwords I don't think feminism or lack of equal opportunity is the reason why we don't have an equal no of both genders at the top (again this is not only in Nigeria) its just trying to find a balance between motherhood and professional life.Sometimes I see why highly ambitious career women decide not to have kids till later(if they even do at all).

That's a confusing answer.
What's wrong with liberty?
That's all I asked

cococandy: Did you read my post?

Which categorically states that when you're married,you have to consider your loved ones despite your personal liberty because you vowed to do so.

As against reckless free will.

And the other example I gave where a person is not allowed to be themselves or express their prefernces because of imposition from the other person and not necessarily because it has anything to do with the family welfare.


You should be giving that definition to the OP because that my post just about summarizes the definition.

zboyd: Lively discourse - keeps me sharp - gives me valuable insights into how other people think - widens my horizons - keeps me open-minded

zboyd: Hmmm...first time I ever been accused of not knowing what I want or stand for before. Oh well, such is life.

Glad I'm a source of amusement for you.

Maybe, if you had asked my intentions in the first place, I may have told you.

Too late.

You'll figure it out eventually.

Thanks for responding though.

Opposition is good - sharpens your wits.

zboyd: If you had been following my posts, I stated more than once that I am not a follow-follow type of woman.

I have no need to follow the ideology of some white women unhappy with their lot with white men (Feminism)...because that's where the concept started...with middle-class white women who wanted a life outside of being a housewife and mother and their husbands wouldn't allow them to.

Therefore, I am not a feminist.

I follow ZBoydology - I think for myself.

damiso: I think that Adichie comment was taken out of context a bit . Obviously I find feminists who believe in Chivalry hypocritical but I want to give her the benefit of the doubt that she felt no one (men and women) alike offered to help.

Maybe the writer assumed she felt men would swoon in to help but I think Adichie's point was more about an unfriendly environment.People say London is an unfriendly place too (in a largely equal society as well) but people (men and women) would offer to help you if they see you struggling.


I remember my pram carrying days in stations without step free access in cental London esp (everyone is in a hurry in central London )Someone would ALWAYS volunteer to help as they felt it might be a struggle up a long flight of stairs.This seems more to do with milk of human kindness as oppossed to chivalry.

damiso: I really would prefer not to get involved in all this feminism/submission debates, but i read the article and I feel the personal attacks on Adichie were not necessary.

While she made some points that could be valid why did she have to tie most of them to vacuums in Adichie's life? The way she kept on and on about Adichie not having 'class' just kinda spoiled it for me (her points could have still been made without the snide remarks) as we are entitled to our opinion.Made it seem like there was some kind of beef she has against the person of Adichie.

That said I also do not believe feminism is the solution to the issues we have in Africa.

1 : the quality or state of being free: a : the power to do as one pleases b : freedom from physical restraint c : freedom from arbitrary or despotic control d : the positive enjoyment of various social, political, or economic rights and privileges e : the power of choice 2 a : a right or immunity enjoyed by prescription or by grant : privilege b : permission especially to go freely within specified limits 3 : an action going beyond normal limits: as a : a breach of etiquette or propriety

beeevan: Quote where I said that it was limited to tribe, race or skin color.


The topic might be about cheating but my post emanated from what am reading from men here not topic.

beeevan: When 'mentality' and 'cheating' start share the same meaning?

beeevan: All these people saying d@ you cant possibly cheat on some1 if you love dem re naive.
Does it make sense for guys to go along with d idea d@ they will neva ve sex with any1 else ever again,wen d biological imperative for male is to mate with as wide a variety of partners as possible.
At the same time,d biological imperative of female is to find a man who will stay with her and provide for her children and a man who is mating with oda women may be tempted to instead provide for the children he has with one of dose oda women.
So w@ is love?...love is the insane state of the male to agree to violate his biological imperative to meet her biological imperative.so by dis definition,if you re willing to ve sex with anoda woman,you cant be in love,but smh!!!...if you re willing to give up the opportunity to ve sex with oda women....you re insane......Goodluck!!!
Pickabeau only a Naija man fit yarn this opata.

beeevan: No wonder most of them will raise bastards as their kids,while you are humping around 'chopping' ikpa ngwugwo from Caro to Ijeoma, that refurbished Virgin that you married is busy returning souvenirs from left, right and center. This generation go hear nwii...


