Pataki:


You are one of the very very few I vowed never to engage in war of words or back and forth insults on this forum. Even though, I don't think I have the strength for those yester-years fire spitting words again in general.

Hope you are doing great. Which section are you posting at mostly these days sef?

Nowhere, bro. I simply enjoy reading the analyses (and bants) here every now and then. Like you, I no longer have that strength for (nor interest in) lengthy arguments. I'm doing great! Hope you are as well.

Pataki:
Purist is not a mod here. Even though his blood can be hot at times too in the past, he definitely would make a fine mod.

Anyways, let the scum-insults continue. After all, this is the scummies thread.

You would know.

DiademSh07:

I don't believe this at all.
I always view all the monikers that came into the thread and everytime you came in like you did yesterday, I got banned and my post got deleted.
Afterwards, you would leave the scene!

You know the thing about correlation and causation? Anyways, I won't be dragged into your mini-war here. If you're keen to find out who's been deleting your posts or banning you, I believe mukina can be of help.

DiademSh07:

Your biases are staring you in the eyes!
Don't fuccking ask me!

LOL your blood too dey hot. From what I gather from all the mentions, you assume I've been deleting your posts? I'm not even a mod.

DiademSh07:
Purist, what happened to the reply from my Kagawa10 moniker to sylvalord?
Don't tell me he's your bae!
Why would you readily leave his insult while deleting mine?
Both of you just outed yourselves already!
Yeye!

What are you on about and why do I keep getting mentioned?

GBR1:

It's done here quite often and if you haven't noticed yet, i have pasted several posts from monikers ( on this forum) without referencing anybody with no problems. I'm only obligated to a post a source if it's news for verification of it's authenticity and i think that's fair enough for those kind of materials. I do form my own opinions and see no issues with endorsement of other's opinions and/or through use of their posts but here it's obvious you are trying to make a case there where isn't and good luck with that.

Except that was no endorsement though. If I were to endorse your views, I'd also have to acknowledge you, the author. That's how it works.

This attempt to save face won't fool anyone here. Just don't do it again, for the sake of decency at least.

elampiro:


Your writing style is akin to Starboard's.

That post you quoted was copied from another forum. Actually, it's a merge of two different posts from the same thread. Why do our people do this? So irritating.

Dadehmola:
E sure me die say na from Asante Kotoko dem buy this mensah from!

He's Dutch.

Mata!!! Nice freekick.

HERRERA!!! Rashford assist.

Lengthy, but an excellent read.

Louis van Gaal and the collapse of English football culture

Rob Smyth laments the degradation of the culture of modern football, and the way managers like Louis van Gaal are treated by the media, fans, players and club owners in the digital age.


Had social media existed in 1989, Manchester United might now be approaching their 50th year without a league title. Alex Ferguson would have been hounded out of a job that winter, perhaps replaced by Leo Beenhakker, and anything could have happened after that. Liverpool and Everton – who won all bar two of the league titles in the 1980s – have not been champions since the 1989-90 season, so it’s quite conceivable United could still be stuck on seven titles, stumbling towards an unwelcome 50th anniversary on 6 May 2017.

The most important bit of Fergie Time had nothing to do with a referee’s stopwatch. It was the slack allowed by the United board during the bleak, black winter of 1989-90, when most people thought Ferguson’s time was up. Instead he went on to win 28 trophies at United. You would think Ferguson’s case would be as powerful as a judicial precedent, yet it is quite the opposite. Ferguson stayed 26 years at United; these days most managers don’t last 26 months. Apart from Arsene Wenger, Eddie Howe and maybe Alan Pardew, all Premier League coaches should share Guus Hiddink’s title of interim manager. The job insecurity makes football management the sporting equivalent of the zero-hours contract. That aside, it bears no resemblance to the real world.

When Ferguson retired, United spoke piously of the importance of stability. But in the 21st century principles are made of clay, not stone, and they sacked David Moyes before the end of his first season. It seems inevitable that Van Gaal will be replaced in the near future; he would probably have gone already were it not for internal politics. When he does leave it will set a significant precedent. United fans have moaned about Van Gaal compromising the club’s identity, but another feature of that identity was giving a manager a proper chance. As Scott Murray pointed out in this excellent piece, when Van Gaal goes it will confirm that United, the preachers of patience in 2013, have become just another sacking club. No better than Chelsea.

