How a man chooses to bury his beloved mother is his inalienable right, naturally derived from his intimate biological relationship with her. No one has any right to blindly criticise him for expressing himself in any way and measure that is legally and morally permitted, and such that pleases him, and perhaps, his precious mother who is no more.

I have buried my father, and I know the things that my mum wouldn't want me to do on her burial day. My mother has consistently maintained the view that, whatever a man cannot do for her while she's alive, that person shouldn't bother doing it on her demise. God listened to her and blessed me with a wife who has become like a daughter to her.

And as her first son, apart from other statutory responsibilities, one of the very first major thing that I ever did for her was to renovate my family house few years ago - my mother used to sleep in a room with a leaking roof. In fact, apart from the leaking roof, she was also struggling with flooding: each time it rained, she would spend hours upon hours scooping water out of the entire house. It was that bad. So according to her desire, I solved that problem, albeit strenuously in terms of resources, time and energy.

So to me, my mum's view is my guiding principle when it comes to burial. And as a philosopher, I know that death is a gradual process. Therefore, a man ought to start preparing for his burial and that of his people the moment he gains a certain level of maturity.

And this is where sound reason and logic comes in. Since death is inevitable, why should we wait for a single day, the ultimate end of the race, to show our love, when we know that the dead can't witness anything again. The dead is dead. In the words of Jesus Christ, "Let the dead, bury the dead."

My mother wouldn't want me to throw money into the air on her burial day. What my mother would rather want is that I should utilise all the available resources to live a meaningful life, and reach out to as many people as I can.

The poverty in Nigeria is too much. Sincerely, the lifestyle of Nigerians when it comes to burial bothers me a lot, and I think that poverty has a way of turning money into man's enemy. Why do we live like slaves and get buried like kings and queens?

I hereby assert that prolonged and extreme lack can create two possible outcomes:

1. A tendency to be extremely frugal - what I call the "imprisonment syndrome", might arise. Do you imprison (keep in the dark/solitarily confine) what you like?

Or,

2. Reckless, highly emotional, and thoughtless dissipation of scarce resources. No man destroys what is not his enemy.

In summary, the owner of a given resource, is empowered by natural and man-made law to do whatever with it as he so pleases, and he is very free to bury his mother however he wants.

However, humans have survived/still surviving so many natural and artificial disasters not because they allowed poverty to transform money into their enemy. We are thriving, because as higher animals, we believe that empirical reasoning and sound logic, instead of sentiments, recklessness and wanton rowdiness, must guide and guard a very large percentage of our actions and inactions. Last last, Oba cannot overshadow logic and reason.

Solomon Okocha

when it gets to your turn,
do as you please

anthonyuncle:
when it gets to your turn,
do as you please

OK Sir.

Logic and reason must prevail over simplistic sentiments!