Palm/Passion Sunday
The holy week is here again and today marks it's beginning. It is yet another time when the palm trees in different parts of the word sends out their cries for help. This is because of the Palm Sunday celebration which is always held on Sundays before Easter.
In most liturgical churches especially in my part of the world, Palm Sunday is celebrated by the blessing and distribution of palm branches in or the branches of other native trees. The difficulty in obtaining palms in unfavorable climates led to their substitution with branches of native trees,
Last night, I embarked on a rather fruitless journey to to cut some tender palm frond for today's celebration. This is so because in this part of Africa, you will have to obtain the palm yourself and take it to the church to be blessed. I was unable to obtain any palm so i had to make do with some guava branch.
The Palm Sunday is significant to Christian's all over the world. This is because it represents the palms spread on the pathway for Jesus during his triumphant entry into Jerusalem. The palm was used by the people to show respect to Jesus the king of peace when he rode on a donkey into Jerusalem.
Today, just like every other Palm Sunday, the priest blessed the palms brought to church. After this, every one proceeded outside for the procession in commemoration of receiving Jesus into Jerusalem. The gospel for today was that of the passion of Christ.
After the church service, you are expected to take the blessed palm to your house and hang or keep it near holy images. The e palms are kept till the next year Lenten season when it will be gathered and burnt in the church in preparation for Ash Wednesday which marks the beginning of Lent. And so the cycle continues.
Shattered hope
"I will be back for you. Just give some time to put things in order". That was the last thing she remembered him say to her before. Her heart had been filled with hopes of a better life. Who would have thought that her hope would be short-lived because of another person's shortcomings or rather negligence.
She had spent 23 years of her life as an orphan toiling to make ends meet. She needed a change. The house she lived in was without roof and about to fall on her. The meagre money she made hawking was spent on her always sick younger sister.
She met him in the streets where he also hawked. They became best of friends. Soon he left the streets and began to work for a rich man as a reward for some good act. He still kept in touch with her and offered help to her in the little ways he could. This feelings soon grew into love.
On that day when things took a wrong turn, he had come to tell her that he got a better job with free accommodation and a car. The new job was secured for him by thesame rich man he once helped. He just had to put things in order and then bring her and her ailing sister under his roof. She was so happy. Just as he turned to go, he was kissed by a lorry which had lost control. He couldn't survive it.
The old lorry that hit him was driven by an old man. He had lost control of the vehicle after the steering wheel came off. In an attempt to know whether he could fix the poor thing back and regain control of his vyehicle, he did not know when the old lorry veered off the road and hit the young man in who was about to cross.
The lorry driver claimed he was test running the vehicle to see how fit it was for the road, and that he lost control due to the poor nature of the road. That was the worst excuse one could give for negligently bringing out a vehicle that was not roadworthy. Because of the stupid mistake of a pot bellied old man driving a rickety racketty old vehicle, her only hope of a better life was shattered.
Back to read.cash
Three months ago, I was introduced to this wonderful platform. The first week of using the app was fun. On the second week, my phone developed some fault. I could not access any information with it anymore, neither could I send any. Even my phone applications could not be used. It was a tough moment for me. I even had to flash my phone but it turned out to become worse than before.
After I had flashed it, it became a typical example of being dumb. It could not follow simple command. I was literally logged out of all social media platforms. Though thankfully it turned back to how a normal phone should, but that was after some days.
I tried logging in to my read.cash account but couldn't. That was when I was frustrated the most. I couldn't even dump the phone because I already spent more than I could imagine on repairs.
I kept trying to log in unsuccessfully until yesterday. It was surprising to me sha, but I thank God. I had to make a post and thought it best to narrate why I've been missing in action for three good months.
If there is one thing I plan to do now, it is to make up for these lost unproductive months. I know there is no way I can do that without your love and support.
I also pray that that I will never ever experience the events of last three months with my phone again, as I never knew how basic and important phone could be to a person.
City
Before I left for the city, mother always reminded me of the story of the old lady who made the mighty udala tree her home. It was said that the lady began to visit the udala tree after her only son left for the city. He had promised to come back in four market days. On the fourth market day, the old lady went to the udala tree to receive her son.
The udala tree was on the pathway leading to the big city. Her son never showed up. Every evening she would camp out at the udala tree and never go home until midnight. For years she kept up at this but never met her son. She was rumoured to have died at the udala tree.
