The Cabal is commenting....

Its my first post (yay!) I am so nervous. Ok. Let's go!

Hey Everyone!

My name is ...unpronounceable. Yes. I know you are Nigerian but still... ok try it yourself..

Iyinoluwa Aboyeji. 

Some girls think the name is sexy but if you are not Yoruba, you'll think I was trying to trick you into speaking in tongues. Thankfully, unlike Nigerian politics, this problem has a solution. If bruising your tongue is not your thing, you can just call me "E"..like the alphabet.

All you need to know about me is that I am the political junkie. I read Nigerian newspapers online while normal human beings my age read Perez Hilton and TMZ (ehn...deny it now), I have tons of active Nigerian politicians on my Facebook friend list (who knew they could facebook chat?) and I write about it a lot( so much that I now run my school's official newspaper)

For my first post I want to pay respects to Nigerian online commenters! (Brap! Brap!) They fascinate me! Like seriously. When I have a bad day (like when regressions I have been working on for a few weeks turn out to be wack models), I usually go to teh Nigerian internet for comfort. Believe you me, it never ever fails! Crazy spelling and grammar errors, insults, pidgin, slang or just the stupidity of some of them are made for laughter.

One of the words I have been seeing increased usage of over the past few months in the Nigerian online political space is "cabal". All of a sudden, its like the word just exploded in the Nigerian political dictionary. 


So I performed a small experiment. Using my junkie powers I sought to find out how many times the word cabal was used in a Nigerian political discourse....


in newspapers comment sections.......

on my facebook......

even on google.....

What is particularly funny about the cabal thing is that although it is often used as a derogatory term to describe the Nigerian political elite, it seem its actually Uncle Yaddie and his cohorts who made the word "cabal"  nigerian cool....

They had used the word to describe a group of Nigerian businessmen who had cornered the fuel importation business so that petrol was scarce and expensive. Funnily enough, it backfired.

Nevertheless, I think it will make for a wonderful drinking game for Nigerian political junkies like me. any takers?

Fun fact about the word "cabal": Indonesians use it way more than we do. I wonder what it means in their language....