There are many bad habits that can hinder your goals — but the “most self-destructive” habit is so common, you may not realize just how damaging it is.
″[As] human beings, we can’t help but to compare ourselves to others, and comparison is the deadliest thing we can do to ourselves because we will always come up short,” Simon Sinek, a bestselling author and leadership expert, said in a 2021 YouTube video. “All it does is exaggerate all of our insecurities.”
“It’s OK to enjoy other people’s success, but you let them live their lives and you live your life,” he added. “Oh, and by the way, they’re curating their social media. That’s not really their life. So you’re making decisions … based on their curated life.”
To avoid falling into this “circle of depression,” Sinek has a few tips to reframe your thinking:
1. Look to your peers as a source of inspiration, not as competition.
2. Take pride in the things you’re good at instead of dwelling on areas that need improvement.
3. Lean on your inner circle for support and reassurance.

CNBC

Revelers counted down to midnight on New Year’s Eve across the globe Sunday as fireworks and festive lights offered a hopeful start to 2024 for some, even as the world’s ongoing conflicts subdued celebrations and raised security concerns.

In Australia, more than 1 million people watched a pyrotechnic display centered around Sydney’s famous Opera House and harbor bridge — a number of spectators equivalent to one in five of the city’s residents.

“It’s total madness,” said German tourist Janna Thomas, who waited in line since 7:30 a.m. to secure a prime waterfront location.

Some 90,000 police and security officers were deployed around France including along Champs-Elysees Avenue, where large crowds took in a multidimensional light show projected onto the Arc de Triomphe showcasing the history of Paris and sports on the menu for next year’s Summer Olympics in the city.

In New York, people lined up early to nab a spot in Times Square for the midnight ball drop. Officials and party organizers said they were prepared to keep tens of thousands of revelers safe in the heart of Manhattan, as the city has seen near-daily protests sparked by the Israel-Hamas war.

FIREWORKS LIGHT UP THE NIGHT

Stunning fireworks displays bloomed at iconic locations like the Acropolis in Athens, Greece; reflected in the sleek glass walls of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates; and accompanied a collective cheer filling the air in Nairobi, Kenya.

As the hands of the clock sounded, tick-tock, reaching to hit the midnight hour mark, Nigerians were excited about the turn of the new year. Many citizens celebrated the New Year on Sunday night amid stunning firework displays, illuminating the skies across the nation’s atmospheric corridors.

China celebrated relatively quietly, with most major cities banning fireworks over safety and pollution concerns. Still, people gathered and performers danced in colorful costumes in Beijing, while a crowd released wish balloons in Chongqing. During his New Year address, President Xi Jinping said the country would focus on building momentum for economic recovery in 2024 and pledged China would “surely be reunified” with Taiwan.

In Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, the mood was upbeat as revelers gathered for a fireworks show at the bamboo-shaped Taipei 101 skyscraper and at concerts and other events citywide.

In India, thousands of revelers from the financial hub of Mumbai watched the sun set over the Arabian Sea. Fireworks in New Delhi raised concerns that the capital — already infamous for its poor air quality — would be blanketed by a toxic haze on the first morning of the new year.

Across Japan, people gathered at temples such as the Tsukiji Temple in Tokyo, where visitors were given free hot milk and corn soup as they stood in line to strike a massive bell.

POPE HIGHLIGHTS THE HUMAN COST OF WAR

At the Vatican, Pope Francis recalled 2023 as a year marked by wartime suffering. During his traditional Sunday blessing from a window overlooking St. Peter’s Square, he offered prayers for “the tormented Ukrainian people and the Palestinian and Israeli populations, the Sudanese people and many others.”

“At the end of the year, we will have the courage to ask ourselves how many human lives have been shattered by armed conflict, how many dead and how much destruction, how much suffering, how much poverty,” the pontiff said.

GAZA AND UKRAINE WARS GRIND ON

In Russia, the country’s military actions in Ukraine overshadowed end-of-year celebrations, with the usual fireworks and concert on Moscow’s Red Square canceled, as they were last year. Even without the festivities, people gathered in the square,and some cheered and pointed their phones at a clock counting down the year’s final seconds.