Van Gaal’s is a more complex case than most, because the complaints are more about style of play than results. And many of the criticisms against him are legitimate. His team play mogadon football, some of his decisions seem wilfully perverse and he has been almost the exact opposite of the attacking maverick depicted in the brochure. (That said, it’s not his fault that most United fans, and apparently Ed Woodward, were looking at a brochure from the late 1990s.) We should not be fooled into thinking United have turned it round: their recent wins have had a significant element of monkeys and typewriters.


There are many compelling arguments for sacking Van Gaal. The problem is supporters of every club – or rather dissenters – who are struggling will tell you that their case is different; that a sacking culture isn’t desirable but that this bloke really does need to go. They can’t all be right, and all those managers can’t be incompetent. In absolute terms, it’s simply not possible that so many managers can be as bad as the forest of P45s would suggest: the ratio of failure in management is up there with politics. For all his faults, the pressure on Van Gaal reflects a culture in which the lunatics have taken over the asylum and calm pleas for sanity will have you sectioned.

Arsenal are now the last bastion of rationality in English football, and we know what will happen there once Wenger retires. Wenger is approaching his 20th anniversary in September; it is possible, even probable, that he will be the last manager in English football to stay a club for 10 years, never mind 20.

There has been significant climate change in English football since Wenger arrived in London, with hot air coming from west, east, south and north of most grounds the moment things go vaguely wrong. A culture of instant gratification, unrealistic expectations and brattish demands has made football management harder than ever. Jurgen Klopp is already getting grief from some, and it can’t be long before Gary Neville is dismissed as a fraud. While all this has been a triumph for Sven-Goran Eriksson’s bank balance – “Life, Kaiser, we’re celebrating life” - it’s not a development of which anyone should be proud. We can be too immersed to see the wood for the trees, but this is just one example of how football has developed a skewed, screwed value system that verges on the dystopian.

Had Ferguson been sacked in 1989-90, history would have been recorded him as a complete failure at United. With the current overload of social media, rolling news and phone-ins, even Ferguson might have been overwhelmed by sheer weight of morons. More likely, the board would have succumbed to a crescendo of entitlement.

It’s worth recalling just how bad Ferguson’s United were, because Van Gaal’s team look like Spain 2012 by comparison. They finished 11th in 1988-89, when crowds at Old Trafford dropped below 25,000. That summer Ferguson went on the biggest spending spree in the history of English football (he spent just over £7m, which shows the extent of the inflation since). By February – even after Mark Robins’ famous FA Cup goal at Nottingham Forest - United were 17th and went to fellow relegation strugglers Millwall without a win in 11 league games. The style of play was so boring that George Best said he “wouldn’t walk round the corner to watch them play”.

It would be wrong to say that humanity was great in 1990 – Ferguson said he felt “like some kind of criminal” – but the abuse and pressure were nowhere near as severe or relentless as they are now. There is a zero tolerance approach towards the “criminals”; anything less than the best is a felony. The issue is not the criticism but the nature of it: often extreme, nasty, infantile and narcissistic. It is not just in the land of the blind that the one-eyed man is king. In modern football discourse, ostentatious ignorance and extreme opinions receive significantly more exposure than reserved wisdom. The way things are going, Match of the Day will soon be presented by Jeremy Kyle.

Look at these recent tweets about Van Gaal - there are even worse, not printed here for reasons of basic decency and asterisk preservation.

"I swear to f*****g God I hope LVG dies tonight in his sleep .... only way these s*** c*** owners will get rid of the p****!!!"

