Recently, America’s TV girl, Oprah Winfrey, called on America to sever diplomatic relationships with world’s topmost corrupt countries.

Worst of all the countries, Oprah surmised, is Nigeria.

According to her, “all Nigerians – regardless of their level of education – are corrupt.”

It is very pathetic that Oprah could ascribe to a larger population, the evil act of an insignificant number of persons in the world’s most populous black nation.

Oprah’s conclusion is based on the fact that a Nigerian of Igbo extraction was caught with $500,000, which was alleged to have been stolen from a foreigner through the Internet fraud popularly known as 419.

Oprah had sponsored an hour-long programme, which ran for several days on the CNN, with the sole aim of exposing the clever tricks espoused by this group of Nigerians to con their victims.

Much has been said about the greed of the victims themselves, and I need not say more about it.

However, at a time when Americans are committing heinous crimes against children and women, nobody has tagged all Americans as murderous.

So, why call all Nigerians rogues because of the sin of a few bad eggs?

Oprah regularly tells her life story: how she was sexually abused by close relations, how she ‘walked the streets’ (Americans’ euphemism for prostitution), etc., but nobody has ever deemed it fit to tag all American men as incestuous because of Oprah and others’ experiences.

She did drugs – just like the typical American teenager, but nobody has cast all American youths in the mould of drug abusers!

So, why should an individual that is supposed to know better sentence a nation to odium for the infraction of a tiny fraction of its population?

I urge Oprah and her likes to disabuse their minds about Nigerians.

Be wary of requests for money from strangers, and if you fall for a scam, blame your greed and not Nigerians.

Okoli Vitalis,

legendchyke@gmail.com

Disturbed by the distraction provocative dresses have become for university staff and students, many tertiary institutions have enacted urgent dress codes to curb the problem and limit the damage to the self esteem of everyone on the campus. The University of Ibadan (UI) is the latest to join the codification of dresses on campus. UI, said the report, has banned female students from wearing perforated and transparent clothes, low-neck blouses that expose breast, armpit and belly-button and tight skirts that reveal, in all its aggravating posture, the structure of the buttocks. No skirt that does not reach the knee, said the regulation, could be worn. Male students were similarly, but not acutely, affected. In general, the dress code expects them to remain men, not hybrids or dandies piercing ears and plaiting hair.

There are no reports to tell us how universities, which have enacted dress codes for their students, have fared. We do not know how well the schools have enforced the codes or for how long. We also have no inkling into what motivated the authorities to draw up the codes. Did offended students complain about the dresses? Were teachers distracted from doing their job or conducting research? Did the provocative dresses engender cultism and affect standards negatively? And have the sociology departments in these schools researched the reasons female students flaunt what materialists call their assets?

It seems that the dress codes were a product of general feelings rather than deep-rooted research. Everyone appears to feel horrified in a vague sense and expresses it without knowing concretely why. And the authorities also play along with the horrified university public by surrendering to the same paranoia. The reasons often given for cracking down on outrageous dresses, some analysts volunteer, are basically connected with religion, ethics and culture. Religion, because they say the dresses offend God and morality; ethics, because they say the dresses are depraved; and cultural, because the dresses are at war with our traditions and values.

The dress codes have, however, not diminished the outlandish and obscene taste for the unusual. A cursory inspection of many institutions show clearly the tenacious hold female students have on expressionist fashion where both what is hidden and what is exposed speak loudly to the viewer’s fantasies. And judging from the wording of the dress codes themselves, the authors seem to have excellent and sharp eyes for anatomising both the dresses and the dressed. The war over indecent dresses on campuses obviously cannot be won at the level of imposing codes, in spite of their engaging simplicity, and enforcing them. Have the university authorities never heard of moral suasion? Can’t they try to reason these things out with the students and persuade them to opt for change?

Do not be hasty in these three: Marriage, Business and Travel"
Do not waste these three: Time, Money, Energy"
Like these three: Kindness, Sympathy and Cordiality"
Hate these three: Injustice, Pride and Unfaithfulness "
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Leave these three: Laziness, Too much talk, Hurried Judgment "
Value these three: Intelligence, Ability and Happiness " Control these three: Temper, Desire and Tongue "
Preserve these three: Good books (scriptures) Good deeds and Good Friends.