After shelling in the Russian border city of Belgorod Saturday killed 24 people, some local authorities across the country also canceled their firework displays, including in Vladivostok. Millions were expected to tune in to President Vladimir Putin’s New Year’s prerecorded address, in which he said no force could divide Russians and stop the country’s development.

Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip killed at least 35 people Sunday, hospital officials said, as fighting raged across the tiny enclave a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the war will continue for “many more months,” resisting international calls for a cease-fire.

Skyscrapers in Tel Aviv were lit up in yellow to call for the release of hostages held by Palestinian militants in Gaza for more than 80 days.

“While you are counting down until the new year, our time and our lives stopped,” said Moran Betzer Tayar, the aunt of Yagev Buchshtab, a 34-year-old hostage.

In the Gaza Strip, displaced Palestinians huddled around fires in a makeshift refugee camp.

“From the intensity of the pain we live, we do not feel that there is a new year,” said Kamal al-Zeinaty, who has lost multiple family members in the conflict. “All the days are the same.”

In Iraq, a Christmas tree was decorated with Palestinian flags and symbolic bodies in funeral shrouds, placed beside a liberty monument in central Baghdad. Many Christians in Iraq have cancelled this year’s festivities in solidarity with Gaza, and have chosen to limit their celebrations to prayers and rituals.

“We hope that the new year, 2024, will be a year of goodness, prosperity and joy,” said Ahmed Ali, a Baghdad resident.

In Muslim-majority Pakistan, the government banned all New Year’s Eve celebrations in solidarity with the Palestinians.

GLOBAL TENSIONS SPUR SECURITY VIGILANCE

New York Mayor Eric Adams said there were “no specific threats” to his city’s annual bash. Nevertheless, police said they would expand the security perimeter around the party, creating a “buffer zone” that would allow them to head off potential demonstrations. On New Year’s Eve 2022, a machete-wielding man attacked three police officers a few blocks from Times Square.

Security was also heightened across European cities on Sunday.

German authorities said they etained three more people in connection with a reported threat of a New Year’s Eve attack by Islamic extremists on the world-famous Cologne Cathedral.

In Berlin, some 4,500 police officers were expected to keep order and avoid riots like those seen a year ago. Authorities also banned the traditional use of firecrackers for several streets across the city. They also banned a pro-Palestinian protest in the Neukoelln neighborhood of the German capital, which has seen several pro-Palestinian riots.

AP/Punch

Nigerian lawmakers approved a request from President Bola Tinubu to convert N7.5 trillion ($8.2 billion) in overdrafts from the central bank to longer-dated bonds that will be added to the country’s debt.

The senate granted approval at a sitting on Saturday during which they are also endorsed

a N28.77 trillion spending plan for 2024, higher than the 27.5 trillion naira figure proposed by Tinubu.

Tinubu said the conversion will reduce the cost of servicing the debt to 9% when compared to the monetary policy rate plus 3% that it currently attracts, and also improve the transparency of liabilities owed to the banking regulator.

Lawmakers in May approved the conversion of N22.7 trillion in loans from the central bank into bonds. The request was made by Tinubu’s predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, under whose administration loans from the central bank rose by more than 3,000%. That helped increase Nigeria’s outstanding debt by more than 50%; total public debt was N87.9 trillion in September.

Bloomberg

Israeli strikes in central Gaza kill at least 35 as Netanyahu says war will continue for months

Israeli strikes in central Gaza killed at least 35 people Sunday, hospital officials said, as fighting raged across the tiny enclave a day after Israel’s prime minister said the war will continue for “many more months,” resisting international calls for a cease-fire.

The military said Israeli forces were operating in Gaza’s second-largest city, Khan Younis, and residents reported strikes in the central region, the latest focus of the nearly three-month air-and-ground war that has raised fears of a regional conflagration.

The U.S. military said its forces shot and killed several Iran-backed Houthi rebels when they tried to attack a cargo ship in the Red Sea, an escalation in a maritime conflict linked to the war. And an Israeli Cabinet minister suggested encouraging Gaza’s population to emigrate, remarks that could worsen tensions with Egypt and other friendly Arab states.