The mentality of the average Nigerian man is an assault on humanity.

fellis: I agree with the last part. Both are important.
In another sense, sometimes in life, people will need more of logic when they want to make a decision and sometimes they will need more of emotions. Sometimes equal doses of both is necessary.
Shikena.
It's a very great abuse of human rights to expect an entire gender to discard their person liberty in favour of another gender just because they don't have joysticks.

Lastly, sorry I can't highlight what you requested right now, I have to log off because of unfinished offline business. You can try Google though

Godmystrength: I got some exception. What can i do? or is there any other kind of certifications that is quick and yield result asap

fellis: Ok, I focused on it because some men think being more logical is enough grounds to control other people's lives. I was trying to highlight why a balance is needed by pointing out the flaws in logical thinking.
Emotional thinking also has its downsides but I didn't bring them up because nobody is on the thread claiming that emotions is superior to logic.

fellis: Pickabeau don come o! Pickabeau good aftnoon sah! Please in which part of my post did I mention that I favour emotions based thinking abi why are you asking me this question about making decisions without recourse to logic?

Godmystrength: ACCA.

Godmystrength: certification wise, i am seriously working on that.

thinking about the BC.

My folks are aware (or how do i explain to them the reason i am always borrowing from them)they just know and encourage me. My mum has called us both at one time to advise us on how to be prudent and plan well. She was even suggesting that instead of paying that much for rent, we should be thinking of starting to plan for building our own house even if it is just a small place. The way he lambasted me thay day when we got back home, i will never forget in my life.

His folks are aware. To them nothing wrong with what is happening. it is a normal thing. As i am encouraging him to get a job doing, they are discouraging him that business is his calling.

I had to pay the rent because the old rent has been long due and rent has been increase by a 100k and we had to move out asap. NEPA bills was already piling up plus the unpaid rent. And we heard from reliable source that building will soon be sold. We weren't the one given the quit notice, it was given to other tenants. If we were evicted, where will i go to with my baby?

Godmystrength: i have done all that but no head way (his response were still based on my salary), hence my silence because i am just tired of gong back and front. You won't believe that immediately we moved to the new house, he told me that we need to start planning for another baby and that was when i knew there IS A BIG problem. I told him i wasn't ready and when he wanted to turn it to argument, i left him alone. I know within me that it not gonna happen now.

fellis: I unfollowed this thread before, I was mentioned by two people, that's why I came back and I want to add something very important to this thread.

You ladies should NEVER let any man deceive you into thinking that being more emotional than logical makes you mentally deficient and is a valid basis for their deciding how you live your life.

Ideally, normal human beings should be 50% logical/ 50% emotional. Emphasis on ideally.

In decision making, The Rule of Balance should be applied. Both logic and emotions should come into play, none is less important and none is useless.
An entirely logical decision making process is devoid of compassion, cold, calculating and slower than an emotional decision making process. Slower because logical thinking has to examine evidence from previous experiences or knowledge in order to come to a valid conclusion. Another problem is that logical thinking is not perfect, it has flaws and the logical decision maker is prone to unintentionally making any one of the countless logical fallacies that constitute problems in logical thinking.

1. Fallacy of Division
2. Fallacy of Equivocation
3. Ad Hominem
4. Red Herring
5. Non Sequitor
6. Straw man argument, Circular argument, begging the question etc, etc, etc.

So as you can see from the list above, a person being more logical than emotional does not automatically mean that they will be better at decision making because logical thinking has it's own flaws
A leader need to know how to equally balance emotions AND logic

Besides, most neuroscientists have agreed that well over 90% of our behavior is generated outside of consciousness and from our subjective life experiences as humans.

Women, your being emotional doesn't make you more foolish than men by default, don't fall for that lie. Emotions is what makes women more loving and compassionate and caring. That's why you don't see many female armed robbers or hired assassins or rapists or serial killers.

Godmystrength: I don't have any other money o. in fact, if you remember how much my salary is, you will know what i mean.
Gotten a job ke? what can i say? He got one and my hopes were high and he just dashed the hopes before he even resumed the job. he said he is praying to God to bless his business (he hasn't done any in recent time).

We even had a little quarrel this morning before i left for office because he said i refuse to collect atm for my salary account (because he said it would have been easy for him to go and withdraw money to pay his brother). Since i have tried my best and i don't want to result to nagging, i have decided to just be silent for the now. I can't kill myself from too much of thinking.

1AngryBird: .
Lol, So you think those two are the perfect references to support your theory?