"LVG out scum b******"

This Is England 2016. It’s difficult to reconcile all this with a society that thinks it’s more sophisticated and civilised than ever before. The apparent contradiction comes from the remote, virtual nature of digital abuse, which is one level below verbal name-calling – and that never hurt us anyway, right? The above tweets are extreme examples, but at some stage almost all of us have sat in front of a keyboard and mistaken ourselves for Chuck Norris. Often it’s prompted by football, which brings out everyone’s Hyde side. A digital world didn’t bring out the beast in us; it just gave it a platform. If you behaved in such a manner in a drinking establishment in the 1970s, you’d have got a lit fäg in the eye, and you could have had few complaints.

We don’t know the extent to which social media is representative of society or a fanbase; the same could be said of a matchgoing support, such is the change in the demographic at English football grounds. Nobody knows anything. Instinct might tell us that social media attracts a gobby minority and produces a shouting match from which the silent majority have withdrawn in disgust. In a sense it doesn’t matter, because whether it is representative or not, social media carries almost as much weight as the stock exchange, with decisions taking accordingly by everyone from chairmen to editors.

Theodore Roosevelt was wrong. In the 21st century, it is not the man in the arena who counts. The credit belongs to the critic, the cold and timid soul who neither knows victory nor defeat, who sits in his pants on the sofa telling the world that he hopes Louis van Gaal will die.

The idea of fans wanting the United manager out is certainly not new. There was the famous “TA RA FERGIE” banner in 1989, and Dave Sexton was sacked because of supporter discontent in 1981. “Unfortunately Dave Sexton has failed commercially,” said Martin Edwards. “We took the decision because of the hundreds of letters from United fans expressing dissatisfaction with the type of football the team have been playing.”

These days there are not hundreds of letters; there are millions of tweets and posts and memes. It is overwhelming and inescapable, and the sheer noise makes it so much harder for a manager to turn things round, particularly at the top clubs. Negativity perpetuates itself; players give up more easily. The last manager at a huge English club to come back from the brink and thrive was probably Ferguson.

This creates a dilemma for any chairmen with oldfangled principles. Should you do what is right and proper and give a manager a minimum or two or three years? Or do you accept that events have spiralled out of control, usually through the fault of others more than the manager, to such an extent that it’s almost impossible he can turn it round and therefore it is in the best interests of the club to sack him?

That most managers benefit from time to do their job properly and in relative peace is a truism that shouldn’t need further exploration. At first, even Ferguson was overwhelmed by the United job. “Big club, this,” he would say to Bryan Robson and Norman Whiteside, and it was four years before his bum really stopped squeaking.

Many of the most famous triumphs in modern English football history have come from sides in a far worse position than Van Gaal’s United, such is the nature of the most important thing in sport and life: confidence. At Christmas 1997, Arsenal had lost four of their last six league games and were sixth, 13 points off the leaders. Arsene Wenger was under a fair bit of pressure, with one newspaper saying the dressing-room was split and he was no longer allowed to buy French players. They didn’t lose another league game until May, by which time they had won the title and were playing the best football in the club’s history. In January 1984, Howard Kendall’s were booed off after a 0-0 FA Cup draw at home to Gillingham. Within 15 months, the greatest side in Everton’s history had won the league, the Cup Winners’ Cup and also the previous season’s FA Cup.

In November 1992, before the second big turning point of his United career – the signing of Eric Cantona – Ferguson’s United were even less productive than Van Gaal’s: they had scored 19 goals in 21 games that season, and 49 in 49 games that calendar year. The only reason they didn’t draw games like 0-0 like Van Gaal’s team is because they usually conceded. Yet within months they won the first title in 26 years playing some of the best football in United’s history, and in 1993 they scored 109 goals.

There are so many examples. In the winter of 1981, Liverpool were both European champions and domestic has-beens. They finished fifth in 1980-81 and were 12th at Christmas the following season. In an age of social media plenty would have opined, with faux sagacity, that Bob Paisley had taken the club as far as he could and that it was time for him to go. Back in the real world, Liverpool stormed to the title by winning 20 of the last 25 games. The following season, Paisley’s last before retirement, they were champions with six games to spare. Later that decade, the press spent two years trying to drive Bobby Robson out of a job before he took England to the semi-finals at Italia 90 and they sent him off as a national hero.

