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Tag: Obsession

  • Obsession with penis size – By Francis Ewherido

    Obsession with penis size – By Francis Ewherido

    By Francis Ewherido

    Men have always been obsessed with the size of their penises. Here in Africa many tribes evolved various measures for enlarging their male organs before the Europeans arrived. In Zimbabwe, one man took an overdose of the herbs and became so big no woman would go to him except she wants to experience birth pains each time she had sex with him. His penis was almost as big as a new born baby. As at the time the story came out his sex life was gone and he was crying for help.

    We get inundated everyday with adverts on penis enlargement drugs and therapies. There is so much misinformation going on. Youngsters need to be properly guided before they go into depression or commit suicide over non issues; much ado about nothing, is a better way to say it. Many men desire bigger penis. Some young people have low self-esteem because of the size of their penis. Youngsters are my focus today.

    I already started writing this article when I remembered I did two articles on the subject about seven years ago, one of them Penis Tinz (Penis tinz – Vanguard News (vanguardngr.com) deals with the issue substantially. I therefore took some relevant portions and added fresh materials and perspectives to bring it to the present.

    Does size matter when it comes to procreation? Absolutely not. As long as the penis is big enough to go into the vagina, any man can procreate if he has healthy sperms and the wife does not have issues of infertility like blocked fallopian tubes and infections, among others. “About 10 years ago, the penises of 1,200 volunteers from all over India were measured. The outcome of the survey showed that Indian men had smaller penises by international standards. Irked by the findings, Sunil Mehra, a former Indian magazine editor said: ‘It’s not size, it’s what you do with it that matters (emphasis mine). From our population (of over one billion people), the evidence is Indians are doing pretty well. With apologies to the poet Alexander Pope, you could say, for inches and centimeters, let fools contend.” Gorillas and humans share 95 to 99 percent DNA. Gorillas have one of the smallest penis (1.5 inches or 4cm when erect) in the world compared to body size and weight. If the size of the penis mattered in procreation, gorillas would have gone extinct by now.

    Does the size of the penis matter in sexual satisfaction of your wife? The answer is yes and no. I have read stories of wives who sued for divorce because their husbands’ penises were too small. Also, some women have sued for divorce because they complained that their husbands’ penises were too big. One of such women said having sex with the husband was a nightmare and a painful experience and she never looked forward to it. Some women are put off by a small penis while some are put off by a monster dicks. In secondary school, there was this story circulating. One of the two students with the biggest dicks (we had big open bathrooms so the size of people’s penises was an open secret) went to patronize a mentally unstable prostitute popularly known as Kwamelaho (ejaculate inside). The student paid, but immediately Kwamelaho saw the size of his dick, she shouted in very raw Urhobo: “I did prostitution in Lagos and Ibadan; I also did prostitution in Benin and Warri; I have never seen anything like this. Take your money and go, I don’t want.” (It was even alleged that she told our principal that students should to stop calling her Kwamelaho, because it is not her birth name. We never knew what her birth name was).  So, the size of the penis largely depends on the woman.

    Now let us examine some more facts from research findings. An average penis length is 5.6 inches when erect. In November 2020, the NHS revealed that the average penis size in the UK is 3.7 inches, when flaccid and 5.1 inches when erect. Meanwhile the vagina length, unstimulated, ranges from 2.75 inches to about 3.25 inches. When a woman is aroused, it increases between 4.25 inches to 4.75 inches. God is a master planner! “Regardless of how long the vagina is, the area that is thought to be important for most women’s sexual response is the outer one-third.” The import of the above research finding is that the average-size penis is more than long enough to satisfy a woman.

    Still on the vagina, Christine O’Connor, MD, Director of Adolescent Gynecology and Well Women Care at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore (United States) says it is “elastic. It is small enough to hold a tampon in place, but can expand enough to pass a child through. This is because the walls of the vagina are similar to those of the stomach; they…fold together to collapse when unused, then expand when necessary.”