5minsmadness:

GentleMimi: @ Pickabeau1
Hmmmmm, a pretty lady is easily forgiven. True. Diff strokes for diff folks sha. I admire ''appearances'' and get attracted occassionally. But its usually just a mere flinting phase which gets boring with time. Depth and character keeps me hooked
Making excuses for lapses from fellow male folks?...eku ise.

Gentle..? Oh yes! *tongue out*

cococandy: if I didn't read it,how else did I know what she said?
I did.
First of all I've stopped having the pointless forth and backs about feminism that we do here,no one manages to convince the other anyway.so why sweat it?

Second it's laughable that she thinks she knows better than adichie about the issue. Smh.
There's a reason why she's the unknown and adichie is the star.(Not that it matters)
But I see it self conceit for her to think she knows better.

And yes she's a hater,how can I not point that out? Most of the vitriol she spewed on the lady gave her away to be the classless attention seeking person that she really is.
Matter of fact how can I see her point when I don't know if the topic is about feminism,adichie or adichie's brand of feminism?
Ok so there are different brands and adichie has one brand all to herself. That's nice


How is Nigerian women being almost as educated as females in other parts of the world nullify that fact that for the most part we are still considered less than men?
And does she want us to rule out some parts of Nigeria while conducting the research about female education in nigeria? How convenient!
I mean if it's restricted to the north alone which BTW is more than half the land mass of nigeria it's.all good. Right?
As long as it is in the north. No wahala.
And she says she lives in nigeria.


I still don't get why I should sit and discus chimamanda's understanding of feminism.
Is she setting the rules for anyone?

cococandy: First the wirter says the problem of female suppression doesn't exist in Nigeria.
That almost renders the whole write up invalid.
I'm sorry it's difficult to take some who says that seriously.
A country where we have to count the high profile women off the fingers of both hands and feet still has a long way to go in women's emancipation.
He wanted her to be specific about the part of Nigeria still in the dark?
I guess we should title the next topic 'emancipation of women in the North' or
'Emancipation of women in urhobo land'
Aren't we all Nigerians?


Second,one would have expected him/her to put their points accross without throwing insults and jabs at the person of chimamanda.
I don't know what this write up is all about,but it is glaring that at the heart of it is a deep dislike for adichie. And hate is one thing I don't do.if I quote all the sentences where she/he said nasty things about the writer, it'll be very obvious this topic is about chimamanda and nothing else.
And frankly I've a life so colorful I don't sit and discuss celebrities.

I think the author of this post should try get such a life too.

GentleMimi: Lol. A guy who judges if a lady is worth the hassle by her profile pix is a shallow individual. Unless he's just bored out of his wits and wanna play...muhehehe. Sometimes those games could get out of hand,u get? Reason why i'll never upload a pix? Let me be judged by my ''difference/uniqueness'',not a ''fine face''.

Ayam veli veli gentle!

The women of Finland were the first in the entire world to be granted the ballot. The year was 1906. Norway followed in 1913. And then Denmark and Iceland in 1915. But one can always juxtapose for the purposes of clarity. On August 26, 1920—fourteen years after Finland did it—the 19th Amendment granted the ballot to American women. In February 1918 British women over the age of 30 received the right to vote, but suffrage rights for men and women were not equalised before 1928 in that country my Nigerian compatriots think is their God—that’s 22 years after Finland took the step. France was in 1944. Belgium, Italy, Romania, and Yugoslavia were in 1946. Switzerland was only in 1971—and that’s six years before Adichie was born—while Liechtenstein, a country in the very heart of Europe, had to wait until 1984, my year of birth.

Approaching independence, both the men and the women of Nigeria voted jointly in 1951—and it was the first time for each of the sexes. In other words, there was never a time in the history of Nigeria when only men were allowed to vote. I should also emphasise that Nigerian women were 20 years ahead of their Swiss equals.

As a people who initiated feminism and have finally arrived at the journey’s final destination—a state of existence completely unimaginable to the likes of Adichie—this is how we live as Scandinavians:

1. There is no chivalry left in the land. Men open doors for themselves. Women open for themselves. Anything other than that is foreign and the exception, not the rule.

2. Men pay their bills. Women pay theirs. A couple visits a café, the man pays for his coffee and the lady pays for hers. Anything other than that is foreign and the exception, not the rule.

3. Men do not compliment women. Instead, because men and women are engaged in an eternal battle for equality, each party expects to be complimented. Anything other than that is foreign and the exception, not the rule.