Israel says it wants to destroy Hamas’ governing and military capabilities in Gaza, from where it launched its Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. The militants killed some 1,200 people after breaking through Israel’s extensive border defenses, shattering its sense of security. They also captured around 240 hostages, nearly half of whom were released during a temporary cease-fire agreement in November.

Just after midnight on New Year’s Day, Hamas militants fired a barrage of rockets, setting off air raid sirens in southern and central Israel. No injuries were reported.

Displaced Palestinians found little to celebrate on New Year’s Eve in Muwasi, a makeshift camp in a mostly undeveloped area of southern Gaza’s Mediterranean coast designated by Israel as a safe zone.

“From the intensity of the pain we live, we do not feel that there is a new year,” said Kamal al-Zeinaty, huddled with his family around a fire inside a tent. “All the days are the same.”

Another relative, Zeyad al-Zeinaty, who fled with the family from the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, said his wife, brother and grandchildren are among many relatives he has lost in the war.

Israel’s unprecedented air and ground offensive has killed more than 21,800 Palestinians and wounded more than 56,000 others, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza, which does not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths.

The war has sparked a humanitarian crisis, with a quarter of Gaza residents facing starvation, according to the United Nations. Israel’s bombardments have leveled vast swaths of the territory, displacing some 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents.

THE OFFENSIVE GRINDS ON

Israel expanded its offensive to central Gaza this week, targeting a belt of densely built-up communities that house refugees from the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation and their descendants.

In Zweida, an Israeli airstrike killed at least 13 people and wounded dozens of others, according to witnesses. The bodies were draped in white plastic and laid out in front of a hospital, where prayers were held before burial.

“They were innocent people,” said Hussein Siam, whose relatives were among the dead. “Israeli warplanes bombarded the whole family.”

Officials from Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Deir al-Balah said the 13 were among 35 bodies received on Sunday.

The Israeli military said it was battling militants in Khan Younis, where Israel believes Hamas leaders are hiding. It also said its forces operating in the Shati refugee camp, in northern Gaza, found a bomb in a kindergarten and defused it. Hamas continued to launch rockets toward southern Israel.

Israel has faced stiff resistance from Hamas since it began its ground offensive in late October, and the military says 172 soldiers have been killed during that time.

Daniel Hagari, the chief military spokesman, said Sunday that Israel was withdrawing some forces from Gaza as part of its “smart management” of the war. He did not say how many, and held out the possibility they would return at a later point in the war.

Israeli media said up to five brigades, numbering thousands of soldiers, would be withdrawn, but it was not immediately clear if it represented a normal troop rotation or a new phase in the fighting. Hagari also said some reservists would return to civilian life to bolster Israel’s wartime economy.

The fighting has pushed much of Gaza’s population south, where people have flooded shelters and tent camps near the border with Egypt. Hundreds of thousands have sought shelter in the central town of Deir al-Balah. Israel has continued to carry out strikes in both areas.

Eman al-Masri, who gave birth to quadruplets a week ago at a hospital in Deir al-Balah, is now sheltering with them in a room with 50 other people at a school-turned-shelter. “There is a shortage of diapers, they are not available, and no milk,” she said.

ISRAELI MINISTER URGES MASS MIGRATION FROM GAZA

The scale of the destruction and the exodus to the south has raised fears among Palestinians and Arab countries that Israel plans to drive Gaza’s population out and prevent it from returning.

On Sunday, Israel’s far-right finance minister said it should “encourage migration” from Gaza and re-establish Jewish settlements in the territory, where it withdrew settlers and soldiers in 2005.

“If in Gaza there were only 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs and not 2 million, the entire discussion about ‘the day after’ would be completely different,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told Army Radio.

Smotrich has been largely sidelined by a war Cabinet that does not include him. But his comments risked worsening tensions with neighboring Egypt, which is deeply concerned about a possible mass influx of Palestinian refugees, along with other friendly Arab countries.

Later Sunday, an official in the prime minister’s office said Israel does not want to resettle Palestinians.

“Contrary to false allegations, Israel does not seek to displace the population in Gaza,” the official said in a statement to The Associated Press. “Subject to security checks, Israel’s policy is to enable those individuals who wish to leave to do so.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter with the media.