    My curiosity is why have men and women been so obsessed with the size of the penis from time? The penis performs three major functions: for procreation, sexual satisfaction of your spouse   and to pass urine. So why is the obsession with size? I have watched short videos called cucumber pranks in many countries, where the guys insert a cucumber in their pants, boxers or pants and walk around in public places. The reactions from members of the public are the same. In my opinion for the men, it is a feeling of inadequacy, envy or awesomeness. For the women, some laugh and cover their faces as if they have not seen it already, some are shocked  or wide eyed, while some behave as if they should bring out the false dick and insert it in their vagina. Whether they can accommodate a cucumber-size dick is another story. I remember something the famous musician, Tiwa Savage, said some time ago. She said some men behave as if the vagina stretches from the entrance to the throat of women. Maybe those behind the pranks feel that way or may be it is just for the fun of it.

    Why are men so obsessed with the size of their penis? The answer might be in the Daily Star (UK) story of Dr. Roberto Viel and Dr. Maurizio, identical twin brothers who specialize in penis enlargement. They said increased girth (circumference) of the penis can improve sex. According to two other studies, about 90 percent of women actually “prefer a wide penis to a long one.” However, Roberto insists that most men do penis enlargement surgeries simply to feel more confident on the beach, in communal showers or in the lead up to sex. He said: “Men want to expose and show that they have a good sized penis when flaccid.”

    So the craze for a longer penis has little to do with sex. In fact the length of the penis matters more to men than to women, according to studies. The penis length seems to be more of an ego trip, a feel-good factor, a confidence booster, a psychological rather than a physical issue. Much ado about nothing? May be.

    Youngsters, face more important issues about your life, your career, getting a good spouse you can spend the rest of your life with in peace and harmony, etc. Married men, you already have children that you sired with your penis, what is your problem? Is your wife complaining about the size of your penis? Is she saying a rat she has eaten to the tail is now bitter? Then talk about the issue and find a solution. Communication in marriage can make a mountain into of a mole hill. Except for people with micro penis, I do not see any issue. If they and their wives are okay they can have their babies. No be one drop of semen dey carry millions of sperms? If it is to give your wife sexual satisfaction, discuss it together.

  • Understanding Nigeria’s Obsession With Rawlings, By Azu Ishiekwene

    Azu Ishiekwene

    The saying that a prophet is not appreciated at home may well be referring to former Ghanaian president, Jerry Rawlings, who died last Thursday from COVID-19 related complications, three weeks after his mother was buried.

    Ghana is in seven days of mourning, but Nigeria is crying more than the bereaved. Among Nigeria’s political elite, there has been a “condolence contest.” And among the wider public, the outpouring of grief and tribute on social media makes Ghana look like Rawlings’ distant second home.

    Rawlings’ life was a big deal in Nigeria. A very big deal. He was a regular presence in lecture circuits. He was particularly loved by left-leaning Nigerian students and radical politicians. He was also popular among blue-collar workers, who would have been pleased to join his army for life at short notice.

    After decades of widespread corruption – just as rampant in military as it is in civilian rule, popular public imagination still extols the “Rawlings treatment” as the only practical solution: that is, public execution of anyone found or perceived to be corrupt.

    Of course, Nigerians saw horrific spectacles of executions back in the day when armed robbers or coup plotters were tied to the stake and publicly executed at a famous Lagos seashore called the Bar Beach.

    But that blood sport, that grim “Bar Beach show,” was mainly for armed robbers or coup plotters, sparking criticisms that while factions of Nigeria’s ruling elite were shooting small fry and settling personal scores against rival officers, Rawlings went for the jugular by executing the big fry, the real promoters and profiteers from corruption among the political class.

    On his passing last week, one Nigerian tweet mourned Rawlings as “a true son of Africa; a fallen Iroko tree.”

    Others hailed his tireless effort to clean up Ghana’s public life, his spartan lifestyle and patriotism and his exemplary, down-to-earth politics.

    Yet, it would appear that the single biggest reason why Nigerians loved Rawlings was his effrontery, the revolutionary zeal with which he fought the war against corruption in Ghana – a crusade in which his government executed three former heads of state and three judges, exiled many perceived enemies and left the press with a bloody nose.

    Nigeria’s history has its own bloody pages, too. Part of what led to the civil war was the first military coup in 1966 purportedly targeted at a “corrupt” political elite. Revenge killings followed and the result was a civil war that cost nearly two million lives.

    A slew of military coups and counter-coups – all purporting to rid Nigeria of corruption, waste and mismanagement – piled on each other, without real evidence of progress in the fight against corruption, a malaise estimated by the World Bank to cost countries like Nigeria, Kenya and Venezuela $1trillion per year or 12 percent of GDP.

