Love vs The Paycheck

Thanks to Africa Magic Yoruba, I have become a veteran Yoruba movie watcher!!

Please bear in mind the fact that I have no clue what they are saying and have to rely on the often retarded sub-titles to understand what’s going on.

Today I caught the first half of a particular one titled ‘Ejo nbe Lorun’ before I had to dash out for a meeting. The situation of the couple in the movie, played by Kunle Afolayan and Lola Alao, caught my attention.


Lola Alao

Both of them worked in the same company, the husband a new employee on the mandatory probation period, the wife a long-standing employee who was a topshot in the company.

A new policy arose in the company, stating that couples could no longer work in the organization; so one of the two have to resign.

The amazing thing about this couple was their individual willingness to step down for the other. As you can imagine, outside influences unleashed their views and pessimism on each of them, letting them know the disastrous outcomes that would be the result if either the husband or the wife, gave up his/her job for the other.


Kunle Afolayan

That was where the wahala began...

In order not to spoil the story for you, I’ll leave it there. However, I’m curious: what would you do if you were in any of their shoes??

Marriage & Relationships : 21st Century Battlefields??

Donald & Omolara Ayoola is a young Nigerian couple living in Lagos. They are a middle class family that is well recognized within the Lagos social circle, and have the cars, lovely house and the ‘right’ people on speed dial to back up their acclaimed status.

Donald & Omolara are each other’s worst nightmare.

They are constantly at war against each other; bickering and screaming at each other with any slight opportunity. Each of them is always on the look-out for ways in which they can affirm their superiority over the other.

Yes, Donald & Omolara are husband and wife, just in case you wanted to check again to make sure.

Let me give you an instance: Omolara is praying to God in front of her husband, and her prayer goes thus: “God make me richer than my husband; Make me more powerful than my husband; do not ever let me become a slave to him”

In another instance, Donald returns home celebrating a huge deal he has just closed. He begins to beckon on his enemies announcing that they have finally been put to shame. Even Omolara had no doubt as to which enemies he was referring to.

The irony is that in the midst of all this, they were both very broke but were only united in the keeping together of the public façade.

Okay you can stop trying to figure out this couple’s identity now; they are characters from a Yoruba movie titled, ‘Modupe Temi’, and are played by Saheed Balogun and Doris Simeon. Gotcha didn’t I?!



Ever since I saw that movie, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this couple. This is because I’ve heard that pathetic as their situation was, they represent the realities of many married and even unmarried couples.

This totally confuses me because, correct me if I’m wrong, I was of the opinion that marriage was supposed to be a union of two people becoming one. I thought those vows made at altars were a commitment to spend the rest of their lives uplifting the interests and well-being of the other person.

I thought the primary function of marriage and relationships in general, was to completely eradicate that deadly term ‘I’ and establish the more functional ‘We’, as the prefix to anything regarding the couple.

I thought that the competitive nature that is necessary for survival in today’s Capitalist societies, was dropped off at the gate of the house, and exchanged for a loving and sacrificial nature, which is what is to be acceptable at home.

The definition of Enemy is ‘a person who hates or wishes to harm one’. How on earth is it possible that a spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend, lover or even a ‘friend with benefit’ can also be an Enemy?

So do you understand my confusion when I hear true-life situations that mirror the Ayoola’s experience? Or am I just naïve or/and desperate to hold on to my seemingly unrealistic expectations about what a relationship or Marriage should be?

I recently heard that people have begun to celebrate Divorce by throwing Divorce parties, and even going as far as having Divorce ‘Wish Lists’ that state the presents people should get them as they are getting divorced.

Depressing as this is, I can’t even blame them, because these days, with the alarming Divorce statistics, it’s blatantly obvious that people are more successful at Divorce than Marriage!!

But really now, What is the problem??

Why have Marriage and Relationships become the 21st Century Battlefields?

Is Love merely a myth like Santa Claus that we have been conditioned since Childhood to expect?

Please share your comments below...

Games Men Play

I recently saw a movie about three guys and the tactics they employed in getting girls laid. One of the guys, played by Mike Ezuoronye, was the fine boy who had an all-round big-boy swag that was entirely fake.


Whenever he opened his mouth to speak, it was all big talk about the oil sector, important people, exotic places, houses, his toys, and all those other topics of conversation that dominate the expensive tables big boys gather around.

The trip about him was that everything that came out of his mouth was a potential architectural award winning lie constructed to get the babe to fling her legs open with great enthusiasm and reverence.
And it worked like smooth music on a stormy day; got them all cosy and more than willing to get warmed in his bed.

The second guy was played by Jim Iyke. Surprisingly, he was a really cool guy, though with a false sense of his own flamboyant elegance, who was trying to get up the ranks in the fraud industry.


He was being mentored by one of the biggest boys in the field, who in the way we saw it, didn’t do a lot more than sit cross-legged in his a-little-too-tastefully furnished living room and smoke a stubby cigar.

Jim Iyke’s character was ambitious, hard-working and had the capacity to convince Barack Obama that he was an angel from God come to tell Barack that his true calling is to be a beggar on Falomo Bridge who is actually a terrorist that would nuke Lagos.

He was that good! He also did well with the babes and was even kind of generous to them. At least the cheques he gave didn’t bounce.

The third guy was a United States deportee who had to endure being broke and eventually, insults from his younger sister as he hustled to go back to the States.
He had a girlfriend who did runs to gather as much money as she could so they could ‘buy’ him a visa, and he would go to the States, settle in, then “send for her”.

He was very grateful to her for using all the money she got from her ‘Uncles’ and ‘Aunties’ in Japan, USA and other parts of the world, to help him. This character was played by Nonso Diobi.

The aim of the movie, judging by it’s title, 'Games Men Play', is to show us the different things men do to impress girls and then inquest them.

It was interesting to see how girls responded when a man’s wealth is perceived. Everything changed; the speech, body language and mood all changed when the expectations attached to the aroma of wealth were aroused.

My knowledge of this comes from my own responses and those of people I’ve been around. Tell me, do men also respond to the perception of wealth in the way women sometimes do? Are you as drawn to the idea of comfort and luxury as I know I can be?

Then why do we unfairly judge Nigerian girls and women, saying that they are all about the money?

Is it bad to want a more comfortable life than what you currently have? Have you ever developed a relationship with anyone, male or female, that you knew had the capacity to facilitate the achievement of your goal?

Most Nigerian females are conditioned to believe that a man is obligated to provide for all their needs, because of the way African societies are structured. If this is a part of our indigenous Nigerian cultures and traditions, then why do we harshly criticize women who just live out these traditions to the fullest?

Why do we label them ‘runs girls’ and do not expect anything of substance from them?
In these same traditional Nigerian cultures, men are allowed to marry more than one wife; it is because of the accept-without-questioning manner with which we embraced foreign religions that men now practice that tradition in secret. Well, sometimes.

However, even though everyone knows it exists, I haven’t seen anyone disregard a man just because he had more than one woman.

If both these practices are borne out of tradition, then why is one celebrated and the other scorned.

Is a woman who desires comfort and takes matters into her own hands by wielding the only power she is aware of a threat to social order?

You tell me.