There are thousands of non-sport examples that demonstrate the value of patience and time, too, including Pulp, Blackadder, Radiohead, Seinfeld and Parks and Recreation. If they were football managers in 2016, they’d all have been sacked before achieving greatness. Nor would Rome would have been built. It would have been abandoned as a failure after a day.

There are no definitive examples of those who were wrongly sacked, simply because we cannot see what happened in a parallel universe. But there are unquestionably thousands of managers who would have won trophies had they been given more time. You certainly don’t need a wormhole to an alternate reality to realise that Real Madrid have been a complete joke since they got rid of Vicente Del Bosque in 2003, or that the karma police have been after Newcastle with extreme prejudice since Bobby Robson was sacked in 2004.

Del Bosque and Robson were replaced by Carlos Queiroz and Graeme Souness – brilliant as a defensive coach and pundit respectively, but nowhere near as accomplished in management as the men they succeeded. What started as a quizzical interest in the grass on the other side has become an obsession that fuels deluded fantasies. If every team in the Premier League achieved what their fans think is par, there would be five champions every season and no team would be relegated. In September, Garry Monk was legitimately touted as the next England manager; within weeks he was fighting a losing battle to save his job. Short of him sticking two pencils up his nose and limiting his team-talks to the word “wibble”, this simply cannot be correct.

Before the turning point of Ferguson’s United career, the 1-0 win at Nottingham Forest in the third round of the 1989-90 FA Cup, Jimmy Hill said United looked like a beaten team in the warm-up. Better to look beaten in the warm-up than during the game: an injury-hit team played with splendid defiance throughout a match that is still spoken about to this day. In 2015, players – consciously or unconsciously – are far more inclined to throw the towel in once it becomes apparent their manager is a dead man walking. They are good-time Charlies. Managers don’t lose the dressing-room. The players go into hiding.

The old line that players win matches and managers lose them has never rung truer. Player power is rife, yet the phrase is partially misleading: in terms of fortitude the players have never been weaker, a reflection of the way masculinity has diminished in a post-Sopranos world. If he resigns, Van Gaal should consider suing his players for constructive dismissal. “Guys today have no room for the penal experience,” said Tony Soprano of the burgeoning rat culture in the mob. The same applies to football: nobody can be bothered with even short-term hardship. If the same attitude was taken in real life, the divorce rate would be 99 per cent. But then football management is more of a fling than a marriage nowadays. The LMA might as well be sponsored by Tinder.

It’s not just the fault of players or chairmen; fans are equally influential. Some seem to think their club is like Kickstarter. The more audible fans – or perhaps more visible, in this digital age - don’t have unrealistic expectations so much as impossible demands: like replacing the greatest manager of all time with somebody just as good.

It’s inevitable that, at some stage in the future, fans will pick the starting XI via a website poll, or vote on whether a manager should be sacked. The Glazers would like that. Paying fans have a right to express disapproval, of course they do, but It’s a fine line between legitimate criticism and juvenile bleating, and nobody really knows where that line lies.

The media, the more pompous elements of which are almost too self-important to function, contribute too. In the past headlines would suggest a manager “could” or “should” do something; now he “must” do it, or else: Van Gaal MUST stand on the touchline and wave his arms around a bit. This is football, not a humanitarian emergency. We all contribute to the culture of sport that resides on the moral low ground and has long since lost reality’s contact details. Football is in dire need of an epiphany. We should cancel the 2016-17 season and give everybody a year to stand in the corner and think about what they’ve done.

It’s easy to say that the sacking culture is out of control, but not so easy to find a solution. The horse hasn’t just bolted; it’s on a different continent and is logging on to its iPad to call Van Gaal a t**t. If football could not find a relevant moral in the story of Ferguson, who would have been sacked in 1989, 1995 and 2005 had fans had their way, there is little chance of things changing. We probably have to accept that – as with banter, passive-aggressive behaviour and narcissistic mawkishness - this is how the world works now, or at the very least how social media makes everyone think the world works.

