Columns
In Marriage Nest, Spouses Are Dying, Ignoring Red Flags, and The Panacea (1)

In Marriage Nest, Spouses Are Dying, Ignoring Red Flags, and The Panacea (1)
By: Balami Lazarus
In the quite beautiful town of Zhimbutu, where men held sway, lording over their wives, some with brutality, few with love,
care and romance others in different ways. While some women are also lords over their husbands with impunity. Fear of getting married gripped young ladies seeing the ways their mothers were being treated and relegated to the background in the affairs of their homes as married women.
The home of Mr. and Mrs. Kwanchinkwalo Xhosa is full of regrets, anger, and bitterness, where Mrs. Xhosa has been treated as an object in the marriage partnership. The red spots were obviously fermented with bubbles ready for brewing.
Similarly, some good number of marriage homes are full of regrets where love, peace, and understanding
and harmony are strangers rejected and kept in a labyrinth of doom where one of the parties is placed in a perpetual tan of unhappiness surrounded by fear in the thickness of smoke, a forced resident.
Long before, now as a young man, a legitimate product of marriage. I took marriage as a mere secular social contract of partnership bounded in love and understanding where two have agreed to live together as husband and wife in matrimony.
However, I have never taken marriage to be a do-or-die affair, which has been the stock of some persons, even when and if the two—husband and wife—can no longer live together, having exhausted reasonable avenues to no avail. Here I am.
for outright divorce as a panacea for the final dissolution of the marriage.
To this day, I have been asking myself, why did I even get married in the first place? For sex, procreation, companionship, norms, tradition, or obligation? While marriage to a larger extent has deprived me and many others of some air of freedom and liberties to do or not to do at any space of time, I suppose. Moreover, the enterprise called marriage has taken away the ‘who’ in many men and
women and made them something else. It has further forcefully taken the lives of many spouses who ignored the red flags and fear of divorce. And besides, many have taken upon themselves to live or die in an unhappy/venomous venture of marriage that is infested with ‘dysentery’ and ‘cholera,’ where death is lurking because husbands or wives lack the guts, will , ability, and/or capacity to invoke the dead-end solution.
Let me now punctuate the work with some questions: Were you forced into it? Was it under duress? Was it at gunpoint? I believed the answers were all no. What will then prevent an individual from liquidating his unprofitable marital interest in such an intense business called marriage to be free from wahala that may likely result in crime?
In such a situation, I advocate for divorce as the only and final panacea, which has a comfortable place as a clause in my dictionary of marriage. Divorce is rarely used in some quarters, no matter what. While my wife and I have sincerely agreed in the course of our marriage journey that at any point in time, with or without any reason/cause, either party can quietly and peacefully walk out of the marriage to avoid who knows what?
In the history of failed marriages and crime findings, it has been shown that one of the parties is forcing his/herself on the other spouse because one of them has a profound and compounded emotional or spiritual attachment to the marriage. The case of the late Mrs. Osinachi Nwachukwu (2023), the gospel singer, was a classical example. Patience and excessive spiritual attachment led to her being killed by her husband, one Mr. Nwachukwu. The same is also applicable to men who fall victim in the hands of their wives. This situation has created two prime suspected killers living in a marriage cocoon.
Balami, a publisher/columnist. 08036779290
In Marriage Nest, Spouses Are Dying, Ignoring Red Flags, and The Panacea (1)
Columns
Africana First Publishers: Poor Reading Culture and the Challenges of Book Publishing in Nigeria

Africana First Publishers: Poor Reading Culture and the Challenges of Book Publishing in Nigeria
By: Balami Lazarus
I was going through my bookshelf looking for a particular bestselling novel when I saw a file that has some records of my work with Africana First Publishers Limited, Onitsha. Going through them was a nostalgia and flashback of traversing around the north to the south of the Niger.
Interestingly, I recalled my colleagues when we used to converge collectively and corporately twice a year for the ‘Epiphany Sales Conference’ in Onitsha at the Book House, the company head office, to assess and evaluate each territory and strategize. It was a period and time for booing and jesting at those lacking behind in discharging their duties in sales and marketing as area managers and educational sales representatives, who are considered the minting arm of the company. I was indeed having fun.
With the resumption of yet another school year, the 2025/2026 academic sessions. And looking back at the book publishing companies in Nigeria, the likes of Africana First Publishers Limited Onitsha, one of the big names in the industry in Nigeria, before the economy started frowning and when the reading culture was above average, and a time when schools and parents were buying books for their libraries and for their children at all levels.
My years of teaching literature in English, where reading is paramount, have given me a continuous tense in the three literary genres: prose, drama, and poetry, and it is a must for students to have all the
texts. This experience has made me see practically that the reading culture is in its coffin, waiting to be nailed finally for burial. I now agreed with one of my friends who recently met me engrossed in a novel and said, ‘Do Nigerians still read books?’Well, for me, you cannot take away books from my life because I love reading, and it is one of my hobbies.
The book publishing business was not of interest to Nigerians until a few decades ago, when some businessmen began to get involved by taking over the control and management of some foreign book publishing companies. Far East Publishers is now Africana First Publishers. Longman is now Learn Africa Publishers. Oxford University Press is today University Press Ibadan. And Macmillan London is addressed as Macmillan (Nigeria) Publishers, among a few others. This tells you that nearly all books used before the emergence of indigenous participation are published by foreign firms and authors.
I came to understand that the book publishing business is capital intensive for what it takes to establish a book publishing company, and being a player in this industry with the current economic difficulties and the very poor reading culture is not encouraging.
Are you aware that there are great differences between publishers and printers? But most people wrongly put them in the same basket, while they are not. Publishers are more of an element in the nature of knowledge contributing to the economy. While printers do the finishing work by printing and binding them into books.
It is a pity today that most book publishing companies are winding up as a result of poor reading culture, economic challenges, and the internet that has sent some packing.
Balami, a publisher/columnist. 08036779290
Africana First Publishers: Poor Reading Culture and the Challenges of Book Publishing in Nigeria
Columns
Deponents and the Consequences of Sworn Affidavits as Legal Documents

Deponents and the Consequences of Sworn Affidavits as Legal Documents
By: Balami Lazarus
In the course of writing this article, three names came to my mind who are legal gentlemen. Though one of them is no more. These men have contributed to my knowledge and understanding of the law in conducting my real estate business as a registered broker and how it works in the courts of law. However, I am not a lawyer, and I have never wished or aspired to be one despite the opportunities and privilege of being alive and in good health.
The understanding of some basic aspects of the laws is far away from many Nigerians. Well, my knowledge and fair understanding of some laws is from personal self-development. While my late brother Barr. John Kamdadi Balami and my good friend Barr. (Dr.) Nankin Samuel Bagudu, one of the radical human rights lawyers on the Plateau, were instrumental to my understanding of some aspects of the law/court procedures. And what to do in running my business and living life as a law-abiding citizen who respects constituted authorities/orders.
Another personality who is a friend and a brother by extension, a fine legal gentleman whose name I will not mention, is today a respected Honourable member of the Bench and has also played a significant role in my understanding of the law and what to do when and if the need arises.
My dealings with the courts of law have taught me patience, because courts under judges are a calm body of the judiciary. It is a place where you are given a fair hearing and judgement.
Furthermore, courts are where you can obtain signed legal documents on oath to different kinds of affidavits on civil matters/issues that directly concern the deponents, knowing fully well the consequences of lying while under lawful oath. This is because affidavits are official prescribed declarations of what one writes and claims to be true under oath. And that when and if the court finds out one is lying, you are liable for perjury.
Moreover, my association and interactions with human and civil rights organizations/associations, including my activities and contributions in Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) matters for peacefully amicable settlements and/orconflict resolutions, have further exposed me to understanding of what affidavits are.
The courtrooms under judges are interesting places to be in seeking legal redress. But I have observed that many are not comfortable with the courts of law, not knowing they are hallmarks of legal protection, justice, and punishments under the laws of the land. Judges are known to be kind individuals with large hearts. They are men of privilege under and outside the law. It is at their discretion to temper justice with mercy in either civil or criminal cases. And it has also exposed me to who legal practitioners are with their legal rhetoric in court before a judge.
Therefore, courts are not only meant for fair hearings and judgments but also for where you find justice and legal protections through legal redress and sworn affidavits.
Balami, a publisher/columnist. 08036779290
Deponents and the Consequences of Sworn Affidavits as Legal Documents
Columns
Angry, Bitter, Frustrated Nentawe Yiltwada Goshwe of Kanke and His Political Bandits

Angry, Bitter, Frustrated Nentawe Yiltwada Goshwe of Kanke and His Political Bandits
By: Balami Lazarus
I disliked joining or responding to partisan issues or arguments with individuals or groups of persons in any form or manner for or against, as the case may be. This is because most times many out there are not objective in such matters. Rather, they are damned and condemned in totality without consideration or a second thought. But here am I, doing what I don’t like. I will then be brief with this work, believing it to be my first short write-up.
My concern as an individual in a democracy has always been any individual who can bring changes and deliver the dividends of democracy through good governance to his people, not the political party as a platform. But this has been the norm for many citizens, likeNentawe Yiltwada Goshwe of Kanke and his political bandits.
The late Waziri Ibrahim of Borno, once a leader of the Great Nigeria People’s Party (GNPP), had the watchword
“Politics without bitterness” has been the guiding principle of his party and members. Meaning politics is not a do-or-die affair. Unlike Nentawe and his men on the Plateau, who have been blowing fouls against Governor Caleb Manasseh Mutfwang’s administration since 2023, until when? Only God knows.
I will hereby narrow this piece of work and its context to angry, bitter, and frustrated Nentawe and others who are deliberately refusing to come to reality with the positive developments on the Plateau because of their disjointed, myopic, and comatose state of mind that has not allowed them to see anything good done and/oraccomplished by the Mutfwang government.
Their intent through Nentawe is venomous, demonstrated in his political attitudes towards the government and the people-oriented projects carried out by the state down to his village, Dungung Ampang East District in Kanke Local Government Area. The citizens are witnesses to these laudable infrastructural/social amenities projects.
I will also appreciate answers to these questions:Who is Nentawe Yiltwada Goshwe in the last 20 years of Plateau State? What are his political pedigrees in the state?Can this Kanke man be trusted with the mantle of the state leadership?
Speaking recently on the radio, he descended heavily with a sledgehammer on the administration of Governor Caleb Mutfwang with frivolous unsubstantiated statements oiled with dead lubricants of lies of anger and bitterness with sword-edged extensions to the doorsteps of the Caleb Mutfwang family. “With the allocations coming to the state, there is nothing to show for it.” According to him, Mutfwang and his brothers are siphoning public funds meant for the state. Haba! Nentawe of Dungung.
For me, Nentawe Yiltwada Goshwe and his political gangsters/mobsters are enemies of the state who are working with anger, bitterness, and frustrations in an attempt to politically discourage the good citizens of the state from supporting the able, progressive, and focused Governor Caleb Mutfwang, who has shown and displayed a high sense of political maturity and purpose in governance in piloting the affairs of the state against all prevailing odds, including that of Nentawe and his frustrated political bandits who were voted out of Little Rayfield, Jos, the seat of power.
Balami, a publisher/columnist. 08036779290
Angry, Bitter, Frustrated Nentawe Yiltwada Goshwe of Kanke and His Political Bandits
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