    Curiously, the same heavy-handed – even bloody – tactics for which Nigerians love Rawlings is strongly resented in at least two of its own leaders who, like Rawlings, also morphed from “khaki to kente.”

    When President Olusegun Obasanjo first ran for office as civilian president his appalling conversion of Ita Oko (an Island on the outskirts of Lagos into a black site), a mini forerunner of Guantanamo and his iron-fist in quelling student’s protests (not to mention his onslaughts on musical icon, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti) were cited as transgressions for which human rights groups in the country demanded apology and even restitution.

    For President Muhammadu Buhari, it was even worse. The military decrees on his watch that imperiled press freedom and under which two journalists were jailed; the long and harsh prison sentences meted out to politicians by hastily constituted tribunals; and the popularisation of corporal punishment, were among the long list of grievances held against Buhari each of the four times he contested for the presidency.

    His explanation that he had become a “reformed democrat” fell on deaf ears. In 2015, his campaign team had to dress him up in an assortment of costumes including fancy bow-ties and corporate suits, to make him look truly the reformed part.

    To date, Buhari is still taunted over the occasional appearance of his military reflexes. Some families whose patriarchs he handed long jail sentences, blame him for the premature deaths of their loved ones. The deployment of soldiers who shot at unarmed protesters during the recent #ENDSARS protests has also been canvassed as lingering proof that the spots of the Buhari leopard remain intact.

    It’s doubtful, however, if any Nigerian leader would do anything close to what Rawlings did, especially in his first coming, and get away with it. The only man who tried – General Sani Abacha – did not live to tell the story. Military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, who executed a variety of authoritarian rule in velvet clothing, only managed to escape by the skin of his teeth.

    Yet, Nigerians extol Rawlings who executed former heads of state and judges among other draconian remedies, and also swear that nothing short of the “Rawlings treatment” will save the country.

    Apart from Samuel Doe’s violent overthrow of William R. Tolbert’s government in Liberia in 1980 and the public execution of Tolbert’s cabinet members applauded by cheering crowds who lived to regret it, and the Red Terror in Ethiopia following the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie, Rawlings’ Ghana stands up there in the pecking order of horrific public executions of high-profile officers on the continent after a military takeover.

    So, what is it about Rawlings that Nigerians swoon over? His charisma? Charismatic leaders make our hearts beat a little faster. They send our blood racing, especially if their candles were blown out prematurely – like General Murtala Mohammed or Captain Thomas Sankara. But Robespierre and Hitler were also charismatic leaders.

    What was it in Rawlings then that Nigerians adored? Why was it that even if he had killed 10 people when he was alive, Nigerians seem prepared to say, “Thank God, it was not 11”?

    Leading columnist and chairman of the Editorial Board of the Abuja-based Daily Trust, Mahmud Jega, told me, “Africans appreciate strong, vibrant, forceful leadership. They love leaders who are passionate, anti-colonial and yet, with the common touch.”

    That description fetched the image of Rawlings stopping his convoy to pick up stranded passengers along the way. There is also the viral video of him getting out of his car in a traffic jam in Accra to take charge with rapturous commuters chanting, “Papa J! Papa J!!” Or his confession that he didn’t have a foreign account for all the years he was in government, until a few years ago when former UN Secretary General, Kofi Anan, asked him to open one.

    Jega admitted that even though Rawlings’ first coming was “one of the most traumatic on the continent”, his subsequent record as two-term civilian leader made up for his earlier flaws. “He is, in a fundamental way, the father of modern Ghana,” he said.

    Perhaps it was that redeeming act that Nigerians really admired about Rawlings: his courage, his patriotism, his charm, his willingness to slay any dragon whatever its size, and more importantly, the strength of his conviction.

    Yet, there are Ghanaians who still ask, at what price – a question their Nigerian neighbours might conveniently overlook.

    As the news of Rawlings’ death was breaking, social media was drowning in emotional tributes and rejoinders by hurting family and friends of those Rawlings had either executed, jailed or exiled. The common theme was Rawlings refusal, to the very end, to tender public apology or give any indication of remorse for the killings.

    Others went farther. They acknowledged that even though significant progress was made in the Rawlings years to rebuild hope and confidence, after 20 years in government, his legacy was also infected by the same demon of corruption for which he condemned and excoriated his predecessors.