Barry Davies, the great BBC commentator who was eased out of Match of the Day for appreciating the value of silence, once said that “perhaps each generation gets the commentary of its age”. The point applies here too. Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho, the most successful coaches of their generation, have never stayed more than four years in a job, and Guardiola was so weary in his fourth year at Barcelona that you doubt he’ll make that mistake again. Carlo Ancelotti did spend eight seasons at Milan, but since then he has jauntily boosted his CV and his bank balance by winning major trophies for and being sacked by Chelsea and Real Madrid, with a short stay at PSG in between. Three years used to be the minimum for a manager to have a fair crack; increasingly it feels like the maximum.

Ancelotti’s sanguine acceptance of a P45 might be the answer. The writer Scott Anthony has suggested a change in our perception of what it means to be sacked or to resign. In this country it is generally an unconditional failure, yet that need not necessarily be the case. Other sports, where basic human values still prevail, demonstrate this. When Hashim Amla resigned as South Africa cricket captain a couple of weeks ago there was little criticism, just a recognition that a good man had done his best but that it hadn’t worked out and was probably in the best interest of the team to move on.

“Mutual consent” is one of the game’s more risible euphemisms, but if used sincerely – football’s take on conscious uncoupling – it could make things better. It’s not an ideal solution, but it is preferable to the alternative: of humans being treated like criminals, and of some club sacking the next Alex Ferguson before he has won a single trophy.

http://www.eurosport.co.uk/football/premier-league/2015-2016/fergie-wouldn-t-have-survived-digital-age-where-managers-are-treated-as-criminals_sto5064849/story.shtml

Martial don score with head o (for those asking whether he can use yansh and fingernail to score)

Pataki:
Purist, why are you no longer posting on this board?

How are you doing?

Do you miss me?

I'm good brah, being a spectator is a lot more fun nowadays. Hope you're well.

mukina2

Swag FC reporting for duty. Kindly send the applicable codes, thank you.

@OptaJoe

0 - Arsenal have failed to have a single shot in the first-half of a PL game for the first time since November 2004 v Liverpool. Hushed.

Did someone grease the Old Trafford pitch before kick-off?

bukatyne:


If the woman who did not shed a tear publicly when she heard her daughter died and resumed after about a week ran out of her office without her iro, I am inclined to believe she saw a snake.

She was not delirious and nobody will wait to see her fly

We had people claiming several things and no one was called a 'witch'.

The expelling or isolation (if there was a facility for such) was the best option.

That your principal was tough does not mean she wasn't superstitious/mistaken/confused/etc. When did this incident happen? I'm guessing well over 10 years ago. You're asking us to rely on your anecdotal account of an incident from way back when most people don't even remember what they ate for breakfast 5 days ago. Did your principal claim to SEE a snake? Do you recall the exact words she uttered? Did you HEAR her personally narrate what transpired in that room?

Your principal was clearly in a state of panic. Whatever she narrated at the time should be taken with a pinch of salt anyways.

Nobody will wait to see her fly but they couldn't wait to label her a witch.

bukatyne:


You don't believe in adult witches?

Well well.

Boarding schools in Nigeria are rife with these kinda paranormal-esque stories. I've heard countless tales, many even far more terrifying than yours. I have even "seen things" myself but the difference is I am able to recognize and acknowledge my own cognitive limitations.

There are no witches/wizards anywhere. Fear + Ignorance, however, is a very powerful and unfortunate combo.

bukatyne:
@Purist:

I understand your lack of belief.

AS for gender... a witch is female... wizards are male

I was an eye witness in some of the instances and a lot of students were outside the Principal's office that day

But rather conveniently, not a single soul in the entire school actually SAW a snake. Listen, I've told you exactly what happened inside your principal's office that day. You can call her to ask and she'll confirm my account.

bukatyne:

We had the good, bad and ugly in my school... people saw black man etc. always... they were not labeled witches; some students were evil and did horrible things... nobody called them a witch... one of my colleagues used to have fainting spells where she just passes out after murmuring some stuffs.... we always rushed her to the sick bay. People had different illnesses/behaviors/attitudes... nobody called anyone a witch for all that

This girl was not poor or vulnerable... she was on top of her game. It was not an issue of picking on her. This babe said she could fly and it was initially treated as 'I am Obama's daughter' till they found out it was serious

She was clearly delirious. Did anyone ever see her fly? Was she ever recorded flying? Is there any proof that she could actually fly beyond her own claims?

Sounds like she suffered from Type I Bipolar Disorder (BPI), often accompanied by mania and delusions of grandeur. The same condition found in people who claim they're Jesus or Mohammed or some other famous figure.

Hallmark symptoms of mania include an abnormal, often expansive, and elevated mood lasting for at least 1 week. They may also include a decreased need for sleep, racing thoughts or a sense that thoughts are out of control, rapid and often pressured speech, increased goal-directed activities or projects, hypersexuality, reckless behaviors and risk-taking, and delusions of grandeur. Associated delusions frequently center on an expansive sense of self that goes well beyond narcissism (eg, believing oneself to have special powers or to be the chosen leader of the world or universe).
http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/913464-overview#a0101

bukatyne, this girl was no witch. She had a medical condition.

bukatyne:

I trust my Principal's judgment in this matter... She was not a woman swayed by emotions and had to be shown facts...

The cognitive bias I talked about earlier.

bukatyne:

If students were called witches just because of one or two student account, then a lot of student would have gone home. We had the weird as they come. The School Authorities did not impose their 'ignorance' on the students... the students forced the SA to investigate and act.

Let's for the same of argument say this chick was not a witch. It is better for the School Authorities to err on the side of caution. She was placed with about 99 other girls in a dormitory and the School has the responsibility of protecting all students equally. If she has issues, it is the duty of her parents to care for her.

Let's disagree to agree.

She could have been helped, not expelled.

bukatyne:

If you believe there are adult witches, why can't some of them be witches from childhood

I don't.

bukatyne:

She was behaving oddly (saying silly things repeatedly(initially, her colleagues thought she was a joker till later on), attitude to mates etc.) and her mates reported her to the matron who punished them.

The rumors still continued despite punishing the rumor mongers(manual labor under the sun, floggings etc.) and the Matron decided to take it up (if students are willing to be deboarded because of their belief, it is wise to see how serious they are)

The issue got to the principal who called the student to her office. The girl started manifesting saying all sorts and allegedly turned to a snake and changed back. I saw my principal and Snr. Boarding House Master run out of the principal's office.

Needless to say, she was bundled back to her house that day and no student ever entered the bus used to transport her again

She also gave a mate of hers a lotion to rub on her lips that she will become popular. (The girl's lip became burnt and she did became popular).

If you believe there are adult witches, why can't some of them be witches from childhood

Thank you for your response.

One major problem with anecdotal accounts is that as humans, our memories are notoriously unreliable. The (often) complete lack of falsifiability as well as the ever-present cognitive bias of the storyteller only makes it harder to be taken seriously. Even if you do get one or several others to corroborate your account, there is still the problem of subjective validation to contend with.

Your manner of narration suggests that you were never an eyewitness to any of this student's alleged eccentricities (wouldn't matter either way even if you did witness first-hand), nonetheless, let's consider for the sake of argument that your account is 100% accurate.

It's no secret that ours is a society that is deeply rooted in superstitions and all manner of primitive beliefs, and nothing typifies this phenomenon more so than our varied cultural practices. As cultural psychology dictates that people are inevitably shaped by their culture, there is little to wonder about why virtually everyone in your school nursed a unified, aligned thought toward that one young girl who just so, unfortunately, happened to be weird/troubled. Of course it had to be a female! Ever wondered why the vast majority of witchcraft allegations are mostly represented by people of a certain gender? And why they're usually either very young, or very old? And why they are always mostly from a poor/not-so-glamorous background? Ponder on that for a minute. Keywords: vulnerable, weak, defenceless. But I digress.

Let's examine the "facts" you presented as evidence of her witchcraft:

She was behaving oddly (saying stupid things repeatedly) ... attitude to mates etc.

This proves absolutely zilch. She might have been suffering from a number of conditions: aphasia, glossolalia*, delirium, or even schizophrenia, etc. Poor girl never had proper medical care, but was hurriedly labelled a witch instead. Mental health is major concern all over the world, and an especially big problem in Nigeria. You'd be surprised at how many "normal" people have one minor (or even major) psychiatric/psychological issue or the other. Most people are often a danger to themselves in which case we simply call them weird. When they become a danger to others, however, our ignorant society labels them witches.

If the girl suffered from Epilepsy and frequently had a tonic–clonic seizure, she'd physically exhibit the kind of forceful behaviours the average Nigerian considers only suited to a witch. Eyes turning and rolling backwards, muscles contracting, back arching, body jerking, blank stares etc.

*Glossolalia, within, a religious context, is oddly seen as acceptable. Many Pentecostal Christians demonstrate this every Sunday.

The rumors still continued despite punishing the rumor mongers(manual labor under the sun, floggings etc.) and the Matron decided to take it up (if students are willing to be deboarded because of their belief, it is wise to see how serious they are)

The rumours persisted because she was obviously different. She acted different, she talked different. She probably had a medical condition. This is where a responsible and enlightened school authority should have stepped in to help the poor girl. They tried to help, you say? Leads us to the next point.

The issue got to the principal who called the student to her office. The girl started manifesting saying all sorts and allegedly turned to a snake and changed back. I saw my principal and Snr. Boarding House Master run out of the principal's office.

You and I will never know what transpired in that office, but know this - it is completely impossible for any human being to transform into another creature or object. It has NEVER happened anywhere on earth and will never happen, except in sci-fi, superhero or horror movies. Your principal and house master might have run of out of that office for a thousand and one reasons, but I assure you, the girl turning into a snake is definitely not one of those reasons.

Think about it for a moment: Of the many years (or months?) she spent in that school, she chose that one time to demonstrate her real powers to the very people who were capable of expelling her? Away from public eye? Of course, it had to happen in private as is always the case with these kinda stories. And so it becomes "They said", "It was alleged", etc. Since the advent of camera phones in the early to mid 2000s, don't you find it curious that not a single person anywhere in the world has been able to successfully capture these kinda events on film? And please, don't mention those fraudulent videos on YouTube.

Poor girl probably got stressed the hell out and had a seizure ("manifesting" ) while they were trying to force a confession out of her, she started to jerk and twitch and curl violently on the floor like a snake, the Principal and House Master had no idea what was going on so they freaked out and ran for their lives. Which is why I am convinced whatever they did in that room was certainly not an attempt to help the young girl.

Somehow, and knowing Nigerians, the story then gradually changes from "she was turning like a snake" to "she turned into a snake" Some would even claim they were there and saw it with their two korokoro eyes. And then it becomes an urban legend, passed on from one set to another, from one generation to another.

Needless to say, she was bundled back to her house that day and no student ever entered the bus used to transport her again

Naturally. The school authorities imposed their ignorance on the students and the young students, naturally, feared what they couldn't understand.

She also gave a mate of hers a lotion to rub on her lips that she will become popular. (The girl's lip became burnt and she did became popular).

In my secondary school days, I rubbed chalk on a classmate's head, he later had some infection on his head that he had to shave all his hair off. Needless to say, he did become popular afterwards -- the ever-amiable Gorimapa.

I must be a witch too.

plaetton:


You know what buddy?
When you think hard about this problem, you put the blame too much on these kids.
Garbage in , garbage out is a fundamental rule of social engineering.

We have to put more blame on the system that puts soooo much garbage in minds of kids long before they begin to articulate thoughts of their own.

Western countries recognized this long ago, by yanking religion out of the public educational system.

This is one lesson from the west that we have yet to learn and imitate.

Indeed, we have a long way to go. Like you correctly noted, the system has to be reviewed some way. Since I moved to Europe, I have observed at great length the stark differences between the way kids are raised here and back home. Independence is perhaps the strongest focus - independence in thinking, in living, etc. I have yet to meet a Christian here who doesn't believe in the theory of evolution. Of course, being the religionists that they are, they have somehow managed to reconcile their beliefs with scientific realities as is often the case.

