With regard to ostentation and conspicuous consumption, my own Yoruba grandmother's upbringing had this drummed into our ears: "Wilful waste makes woeful want!" Not that we were exactly poor. In later years I was to learn that according to the Talmud, it's forbidden to throw away as little as 7 grams of bread...
We could countenance the public display of wealth with a more forgiving spirit. After all, these gentlemen are merely showing us what they have received as God's blessings, and we should be neither envious nor covetous when we see them counting their own portions of God's blessings...
Comparatively speaking, during my brief time here in Sweden ( land of milk and many kinds of honey) from 1971 and still going strong – touch wood - the Swedish social media has scarcely featured that kind of coverage of wedding and funerals; not that we are lacking in money-men and honey-women, but , so far in the realm of extravaganza there was some coverage of Tiger Woods's wedding ( to a swede ) and a more down to earth affair, the wedding of Kofi Annan ( another Swedophile) and understandably those kinds of international events with a tinge of "showbiz" attract the world press, but otherwise, over here, the main events have been the Royal wedding of King Carl XVI Gustaf and Miss Silvia Sommerlath followed by the Royal wedding of Crown Princess Victoria and her gym trainer Daniel Westling and that of her youngest sister, the royal wedding of Princess Madeleine and Christopher O'Neill – all national and international events, full of pomp, ceremony and glory. More recently, the national and international publicity media accorded Harry and Meghan an equal share of the limelight but there too, we are still talking about royalty whereas even as we wish them the best of God's blessings, it's unlikely that Yusuf Buhari's engagement , betrothal and Nikah ( holy matrimony/ taking the plunge) was caught the attention of the media's international radar.
If we want to be comparatively critical, how does Yusuf Buhari's wedding compare with that of Saeb Erekat which incensed many poor Palestinians at the time?
Given the veneration we all have for our mothers, how does the awujo largesse showed by Obi Cubano - feeding so many ( 46 cows) purchased by his own generosity compare with the case of the Chief Melford Okilo the then Governor of Rivers State who - at a point when the official rate of exchange for one Nigeria Naira was £1 Sterling spent either 8,000,000 or 80, 000,000 naira ( I can't remember which) on his mother's funeral and when queried about this dip into the state treasury replied " Don't you want me to honour my mother?" - and that was the end of the matter...
It takes one person to start this, and you've done so sir!Mr. Obi Cubano "sprays" his own money and receives 46 cows for the carnival called his mother's burial in Oba and all the holier-than-thou "pundits" were besides themselves about such a "travesty", "debasing of our morality,' "crime against the Naira," bla bla bla moral outrage of all kinds, etc. How dare Obi and his friends spend their money? So far, we haven't heard that he stole the money from anyone. The USA-Africa Dialogue Forum was animated for days with debates for or against. We even saw suggestions for future research about "Obi Cubano Entrepreneurship Model" -- perhaps the most reasonable of all the flatulence that followed that mother of all burials.Meanwhile, an unemployed youth and son of the president of the Poverty Capital of the World who was so poor in 2014 that his "friends" had to contribute N25 million to pay for his party primaries form; the wizard who has vowed to kill corruption before corruption kills Nigeria; the man who told the world how lazy the youth in his country are, etc., etc. throws the mother of all "royal weddings" attended by over 80 private jets and guests each of whom was lavished with I-Pads and I-phones (both worth about N580,000!), designer anything sold in Dubai shops and plaza's and/or manufactured in Switzerland, etc. ... and not a word on this forum!Lord have mercy!--Okey C. Ihedurue-mail: okeyi...@gmail.com
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