    Economic imperatives forced Rawlings to get in bed with the World Bank and IMF, the neocolonial titans he derided in his early days. He also privatised state-owned enterprises. One of the ugly fallouts of the privatisation was the credible allegation that his wife, Nana Konadu Agyemang, used a company in which she was chairman to buy a privatised food cannery with instalmental cheques.

    The party that Rawlings founded, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), currently in opposition, has also not covered itself in glory, with the €5million Airbus bribe scandal under President John Mahama being one of the more famous shameful episodes.

    “Others were shot for less,” Kofi Coomson, publisher of The Ghanaian Chronicle, told me, as he reeled off the former president’s complicated legacy.

    That’s not what Rawlingsters in Nigeria want to hear.

    Ishiekwene is the MD/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview

     

  • The Politics Of Tinubu Obsession – Azu Ishiekwene

    National leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has very strong enemies and a few of them would not wait for him to die before burying him.

    As soon as there were indications last week that President Muhammadu Buhari had withdrawn support for APC Chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, the floodgate of attacks opened.

    Apart from its obvious collateral damage, Oshiomhole’s ouster was scrutinized and interpreted for the worst it could mean politically. It has since been widely celebrated as the ultimate proof that the relationship between Buhari and Tinubu has broken down irretrievably.

    Tinubu, not Oshiomhole, was the target of the attacks. From the apocalyptic terms in a number of the articles, it was as if the long-awaited, long-coveted and long-overdue end had come for Tinubu.

    At last, they said, Tinubu has been thrown under the bus. The man who sold the South-west to the Northern slave-masters has met his Waterloo. The betrayer of the Yoruba cause has met his foretold end.

    Every empire ultimately declines and now the sun has set on the Tinubu political empire, never again to rise. The man so long blinded by ambition and selfish interest, has met his comeuppance. Save your tears: It is finally over or if not, it’s definitely the beginning of the end!

    Is it really? I suspect that those who are anxious to see Tinubu’s political decline – for real and imaginary reasons, and more imaginary than real reasons, to be honest – may be disappointed to hear that the end is not yet near. It’s not even close, and I’ll tell you why, if you’ll suspend your rage for a moment.

    We’ve been here before. In the days of the Alliance for Democracy (AD), when that party controlled all the six states in the South-west, former President Olusegun Obasanjo launched a no-holds-barred attack that led to the hijack of five of the six states for the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), with only Lagos left standing for AD.

    Obasanjo succeeded, to a large extent because AD governors genuinely believed his pitch that the only way to mainstream the Yoruba, was to accept that in the new political kingdom, the sheep and the lion could lie side by side again.

     

    But it really wasn’t about mainstreaming, was it? Obasanjo was being mocked as a stooge of the North, who failed to win even his ward in the election that brought him to power in 1999. So, it was not about mainstreaming. It was the wounded lion fighting back in sheep’s clothing.

    Sadly, five South-west governors bought the mainstreaming lie and were consumed. Obasanjo left Tinubu for dead. The man lived not only to tell the story but to lay a foundation which virtually turned Lagos into the last surviving stand of progressive politics, from where four of the hijacked states were reclaimed one by one.

    It’s easy to forget now or to underestimate the risk Tinubu took against the vicious tide of the ruling PDP that wanted to take Lagos at all costs. But had Obasanjo and the PDP succeeded, we would be living in a different Lagos today and the map of South-west politics would be significantly different.

    The floods came again in 2011. By this time, the AD was dead and the core replaced by the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN). During the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan, Tinubu faced a three-count charge at the Code of Conduct Tribunal for allegedly operating foreign accounts between 1999 and 2007 when he was governor of Lagos.

    The political undertone of the trial was unmistakable. After Jonathan won the elections in April 2011, PDP hawks who felt Tinubu breached a last-minute political deal with Jonathan (even though insiders felt Tinubu had, in fact, given too much) advised the government to move against him out of spite and fear.


    To teach Tinubu a lesson, Jonathan’s government threw the kitchen sink at him, hoping that the shards of broken glasses and table knives would cause enough bloodletting to put him out of action, possibly in prison, while they move in to dismantle and take over his political base. Again, it seemed the end had come. It was no joke. I recall the trial judge saying he was under pressure to follow the government’s script.

    In the end, however, the man was set free and what seemed like the end for him, turned out, in fact, to be the beginning of the end for the Jonathan government.