One thing is clear here though, you are allowed to nurse any beliefs no matter how ridiculous, but you can't expect to get away with publicly uttering nonsense. The other day a minister had to resign after she argued along religious lines against abortion.

KingEbukasBlog:


Understand the context before typing. Understand why I "bolded" it .

The context was very well understood, and you're fooling no one with your attempted revision.

KingEbukasBlog:

Always ranting like a bit.ch on her period .You lack basic debating skills -faulting a statement and holding unto it . Am being mocked at by someone who feels the BBT and ET are plausible theories . Damn it I forgot ! THEORY

You always try hard to be witty like me ,

Despite years of endless debating and educating people on this forum, it still amazes me to see a lot of folks ridicule the notion of scientific theories as though they are a mere guesswork. I can understand if such ignorance is peddled by people with no science background. What I can't forgive, however, is when self-acclaimed students of science don't prove to be any different. Even worse coming from someone who is so quick to inform us of his lofty achievements in the almighty WAEC, UME, and of course, the most prestigious of all, the Covenant University aptitude test.

For the umpteenth time, people...

Scientific theories are the most reliable, rigorous, and comprehensive form of scientific knowledge. This is significantly different from the common usage of the word "theory", which implies that something is a conjecture, hypothesis, or guess (i.e., unsubstantiated and speculative).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory

bukatyne:

I know that childhood is filled with drama and hyperactivity and I will agree with you that about 70% of 'witchcraft' cases are just that

100%, actually.

bukatyne:

However, There are Some children who are witches sadly.

There are NO children who are witches. I challenge you to bring forward ANY case and let's examine it together.

bukatyne:

If a person can be possessed with the power of God, it is only natural that Some people will be possessed with the power of the devil.

As God seeks to give life, the devil seeks to take it.

A studeby in my secondary school was expelled because of witchcraft.

And believe me, accusing someone of witchcraft was a terrible offence in my school.

I know that the supposed innocence of children is sometimes deceptive however, underneath the surface, Some stuffs happen.

Cc: Wedon and freecocoa

How were they able to ascertain that this student was a witch? I'm genuinely curious.

The kinda things I read on this forum sometimes is enough to make me have a detachable head by now with the way I vigorously shake my head at an alarmingly high interval.

Child-witch? Really? It's 2015 for bleeps sake!!

Africans... Smh

tivta:
Thunder that will fire all those who call the guy broke yet complain that Nigerian girls are gold diggers is coming hard, i bet most of you didn't read the post before lambasting him, the only mistake he made was not suggesting to the girl that they meet at a buka before blasting her. Very soon Nigerian girls will start saying that the man must pay for cab or come and pick her up. Take it or leave it, fast food joints is not in our culture, in the good old days couples met under trees or out side the compound, I really pity this generation, no wonder divorce rate is so high, Nigerians always copying other cultures.

In the good old days, there was no Facebook or whatsapp either. Times have changed, my friend. Move with the times.

jayriginal:


I'd say he "advanced" beyond deism rather than renounced it. Of course I can't speak on his behalf. Its left for him to clarify issues.

And yes, he vowed never to return. He even started his own forum. However things don't always work as planned and he's still here.

I see. NL could be addictive, I don't blame him one bit.

I just did a quick scan of the thread. I was under the impression that DeepSight renounced Deism? Could you kindly refer me to the thread or specific post if that's the case? And btw, I thought he left and vowed never to come back to NL?

jayriginal:


Brother of mine, its been a while. I actually checked your profile some hours ago to see if you were still active.

Anyway, it started with the dead kalam cosmological argument and deviated into the debate as to whether atheism is a religion or not.

Here's the original thread https://www.nairaland.com/2191376/kalam-cosmological-argument

Indeed bro, it's been a while. I actually got bored with this section due to endless rehash of same tired arguments. Just like this one. I'm mostly a spectator in the sports section and front page topics nowadays. I still peep in every now and then though.

I'll go through the thread in my spare time.

jayriginal:


DeepSight is a member of this forum. He used to be a deist. You might enjoy discussing with him.

Bro, what have I missed?

Michael Carrick - 75 mins

90% pass completion
3 interceptions
100% tackles won