Israel is also at odds with the United States, which has provided crucial military aid for the offensive, over Gaza’s future.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel must maintain open-ended security control over the Gaza Strip. At a news conference Saturday, he said the war would continue for “many more months” and that Israel would assume control of the Gaza side of the border with Egypt.

Israel says Hamas has smuggled weapons from Egypt, but Egypt is likely to oppose any Israeli military presence there.

Netanyahu has also said he won’t allow the internationally-backed Palestinian Authority, which administers some parts of the occupied West Bank, to expand its limited rule to Gaza, where Hamas drove its forces out in 2007.

The U.S. wants a unified Palestinian government to run both Gaza and parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank as a precursor to eventual statehood. The last Israeli-Palestinian peace talks broke down over a decade ago, and Israeli governments since have been staunchly opposed to Palestinian statehood.

AP

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Kharkiv strikes were retaliation for Belgorod attack, Russia says

Russia on Sunday said it attacked military facilities in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv overnight, including a hotel housing military commanders and "foreign mercenaries", in response to Ukraine's strikes on Belgorod the previous day.

Kharkiv officials had said that at least six missiles hit Ukraine's second city, injuring at least 28 people and damaging residential buildings, hotels and medical facilities, followed by waves of drone attacks on housing blocks.

Russia's statement said its attack hit the former Kharkiv Palace hotel and the headquarters of the Ukrainian Security Service for the Kharkiv region.

It said military and intelligence officers involved in Ukraine's attack on Belgorod had been among those killed, along with "foreign mercenaries and militants" preparing to carry out cross-border raids.

Ukraine military intelligence spokesman Andriy Yusov told local media that no military objects had been targeted in Russia's attack on Kharkiv and that no one from his agency was harmed.

Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of the Belgorod region adjoining northern Ukraine, said the death toll from Saturday's Ukrainian rocket attack on the regional capital had risen to 24.

In a posting on Telegram he said there were also 108 wounded and that 37 apartment buildings had been damaged.

There was no official comment from Kyiv in the hours after the attack on Belgorod and Reuters was unable to independently verify the Russian reports.

Like other Russian border zones, Belgorod has suffered shelling and drone attacks all year, which authorities have blamed on Ukraine, though none have previously been on such a scale.

Both sides deny targeting civilians in a war that Russia launched against its neighbour in February 2022. The United Nations says that more than 10,000 civilians have been killed in Ukraine and nearly 60 people inside Russia.

Ukrainian news outlet RBC-Ukraine on Saturday quoted unidentified sources as saying that Ukrainian forces had directed fire at military targets in Belgorod in response to the massive Russian bombardment of cities and infrastructure across Ukraine the previous day.

Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that Ukraine had fired its missiles from the Kharkiv region across the border.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Russia explains retaliation for Ukrainian ‘terror attack’

Russia’s military has conducted a string of high-precision missile strikes targeting Ukrainian military facilities and officials in response to the Ukrainian strike on Belgorod on Saturday that left more than 20 civilians dead, the Defense Ministry has said. 

In a statement on Sunday, the ministry said that Moscow’s forces had struck decision-making centers and other military targets in the city of Kharkov, not far from the border between the two countries. 

It noted that a high-precision missile strike on the building formerly housing the Kharkov Palace Hotel eliminated “representatives of the Main Intelligence Directorate and the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who were directly involved in the planning and execution of the terrorist attack in Belgorod.”

The building also housed up to 200 foreign mercenaries who were gearing up for “terrorist raids” into Russian territory, officials added.

Other strikes hit the building of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) and a temporary deployment area of Ukrainian nationalists. “Representatives of the SBU leadership, foreign mercenaries and fighters of the Kraken unit, who were directly preparing sabotage on Russian territory, have been taken out,” officials said. 

In addition to this, an attack was carried out on a branch of the national space control center in western Ukraine, which had been used by Kiev for reconnaissance. Fuel depots in Kharkov and the Kiev-controlled part of Russia’s Zaporozhye Region were also destroyed, according to the statement. At the same time, the ministry stressed that the Russian military “only strikes military targets and infrastructure directly associated with them.” 