    A few months after Tinubu’s acquittal, massive public protests erupted in January 2012 over the mismanagement of trillions of naira in petrol subsidies by the Jonathan government. The protests, later compounded by Boko Haram insurgency, would eventually lead to the fall of that government three years later.

     

    If 2011 revealed anything, it was that the myth about Tinubu being a Northern stooge is slightly overwrought. It was also a lesson that both Buhari and Tinubu would learn. After Buhari’s three failed consecutive attempts at the presidency in spite of his popularity in the North, he came to accept, or was compelled to accept, that his fourth attempt would be fatal without Tinubu.

     

    On his own part, after what he had been through at the hands of Jonathan, Tinubu also had to accept that if he didn’t support Buhari in 2015, he would be fried – done for – in Jonathan’s second term. It’s therefore not a slave-master relationship as often conveniently and simplistically explained: It was real politics, a matter of mutual survival for both men and their core supporters.

     

    The genius that produced that defining moment is still active. It’s being tested, yes; but the outcome cannot be foretold, underestimated or written off.


    In all the talk about fiscal federalism and restructuring, which interestingly has won latter day converts like Obasanjo, no state has done more than Lagos under Tinubu, to use the law courts as instruments to claw back substantial autonomy for states in areas that, if properly explored, would improve their viability and financial independence.

    And while many states still can’t get over their dependence on Abuja, this same Lagos derided as Tinubu’s ATM, generates more internal revenue than 26 states combined, according the report by the National Bureau of Statistics for last year released in May.

    Of course, the imminence of Tinubu’s political death has ebbed and flowed with the fallouts with some of his protégées, the most high profile of them being former Governors Babatunde Raji Fashola and Akinwunmi Ambode, over second term tickets; not to mention the constant snipping from the conservative Afenifere rump of the old AD.

    These battles and rumours of battles in his inner circle have taken their toll on Tinubu. But far from being the death knell which some think, hope, or pray it is, Tinubu’s capacity to survive, to come through and get even stronger, should serve as a cautionary tale.

    There are few, very few presidents who after a decade of leaving office still wield any influence. In Nigeria you can count them on the fingers of one hand. There are even fewer governors who after 13 years of leaving public office still continue to spawn the kind of influence and authority that Tinubu brings to the party, not to mention his nearly insane appetite for risk.

    It’s not just about money only; it’s also about tea leaf reading – a gift that Tinubu possesses and uses in far greater measure than most. It’s about strategic thinking, planning and execution. It’s the courage to pick yourself up and get on with life even when things don’t go your way as it happened during the governorship election in Ondo State four years ago, and would doubtless happen again in future.

    Because of his significant role in forming the APC, Tinubu is easily a scapegoat whenever anything goes wrong there. Yet those who know, know that it’s not always true or fair to blame him, except for those who have made Tinubu-bashing a sport.

    In the current crisis, for example, if the APC secretariat had accepted Tinubu’s suggestion to fill the position of deputy chairman South with Abiola Ajimobi early on, instead of squabbling over whether it should be Ekiti’s or Oyo’s turn to fill the gap, the Victor Giadom pestilence which brought the party to its knees could have been avoided.

    The party is in its present mess not because Buhari fell out with Tinubu, but because politicians who want to ride both sides of the road dragged the car into a ditch. We’ll have to wait for the outcome of the party’s next convention to know if the vehicle is damaged beyond repair.

    The obsession with Tinubu and the relentless predictions of his political death boil down to one thing: suspicions that whatever he is doing now, he is pulling the strings to run for president in 2023. I don’t see how or why that ambition is a crime.

    Politics is about interests, an aggregation of self- and group-interests. And a number of Tinubu’s harshest critics in play today can’t even stand for and win ward elections, never mind consistently being in the forefront of consequential politics at the state and national levels over one decade after leaving public office.

     

    He is without a doubt, the most influential politician in the South-west today and one of the most strategic in the country. Mark my words, Tinubu’s political death is exaggerated.

    No politician who intends to serve, not even Tinubu, should get a soft pass. They should, and must at all times, be held to account for what they have done, what they’re doing or what they plan to do. And there’s room to do that through debate and contest for ideas, not by obsession and mudslinging.

    Hating or wishful thinking is not a substitute for strategy.

    Ishiekwene is MD/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview