We were getting used to a barrage of horrid and distasteful news screaming from the headlines of newspapers everyday focusing on the Boko Haram insurgency. The headlines in these past few days have been bloody, of death, violence, killing, abduction, etc. You wake up to these pieces of news and feel that nothing good is happening in our world again, save the bad news and a grim reminder as it were that the world is coming to an end.
It was, therefore, a relief and comical too that the bottom of the front page of the day carried the outcome of health studies that stockfish or ‘oporoko’ (a popular Nigerian delicacy) is responsible for low sperm count. That is debatable, of course, but it made me laugh for once after reading something that had not happened for a long time. It is not that one is denying the realities of these sordid happenings in the northern part of the country, but then we also want something on the positive side, how Nigerians are thriving despite the odds stacked against them on all fronts, an appearance of silver lining in the dark cloud as it were. We want something on hope and on the positive side even in the midst of these grim happenings. After all, the cup, they say, is half empty or half full depending on one’s perspective.
Christopher Aigbadumah,
Lagos.