4. Like the French and the Germans jointly told Britain when that island nation pushed to renegotiate its EU membership conditions: The European Union as an organisation isn’t an à la carte setting where one enters and decides what to take and what to omit. You either are fully in, or fully out. Put differently: there’s no such thing as cherry picking when attempting to adopt feminism. You can’t say ‘I want that aspect of it, but not the other one’. It is and will always be a chain of realities—imperceptibly linked—and once you try securing an element, be sure to welcome the rest which will inevitably follow.

5. We Scandinavians have championed the feminist cause since time immemorial. Still, our women over here have yet to invent anything beyond roadside hair salons. The national innovation coffers are accessible to both sexes equally. But it’s the men who continue to invent and innovate and help this region maintain its spot as the leading innovator globally. That’s to say that there is no proof that feminism could turn women into the world’s top inventors of things and founders of top companies. The reality in Finland, after one hundred years of feminism and equal opportunities, is that men alone still found the major companies whose taxes take care of the nation, and when such firms employ women it isn’t purely for their skills but also for the sake of diversity.

6. Unfortunate rivalry or war between the sexes is big in our homes and workplaces.

7. Our families are often broken and passionate love is now foreign or the exception.

8. It’s not uncommon for our children to be victimised by battling parents, and for them to be eventually raised by the government.

9. We no longer make enough offspring to perpetuate our civilisation.

10. And finally: there is little to zero love, kindness, and humaneness left around here. We seem to have stifled all of it with the warring energy we’ve been emitting for the past hundred years. This was the reason nobody thought it necessary to assist Adichie in carrying her bags in Sweden. Any citizen who argues the opposite is either delusional or merely lying.

I’m wrapping up and probing: Do I enjoy having such a gloomy reality as a member of the Finnish society? I certainly don’t. Can I live with it? I have been living with it and am now very used to having it as my reality. But would I like to see the same system replicated in Nigeria—my first country? The answer is a strong no. Tellingly, when Adichie was then asked in Sweden about how she sees Nigeria evolving and the sort of society it might eventually become; she answered that she hopes it evolves into its own kind of society and doesn’t resemble the Swedish one. Rather shamefully, this was the same Adichie who fights tooth and nail to export Scandinavia’s feminism to that same beloved Nigeria—her only refuge, my only refuge, from the madness of our joint Western existence. And she’s eager to wreak havoc over there in Nigeria with her tireless presentation of impulsive sermons, keen to upset the balance, and one suspects it’s also because she’s desperate to sell more books—at the expense of her own people’s lives and happiness now and later.

Another mini moment of bliss: Books like ‘The Twilight series’, ‘The Harry Potter series’, ‘The Fifty Shades trilogy’, ‘PS, I Love You’, were all written by women of our times. But how come we rarely hear of these women and their socio-political opinions? It surely has to be for the truism that a sophisticated human is first and foremost humbled by their success. And such humbleness (which in essence is ‘sincere gratitude’) is best expressed by one’s actions as opposed to their potentially bogus words. Therefore these women—despite their individual top tier achievements dwarfing Adichie’s rather seriously—lead their private and professional lives with a grace that compels the stranger to reckon, even from afar, that these achievers are surrounded by the right set of people.

As I indicated in my subtitle, this is not a politically correct presentation. And so I’ll go ahead to remark that according to my Igbo culture, when a woman goes about town or country acting out of control and spewing sheer arrogance as has been the case with Adichie the writer, sensible adults tend to point fingers of blame at one ultimate culprit—a vacuum—and it specifically has to do with the absence of a real man in the woman’s life, either as a strong father figure, or as a strong and influential brother or partner. One could say ‘husband’ instead of ‘partner’ if they will. (And I add that this fourth is also the final vacuum.)

Of her name-changing declaration—i.e. ‘Nobody can force me to change my surname’—a Nigerian commented thusly on social media: ‘I have known Adichie to be an idiot! I don’t blame her; her husband’s name doesn’t open doors.’ Indeed, faceless strangers could be more sensitive and sharp-eyed than we give them credit for. But how Adichie has brought herself so low would baffle any observant mind. Because Nigerians are now logically tearing her apart, and I should add, in a style they very much relish.

Otherwise stated: the Igbo, my people of south-eastern Nigeria, understand that nature abhors a vacuum—a favourite philosophy of my good friend, Mitterand Okorie. It’s also a universal knowledge that a woman is, by nature, ever ready to become exploitative once the man slacks. The relationship between a man and a woman, for those who know better, is therefore a never-ending game of the mind and emotions. I hasten to add that the urge to take advantage of a man or of the vacuum he allowed when he relaxed and stopped being the man, is even larger and much wilder in a black woman’s frame. An African-American comedian once joked that ‘Once a sister makes 9 dollars an hour, she thinks she’s Oprah’—id est she becomes impossible to handle or be with. Meaning that it’s hard, evidently, for most black women to be both successful and classy. Again, since most Nigerians wrongly understand ‘class’ to mean ‘fancy and flashy physical appearance’ I should mention for a second time that in the international sense—the correct sense—‘class’ stands for ‘tact and sophistication of the mind’. I speak here of that correct meaning of class. Can you be equally successful and humble? Can you be successful and still recognise the value of class, embracing it fittingly? Can you be trusted? It seems the temptation of acting crassly and harshly never ever vacates the black woman’s space—more so once she has had a taste of some professional success.

Why else did Adichie choose to address the grown men vying for the Caine Prize as ‘my boys’—with no pun intended—the very height of arrogance and tactlessness! And we all saw the writers, to whom she referred, fighting back. The decisive verdict is this: In the international field of courtship, the Black woman is purely not the most attractive option, because Asian women, White women, Arab women, Hispanics, would fare much better. It’s no wonder then that black men—where they are presented with options—may increasingly feel tempted to date outside their communities. These are interesting times. And happy people with class don’t explain their choices to the world

Culturally and even politically, women have always been involved, elevated and venerated, in the Igbo world. The institution of Umuada—the peace-making and unifying daughters’ guild of the Igbo which still exists to this day—is turned to many a time, but very tellingly especially where efforts by the men-folk have proved futile. This is widely documented in the literature of the academia. In his Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe says of it and of the general status of a woman in the Igbo world: ‘It’s true that a child belongs to its father. But when a father beats his child, it seeks sympathy in its mother’s hut. A man belongs to his fatherland when things are good and life is sweet. But when there is sorrow and bitterness he finds refuge in his motherland. Your mother is there to protect you. She is buried there. And that is why we say that mother is supreme.’ (Chapter 14, page 32)

It’s sadly preposterous that Adichie examines this same culture and finds nothing else but its imaginary disregard for girls and women. There was the 1929 Aba Women’s Riot—famous for its cause as for its unprecedented timing—during which Igbo women repudiated the high taxation by the British imperialists, as well as sacked the puppet Warrant Chiefs. It would take another fifty years for most European women to exercise any political right or vote in an election. It is therefore factually wrong and intellectually misleading to think of these as disempowered women. The history books are available and these facts stand on their own.

***

Adichie’s attack on fellow African females with regard to their use of western-inspired artificial hair was expected to provoke, and in turn help, book sales. But her feminist speech was also expected to soothe and boost the egos, not only of those same wounded African females, but of an entire category of women the world over, again stimulating book sales. The game being played here cannot escape detection by one with a decent, sensitive mind. ‘I hurt you with my hair attack. Here’s a feminist speech to prove my remorse.’ It doesn’t matter which of these cards—‘the hair’ and ‘the feminist’—was dealt first. What matters is that both cards were crafted by the same business-oriented mind-set, and at right about the same period.

At any rate, it seems evident that Adichie does not enjoy a lot of personal peace and happiness. This bug might reveal its presence by turning its host into a pointlessly petty and compulsively argumentative human. And that’s where the second vacuum comes in. Writing is a solitary and compulsive work. The writer should therefore be wise enough to realise the need to find personalised ways to stay emotionally and mentally balanced. The lack of balance is impossible to conceal, although Adichie doesn’t seem to have realised this. Her writing, speeches, interviews, all come together to give her away as lacking personal peace and happiness, i.e. balance. It really doesn’t matter how many times she says with emphasis that she’s a happy feminist. Humans know happiness when they see it, and therefore need not be reminded or cajoled. This is a vacuum of ‘personal peace and happiness’, and as with the first vacuum, good friends and a partner could help her find a solution. Not those that would do her bidding, but who are fulfilled and intelligent and would advise her sincerely.

In the global male camp it is widely believed that a womaniser or player is very often—not always but more often than not—a natural romantic so unlucky to have found himself in a wrong society, with regard to courtship culture. By the same or similar token, one is tempted to think that feminists—African ones particularly—tend to resemble not the most physically attractive of women, and therefore not the most chased and glorified by men. There are tens of reasons to authenticate my thesis, but I’ll submit one and advance: African feminist writers of these times all have this thing in common—the obsessive creation of weak male characters, whom they perversely ridicule with their writerly skills, and then defeat. One senses the urgency of this desire when reading their work, to beat the male figure down, trample on him, and then spread their legs and pee upon him. This is a favourite tactic of Adichie in her writing, and two other African female feminists come promptly to mind; one from Zimbabwe and the other from South Africa. It’s for them a natural goal. And when Adichie nags, endlessly, that ‘the light-skinned female’ is always chosen over her ‘dark-skinned equal’ in the pop culture, it becomes all but obvious why there is all the anger and hatred. A sizeable amount of black women argue that it’s the white community which forced them—through brainwashing—to hate their natural hair and prefer artificial extensions. It now seems like we have another group of black women eager to propose that the pop culture—apparently white-funded as well—be held accountable for the fast-growing epidemic of skin-bleaching, damaging many a black woman body-and-soul.

***

Enter the third vacuum—having to do with an identity crisis stemming from an early migration. In other words, this is where Adichie’s moving from Nigeria to the US at 19 becomes germane. As a person who moved to Finland at age 20, I can sympathise with her struggle to balance between both worlds. The aforementioned writer, Teju Cole, is a perfect example of how a young Nigerian emigrant could rediscover home in an ideal manner and with the priceless help of a full integration in one’s adopted home—in this case the US. He’s able to articulate such challenges with better prose, more depth, and an enviable honesty. Unlike Adichie, you can sense that Mr Cole is sensitive and genuine, and therefore fully human. Where Adichie tries to appear tough and mannish and anything else but sensitive and feminine, Mr Cole enlightens with humility and asks for nothing in return.

And here’s a mini moment of bliss: The thing with a full integration is that while it may distance you from the peoples and ways of your original homeland, it equally forbids you to export nonsense from your new homeland to your original homeland—because you know better. And it’s worth noting that the West always chose its colonial officers taking into account the abilities of the candidates to read, correctly, the black man’s psyche and culture! Or else the words of Frederick Lugard and the like, in describing Africans, wouldn’t remain so timelessly disquieting.

***

I should like to conclude this presentation by dealing conclusively with the feminist component of the bulk. I open by observing that Adichie’s assault on our Igbo culture has been anything but appealing.

I know for a fact that African feminists qualify as the worst globally—the least informed, specifically. And I’m not very surprised by this truth, given that they try to copy a Western ideology they know practically nothing about. Not long ago I tried having a conversation on feminism with a black South African feminist—herself a writer just like Adichie. She was incapable of submitting a single point that was valid. In the end she gave a miserable example of a girl in rural South Africa who, on her way to school, has to stop at a river to wash herself because she isn’t furnished with sanitary pads by her parents. When I asked whether this was a case of gender inequality or plain poverty, she responded by exiting the conversation.

Although I never took Adichie seriously from the get-go, a certain reaction of hers did put the final nail in the coffin as far as my assessment of her opinions goes. That ultimate event took place very close to where I live, in Sweden precisely. Adichie was visiting a gathering there, and when a member of the audience asked for her judgment of the Swedish society and people, she answered that she hadn’t been very impressed. Her reason was that as she struggled with multiple bags in a hotel elevator, citizens stood by and watched who could have helped or simply offered to assist her. Such a thing wouldn’t have happened in her beloved Nigeria, she said.

The guests were unimpressed with her reaction, and I quickly discerned her misguided belief in eating her cake and having it too. Adichie is ignorant of the unnerving truism that in the genuinely feminist countries, like up here in Scandinavia, women and men cater to their own needs and nobody gives a real damn about anybody. How does she expect to be a hard-core feminist and still want other humans to assist her in carrying her bags? Seeing that particular video clip, I knew immediately of her unfamiliarity with the fact that at the very core of the idea of feminism, lies the most advanced form of selfishness the world has ever known.

Feminism has been my reality for all of my adult life. Well over ninety per cent of Scandinavian females are inherently feminist—it’s our rule, not the exception—so I do know what I speak of. And so if we agree that feminism typically starts out as a journey, then it’s accurate to indicate that Scandinavia has long reached the final destination of that journey. The simple facts of life up here, which I’ll now present and of which Adichie and her fellow African feminists appear to be unaware, should enable the very same Africans, who’ve been under her constant onslaught, to envisage their society’s future if they should be gullible enough to toe the feminist line.