Ukrainian officials in Kharkov have confirmed the barrage, saying that there had been six strikes that damaged “civilian infrastructure,” with 28 injured.

The new attack comes in response to a Ukrainian bombardment of Belgorod that killed at least 24 people, including four children, with 108 injured. Moscow has said that the barrage used both cluster munitions, as well as Czech-made projectiles. On Saturday, Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s envoy to the UN, accused Western countries of complicity in the attack, warning that those who orchestrated it would be “punished.”

Reuters/RT

An Igbo adage says that when an anomaly persists for one year, it becomes the norm. So slowly, steadily but surely, it is becoming a norm, an accepted aberration, for a president in Nigeria to appoint himself as a minister. It is like saying in a country of 200 million-plus, there is no one good or capable enough to hold that particular office except the man entrusted with the running of the nation.

It was President Olusegun Obasanjo that started it. Nicknamed the “Trinity President” in some quarters, for six out of his eight years in office, i.e., from 1999 to 2005, Obasanjo was president, petroleum minister and minister of state for petroleum.

It was only in 2003, the last year of his first term that he appointed Edmund Daukoru, the current traditional ruler of Nembe Kingdom in Bayelsa State, as special adviser on petroleum and energy and then minister of state in 2007.

I think Muhammadu Buhari got so fascinated by this “Trinity” arrangement that he saw Obasanjo run that he too made himself the Czar of Nigeria’s petroleum sector by appointing himself into the same offices.

One curious observation is that they both chose to head the petroleum ministry despite their shallow knowledge of the sector. Both presidents were soldiers who rose to become generals. Nigerians would expect them, especially Buhari, to head the defence ministry if they must be ministers. But the Ministry of Petroleum holds an enticing attraction to them. Can it be because Nigeria’s crude oil is called “sweet”?

Addressing some select reporters at a Global Leaders’ Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism, in London, Buhari said: “I will remain minister of petroleum. I will appoint a minister of state for petroleum.”

And that was even before he had taken the names of his prospective ministers to the Senate. Unlike Obasanjo, he had once served as oil minister and, unlike him again, he appointed a minister of state earlier.

When the news broke that he was going to announce himself as petroleum minister, Vanguard newspaper published an editorial advising against such a move.

“The nation is still at sea over how Obasanjo handled the same job for six years from 1999 when he assumed power. Several turnaround maintenance projects were undertaken and billions of naira sunk and yet the refineries remained comatose,” the article read.

But how did Nigeria’s oil sector with its “sweet crude” fare under the two former generals-turned-civilian presidents?

Reports have it that Obasanjo’s leadership at the petroleum ministry was characterised by lots of opacity and breach of due process. The seeds of the controversial Malabu oil deal were planted in that period.

The Guardian, on January 13, 2008, wrote, “Under Obasanjo, the government was not run based on budget and he did not consider himself bound by the budget. He was the budget. He provided figures and allocations and spent money as he liked without any evidential accountability to the National Assembly. Nobody knew what the revenue was. The National Assembly didn’t know; he was not revealing anything. How much came into the government coffers from the oil sales? Nobody knew except himself. He was the sole minister of petroleum.”

And because of this, in December 2007, seven months after he handed over power to Umar Yar’Adua, the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP) petitioned the anti-graft agency he set up, the EFCC, demanding that Obasanjo be probed as he no longer enjoyed constitutional immunity.

The petition read in part: “Let us start by stating that Obasanjo, during his tenure, illegally appointed himself the minister of petroleum resources, contrary to section 147 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

“Secondly, his activities in the oil industry were shrouded in secrecy, as he never rendered proper accounts of the oil revenue to relevant agencies like the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC).

“Thirdly, it is also on record that neither the Federal Executive Council nor the National Assembly was ever presented memoranda or budgets of the oil industry.”

Buhari’s case was almost similar. Probably no other leader in Nigeria’s history has had the swell of goodwill to tap into as him when he took over in 2015, but he sadly turned such enthusiasm into grave disappointment, his regime falling from what many, rightly or wrongly, had high hopes on, to one that the nation couldn’t wait to see the back of.

According to Buhari, the reason he wanted to be the minister was to right the wrongs in the oil industry, which was plagued by corruption, massive fraud, and crude oil theft.

But in his “determination to sanitise Nigeria’s oil industry and free it from corruption and shady deals,” he spent over N11 trillion on “subsidies” and over $19 billion on the maintenance of refineries that did not refine even a single litre of petrol throughout his eight years.

The Constitution of Nigeria that authorised the president to appoint ministers also gave the power of their vetting and confirmation to the Senate of the Federal Republic. Specifically, section 147 of the Nigerian constitution provides that: “(1) There shall be such offices of Ministers of the Government of the Federation as may be established by the President. (2) Any appointment to the office of Minister of the Government of the Federation shall, if the nomination of any person to such office is confirmed by the Senate, be made by the President.

Neither of the presidents presented himself to the Senate for vetting and clearance as enshrined in the Constitution. And all of them shunned defence, their field and what needed professional supervision for sweet crude. This made some people think that if Emefiele became president as he wanted, he may also make himself minister of petroleum as well as CBN governor.

But when this trend first reared its ugly head, some conscientious Nigerians did not take it lying down. A group called the Niger Delta Democratic Union went to a Federal High Court, asking it to issue “an order directing Obasanjo to appoint a Minister of Petroleum Resources under the mandatory provisions of the Petroleum Act Cap 350 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 1990 as amended.”

Filed by Austin Ayowe and Dafe Chuks on behalf of the NDDU, the plaintiffs also sought “an order restraining President Obasanjo and the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Authority (PPRA) from further exercising any function or powers of a minister of petroleum resources.”

Even though the suit was struck out on 15 September 2004 by Stephen Adah, the presiding judge, who held that the applicants had no locus standi to file the suit, perhaps that case forced Obasanjo to appoint Daukoru as minister of state the next year.

However, in November 2018, a Federal High Court in Abuja declared that Buhari cannot legally double as the minister of petroleum resources.

The court made the declaration while giving judgment in a suit filed in 2017 by the former president of the Nigerian Bar Association, Olisa Agbakoba, who urged it to restrain Buhari from continuing to hold the office of the minister of petroleum resources, contending that Section 138 of the 1999 Constitution forbids the president from “holding any other executive office or paid employment.”

We are quick to shout that Nigeria borrowed its system of governance from America, but tell me which American president was a secretary (minister) at the same time.

Unfortunately for our nation, our leaders pick and choose according to what suits their purpose from the American system. The United States enacted the 1967 Anti-Nepotism law which forbids federal officials from employing family members into certain governmental positions and the cabinet. Can anyone mention that to recent Nigerian public officeholders? We have recently been regaled by stories of how even in the temple of justice, some senior judiciary figures make way for their children, wives and mistresses to become judges. It is the same in practically every segment of public service.

We still have a long, long way to go before we can get it right. But the worrying question is: are we even willing to try?

** Hassan Gimba is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Neptune Prime.

Clare Coffey

Gone are the days when stopping by a certain kind of bar pretty much guaranteed some human contact. These days, bars can feel like the loneliest places on the planet.

When the first wave of lockdown regulations ended, back in 2020, I can still remember what I was most excited for. Going to bars again. Perhaps, during a moment of such gravity, this excitement may seem trivial, or even louche. But I love bars, and always have. I love the opportunities (increasingly rare) that they present for just quietly sitting and thinking, for luxuriating in a small pleasure. I love the way they mark the end of the work-day or the work-week and the entry into leisure. I love the way that you can walk into a town as a stranger, and leave knowing a fair cross-section of its dynamics and characters simply by spending a few hours sitting at its bar. I love the space they open up to talk to strangers, or merely observe them. I love that you never know exactly what you’ll get.

I was excited to go back to the bars again, but when I did, something felt different–something felt off. Everything felt a bit smaller, a bit faded. I don’t think anything had actually changed that much from a few months of closure. But I do think that my anticipatory excitement, coupled with a period of forced separation, made me notice something that before had slipped past my consciousness as, over a decade, it slowly became the new normal.

It was the creeping spread of the lonely corner.

The Lonely Corner

As long as I can remember, a certain kind of un-fancy, middle-of-the-road bar has had what I call “the lonely corner.” Someone is always huddled over the glowing pay-to-play machines mounted on the bar, sometimes gambling, sometimes playing simple touchscreen games. They’ll order beer after beer, barely looking up as they while away one, two, five hours.

I always thought these machines were predatory, luring the exhausted or emotionally dysregulated or unhappily solitary into one of the saddest possible ways to drink: alone in a crowd, without alcohol’s social boost, without much apparent joy in the drink, as part of a compulsive routine.

But the lonely corner used to at least be a corner. Now, those same bars often host an eerie vision: a row of barstools filled with people downing their beers and hunched over their hands, scrolling their feeds, never taking an eye off their screens. The lonely corner is everywhere.

Smartphones make bars worse places. In an ideal scenario they wouldn’t. In an ideal scenario the most disciplined smartphone user would be the model smartphone user. The little pocket computer would come out to answer a message, look up a piece of trivia to settle an argument, or take a picture, and then go back in the pocket. But in real life, what you largely get is the doomscroll. And the doomscroll destroys what is most wonderful about bars. The quiet moments of reflection, the silences and pauses that become opportunities to chat with your neighbor, the way the whole bar can become participants in the banter between a bartender and a patron–these are all casualties. Scrolling on your phone is an obvious defense against the awkwardness of sitting silent and alone in a place built for social encounter–you feel like you’re doing something, you look like you’re doing something. But in providing an easy out from those awkward moments, scrolling also removes the openings that allow awkwardness to blossom into conviviality. And each time you take the easy out, I have found, the psychic cost of sitting through the awkwardness or boredom becomes higher.

Doomscrolling is the gateway to doomdrinking

If smartphones diminish what is best about bars, they also enhance their worst possibilities. The doomscroll is a self-soothing mechanism that accelerates and distracts from the passage of time. Alcohol, in certain quiet, ugly moments, can be a much more potent and dangerous version of the same. There’s great pleasure in a mindless beer, staring off into space, content in the moment–but add the scroll and you’re likely to get a mutually reinforcing compulsive cycle. Drinking takes on the logic of the infinite feed: endless, mindless, appetite without the possibility of satiety. I don’t like the way I drink when I have my phone in my hand. These days, I pretty much only stop by the bar if I’ve left it at home. It’s not, by any stretch of the imagination, a convenient arrangement. And for a more disciplined person it’s probably an unnecessary one. But then again, a more disciplined person is probably already at home doing pilates. Drinking in bars is life’s gift to the undisciplined–unproductive, pointless, lounging fun–and I’m not about to let my smartphone take it away from me.

I am not suggesting that all bars have always been, or must be, non-stop festivals of spontaneous joviality. People have always gone to sports bars to watch TV; plenty of people go to bars to read a book or a paper, catch up on mindless paperwork, jot things down in little notebooks. I’ve done all the above, and it’s very pleasant and cozy to do these solitary activities in the company of others and with a drink in your hand. But there are important differences.

Watching sports is already a shared activity; people do it in bars to react with others, to share their pleasure and their pain. The others are discrete tasks, with natural bounds and breaks built in. They are different types of human activity that take place within their real physical context, visible to others and enriching the shared space as objects of conversation or curiosity. The scroll is different. It fills up any and all empty moments. It offers no obvious conversational ingress. Mentally, it takes you into the alternate virtual world of the screen and out of your physical context, and it creates no silent, enriching presence. To the outside world, whatever you are doing on a phone looks like the same thing: being on your phone.

Doing a crossword puzzle at a bar makes a solitary activity social. Smartphones at a bar make social experiences solitary.

Decades ago, we realized that some technologies were too powerful to be safely combined with the effects of alcohol. “Friends don’t let friends drink and drive” was painstakingly hammered from a mere slogan into a social norm. It may be time to consider a similar norm (though without, of course, the legal prohibition) for a technology whose dangers are chronic and diffuse rather than acute and concentrated. There is a growing awareness of the way smartphones can hinder serious pursuits: distracting children at school, reducing the capacity for sustained attention at work. But I think it is worth guarding our unserious pursuits, our inattention, our trivialities, from their depredations as well.  Friends don’t let friends drink and scroll.

Fast Company

Residents of Lagos Island and traders at the popular Idumota market have decried the increasing hunger and desperation inflicted on them by the President Bola Tinubu-led administration.

The residents were seen in a trending video telling President Tinubu in Yoruba language that they are hungry - “Ebi npa wa oo”.

Filed on both sides of the road as seen in the video as the president’s long convoy passed through the ever-busy market, the traders didn't hail him.

They instead kept talking of their pains, which they accused his administration of inflicting on them by bad policies that didn't factor the poor and working class in the country.

The complaining voices in the video were heard saying the presidency had known the plans of the people which was the reason for the heavy security. However, the alleged initial plan was not made known.

Sahara Reporters

Nigerian lawmakers approved a N28.77 trillion ($34 billion) budget for 2024 on Saturday, accepting a funding increase which the government had sought due to higher revenue forecasts and a weaker currency.

President Bola Tinubu had initially presented a N27.5 trillion budget to lawmakers, projecting a deficit of 3.9% of gross domestic product (GDP) and assuming an average exchange rate of N750 per dollar.

But at a special sitting on Saturday, the Senate and House of Representatives separately debated the budget and resolved to adopt it with the changes sought by the government.

The government said it expected more revenue from government-owned enterprises and now expected an average exchange rate of N800 to the dollar, which would boost export income. Economic growth is forecast at 3.88%.

Tinubu campaigned on a promise to revive the country's struggling economy but Nigerians have endured increased hardships this year after the president removed a decades-old petrol subsidy and scrapped currency controls, helping to push inflation to its highest level in two decades.

The budget will be sent to Tinubu on Monday to be signed into law.

Nigeria has struggled with high deficits over the years due to low tax revenue and falling production of oil, its biggest export, forcing the government to borrow more.

Africa's biggest economy is also in the grips of widespread insecurity, which has worsened in some places since Tinubu came to office. He is yet to spell out how to tackle the problem.

The lawmakers separately debated last week's attacks by suspected herdsmen in central Plateau state, which left at least 140 people dead and resolved to invite security chiefs to explain the circumstances around the incident.

Reuters

Nigerian Catholic couple Jane and Lucy have little hope their local parish church will bless their same-sex union anytime soon, as conservative priests across Africa choose to ignore a landmark Vatican ruling allowing such blessings.

Conservative Catholics have condemned the Vatican's declaration two weeks ago, which was approved by Pope Francis, that will allow blessings for same-sex couples, as long as they are not part of the regular Church rituals or liturgies.

The pope has hit back against the criticism and what he called inflexible ideological positions that hinder the Church from moving forward.

But in many African countries, such as the continent's most populous one, Nigeria, even having a same-sex relationship is outlawed and often punishable by long jail terms.

Little wonder that 39-year-old Jane, who has been living with her partner for six years, does not feel the Vatican's declaration will change much.

"Maybe in the next 20 years (or) next 30 years but right now it will be difficult for them (Bishops) to just accept this," Jane told Reuters inside her room in north central Benue state.

In the Anglican church, the issue has caused deep divisions for more than two decades, most recently following Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby's proposal earlier this year to allow priests to bless same-sex unions, bringing the faith close to splitting point.

The Catholic Church has so far sought to avoid the impression of conflict.

Catholic bishops from Angola, Kenya, Nigeria, Malawi to Sao Tome and Principe, Uganda and Zimbabwe are among clerics who have said they will not bless same-sex couples, but have argued that the Pope's decree can be interpreted as optional.

Father Patrick Alumunku of St Louis Catholic Church Mbora parish in the capital Abuja said the Vatican declaration was unsettling for many followers but should be viewed as a move towards inclusiveness for all God's children.

He denied that this was an incremental step to eventually accept same-sex unions in the church.

"There are laws that have been made by God and by the church in 2000 years which cannot change," said Alumunku.

For activist and poultry farmer Jane, the fact that the issue is being discussed openly is reason enough to consider eventually approaching her priest for a blessing, if her partner agrees.

"I think he (Pope Francis) tried to understand the feelings of people who tend to be born different or people who basically are now becoming like the outcasts of this society," she said.

"We are getting there, a moment of self expression and acceptance is coming."

Reuters