Mother said that this happened when she was a kid and that the old lady's son never came back even after the mother's death. According to mother, "the old lady's son was swallowed by the big city".
The day I left for the city, mother was filled with tears and made me promise to never let myself be swallowed by the city. I still remember my promise to her, "mother I'm only going there to study. I'll make sure to call everyday and also come back during the holidays".
That was seven years ago. I've graduated from school but I still roam the city without a job. It has been years since I last called mother. The last time we spoke was on my graduation four years ago. I promised to find a job, make enough money to care for her needs after which I will go back home.
Living as an adult here in the city was a nightmare for me. To get a job here goes with the adage of using what you have to get what you want.
Last week I met my friends from the University. Their lives are already going smoothly unlike mine. One of them had said to me, "you are a girl. Use what you have to get what you want". They promised to introduce me to one of the prominent politicians. This was after I had agreed to do what it takes to live a better life.
Today is the day I met the politician arranged by my friends. After our meeting, he gave me enough money. Such that I never thought I could make in half a year.
Standing outside the hotel waiting for a cab to take me back to my friends, I knew that I've also been swallowed by the city. Perhaps mother would camp out at the udala tree waiting for me to come home. If only she knows that her daughter has been swallowed.
Are You A Trespasser?: Trespass To Person
Good day fellas. My previous article centered on trespass to land which has its relationship with trespass to person.
Trespass to person entails protection of a person against interference with his person. Trespass to person can occur by way of an act, which threatens violence (assault), actual violence (battery), or deprivation of liberty (false imprisonment)
The tort of assault is an act which threatens violence and produces in the plaintiff, a reasonable expectation of immediate unlawful force.
When your act rashly to people in such a way that they are afraid you will harm them, you have committed assault on them. For an act to amount to assault, it must cause reasonable apprehension of fear, it must be intentional, and also immediate and direct. An example is throwing water at a person. When a person picks a bucket of water and throw at you, that act of throwing the water is an assault on you. The water does not have to drop on you. Note that the act mist be intentional
Battery on the other hand is closely associated with assault. It is the intentional or negligent and direct application of force to another person.
There must be physical contact to your body to guarantee battery. Following the example I gave above, battery is not committed on you until that water touches you.
In most cases assault and battery accompany each other. Thus, to throw water at you is assault, but if it drops on you it is battery. To slap you on the face is battery, but to approach you menacingly with clenched fist is an assault. Pointing a gun at you or even shooting it is assault, the bullet hitting you is battery. The list goes on.
When someone has threatened to hurt you, and you suffer apprehension of fear, you have been assaulted. The person might end up not carrying out the threat, but you have been assaulted.
Sometimes, battery can occur without assault. Example is someone hitting you from behind.
Failure to obtain consent from you before carrying out certain acts on your person amounts to battery It is battery for a doctor to carry out treatments on you without your consent. I would like to use the Nigerian case of Okekearu v. Tanko ((2002)15 NWLR(pt 791)659) as illustration. The plaintiff Okekearu in the course of removing some zinc from his mother's residence, injured his left finger. He claimed that the wound was not deep but neighbors still took him to the clinic of the defendant Tanko who amputated the finger without Okekearu's consent. Okekearu brought an action against the defendant, claiming general damages for battery resulting from amputation of his left finger. He succeeded.
Also, an unpermitted kiss is battery. It does not matter if the intention was good so long as you do not have the person's permission.
Battery can be committed on a sleeping person or on a person under anesthesia or even a lunatic. This occurs if the act carried out on the person is such that he or she would not have approved of if they were awake and aware. In a case where a lady visits a doctor and tells him, "I have ovarian cyst and appendicitis, take out the appendicitis but do not touch the cyst". The doctor will be held liable for battery if in the operating room he decides to remove the cyst. This is because the lady gave him no right to do so.
Assault and battery are actionable per se. This means that damage must not be caused to your body before you go to court.
I hope I impacted something in you today. Peace ☮️
Psychopaths
"Who is there?". No response. She moved towards the direction of the sound. She left that room a few minutes ago, so why the weird sound. That room was supposed to be empty. The house was supposed to be empty. She made sure of it.
She dropped the bag that contained the last of her belongings on the sofa and makes her way back to the bed room. It never hurts to be sure she was truly alone. Now that she thought of it, Charles was unpredictable, always up with lots of dangerous pranks.
Charles was her ex husband. Their marriage of seven years came to an end two weeks ago. She only came back to the house they once shared to pick the last of her belongings.
The first year of their marriage was filled with sweet memories of love. It was not until she lost a baby to miscarriage that things took a turn for the worse. Her husband had pushed her to the floor during an argument. As a way of dealing with the pain he had caused, Charles became a drug addict. Soon, he became an addict turned psychopath. First, he mangled their cat and presented to her as their lost baby. The memory still taunts her.
He gruesomely murdered all pets she brought to the house to keep them company. He always said he did them for her and their baby.
She took him to different therapists but he only got worse. She loved her husband so much that she still kept him with her. She thought that bringing a baby into the house would have a positive impact on him. Since she couldn't conceive after the miscarriage and she could not afford adoption, she stole a baby. This was all to bring Charles back to her. She came back from work one day to find the baby missing. Charles had drowned it.
The day she realized she couldn't stay in the marriage any longer was the weekend her sister visited. Her sister was butchered the next morning, courtesy of Charles. He claimed to have done it for their baby.
She cared about her sister, so she reported the crime. She was not stupid enough to implicate herself. She knew she aided him in his crimes but it all had to be tied on him.
She makes for the bedroom door. She could still hear the weird sound. She turns the door handle to meet him standing with a baseball bat. "Surprise. My love", was the next thing she heard. He was supposed to be in a psychiatric hospital.
He spoke again, "I have been waiting for you. I knew I would meet you here love. Do not worry, I will be here with you forever and I will care for your body"
Before she could process his words, he raised the baseball bat to her head. The last thing she heard him say was, "say hi to our baby".
Eternal darkness took her.
Are You A Trespasser? Trespass To Land
Hi guys. Seasons greeting🎄. I hope you are catching all the fun you can in this yuletide season. Well do not forget to desist from trespassing into other people's right as you bask in the euphoria of the season. No one takes likely to a trespasser.
You might want to know, "who is a trespasser?" A trespasser in law is a person who does a wrongful act in disturbance of the possession of property of another, or against the person of another, against his will and can be held liable without proof of damage. Because trespass is very broad, I will focus on trespass to land today.
When you trespass on someone's land, you have unjustifiably interfered with land in his possession. The slightest direct physical interference amounts to trespass. You do not necessarily have to cause damage to the land or property.
When you enter onto the land of others without their consent, you are a trespasser. Sitting or walking on their land or property is enough to make you liable. The fact that you honestly, though mistakenly believed that you were on your own land, or that it was a public land, or that you acted under mistake of fact is no excuse for trespass. Even placing your foot on another's land is trespass.
A person who has lawfully entered a land can become a trespasser if he remains there after his right of entry has ceased or expired. I'll give an example; if A visits B and on account of an argument, B asks A to leave. If A refuses to leave the premises, he will become a trespasser after a reasonable time has expired. B will have every right to apply force in throwing A out of his premises.
Sometimes, we become trespassers by abusing our right of entry into premises. A person who has the right of entry in the land of another, for a specific purpose, commits trespass if he does other things other than that which he was authorized to enter and do. As a delivery man, you have a right to enter premises for purpose of delivery only. Any other thing you do will make you a trespasser, like wandering around the building
Directly placing or removing things on another's land is trespass. Throwing things into a person's house, firing a gun into their soil, removing their doors or windows, etc constitutes trespass.
Trespass can also be in continuation of an act. If a person allows you to place your shoe on his land for a specified period of time, you become a trespasser if at the expiration of that time you refuse to remove your shoe or any other property.
Has your land or property been trespassed upon? There are different remedies you can seek.
Damages which entails recovery of monetary loss if you have sustained actual loss. This can be enforced by a court of law.
Self help which entails remedying the situation yourself by removing the object that constitutes trespass or forcefully ejecting a trespasser.
The main fact is that you can either go to court or abate the trespass yourself.
I hope I impacted something on you today. Still remain your lovely selves and stay tuned for TRESPASS TO PERSON. ☮️
Lonely Days
"tufia". This has become her song morning, afternoon and night. The big house, the two deserted expensive cars, even her treasured truck full of wrappers all means nothing to her. Of what use is all these when her life has become a home to nothingness. Her desperateness has torn her child's life apart. If only she had listened. But the mistake has been made, the mistake that has also cost her her husband.
She sits helplessly on her once treasured armchair watching her marriage crumble. . As the pick up van that carries her husband's property exits the house, she mutters again, "tufia".
He left not even a pin belonging to him in the house. He took away every memory. He only left her the same words, "have a good life in the ruins of the damage you have caused".
She still hears the voice of her only child, "mama you have ruined my life". She never regretted forcing her daughter into an unwanted marriage untill last week. She visited her in-law's house only to see her daughter hanged to the ceiling and her son-in-law lying in the pool of his own blood.
She mutters again, "tufia". If only she was content with the little she had. If only she allowed her only child to be. Now she has lost all that she was afraid of loosing; her husband, her daughter and her happiness. It has become too late for regrets.
She stands abruptly from her chair and makes for the street. She will go to wherever her feet leads her but definitely not back to the ruins she has made. She knows this marks the beginning of her lonely days. But what punishment is there to suffice for what she has done?
Tufia
False imprisonment
Did you know that more than 60% of the world population has been imprisoned falsely?
False imprisonment does not necessarily mean being locked up in jail for a crime you did not commit. Mere restriction of a person's freedom of movement be it in an open field, in the stocks or cage, even in the street constitutes false imprisonment so long as the person restrained is completely deprived of his liberty to move about. When a person's freedom of movement is restrained without lawful excuse or justification, there is false imprisonment.
False imprisonment can be carried out by anybody. It does not necessarily have to be a policemen. A mother locking up her child for a trivial offence, medical personnel restraining patient's movement, etc constitutes false imprisonment. You can be falsely imprisoned by a friend or even a stranger.
For a plaintiff (person whose freedom of movement was restrained) to successfully establish a case of false imprisonment, he or she needs to prove to the court that he was completely restrained and had no reasonable alternate route of escape. Example, being locked in the tenth floor of a building with an open window which is an unreasonable route of escape constitutes false imprisonment.
A person may be imprisoned without his being aware of his detainment. Thus, a man may be imprisoned while he is asleep, while he is in a state of drunkenness, while he is unconscious, or while he is a lunatic. Imprisonment is also possible even if the person is too ill to move in the absence of restraint.
In the popular case of Meering versus Graham-White Aviation Co Ltd., Mr. Meering who was an employee of Graham-White Aviation company was suspected of stealing from the Company. He was therefore requested by two of his employers' private policemen to go to company's office with them to answer some questions. He was taken to the waiting room where he stayed for a long time. Unknown to him, the two policemen stood on guard nearby, having been instructed not to let him leave the waiting room until the Metropolitan police arrived. He later sued the company for false imprisonment and succeeded. He was paid money as compensation.
If the person that effected an imprisonment is able to prove that he did so on a just cause, he will not be found guilty. Example restraining a man's movement to prevent him from injuring another.
There is no generally way of preventing yourself from being imprisoned falsely. Going to court to seek damages is a strategy that has worked and is still working it's way to reduction of false imprisonment. If you are or have ever been a victim of false imprisonment, it is time to take that bull by the horns and seek remedy. Do not let litigation erode you your right to freedom from false imprisonment.
New to read.cash
Hi everyone. My name is Immaculata Ozioko and I'm a Nigerian ( Enugu State to be precise). I'm a writer.
It started with my pouring out my heart and sharing my deepest secrets with my paper both in the form of poem and stories. I've long graduated to scribling down things I've found in nature and the beings around me. All these I had kept locked up in the wardrobe with my clothes as an audience. You might think that crazy, and you are right. A hidden writeup is as good as a non-existent one. It is in this light that I decided to bring my literary pieces to the world.
I was introduced to this wonderful platform by my brother and I believe that through it, my works will experience light and hopefully get to be appreciated by the various readers here. I also wish to use this platform in shaping myself to do better in my chosen line of profession. I'm currently pursuing my LLB in law at the prestigious University of Nigeria Enugu Campus. I believe that when my article is criticized or praised by the noble members of this platform, i will be able to know where I'm lacking in effort. Only then will I be able to improve and so better.
Apart from the money making aspect of joining the platform, i also want to achieve tremendous improvement on my English grammatical usage. I will be open to corrections from anyone here as no one is an island of knowledge.
In conclusion, I hope that what I do on this platform will be able to appeal to your different tastes and I promise to put in my best effort in ensuring that I deliver quality articles and writeups.
Thanks💖
@Immaculata
