A FEW years ago when I interviewed Maj-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari for the Chinua Achebe Foundation dialogue series, I discovered a man millions of Nigerians never knew.

LAST year or so, the Federal Government did the wise thing to send many so-called security agencies packing from the nation’s ports.

THERE is this story about an era in the forties when an epidemic hit my village. People were dying in great numbers. Medical science was very rudimentary and people were simply bewildered.

IT is not yet one year since President Goodluck Jonathan was sworn in as president, yet the nation is being dragged into a vulgar fight over who succeeds him in 2015! That is the nature of Nigerian politics that is very disgusting.

ONE of the reasons why Nigeria is in a state of near-anarchy today is that we hardly reckon that our actions have consequences, and the state has never been decisive in letting Nigerians know that there are consequences for their actions.

TWICE in recent times, the media have speculated that President Goodluck Jonathan was poised to reshuffle his cabinet. As usual, the reported consequence of such speculation was that ministers were feverish with anxiety. On the one hand, during such intervals of uncertainty, public officers lose the confidence to step out and do their work.

IN one of the several interviews to mark his 60th birthday, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu (BAT) was asked by the SUN editors if he was interested in becoming the president of this country. “Why not?”, he countered and went ahead to boast that he can make a better president than many of his peers. But two down the line he began to distance himself from the ambition.

IN June 2011, I started an exercise on jotting down in my diary the number of deaths as reported by the newspapers everyday. On 22 June 2011, a newspaper reported the following: Two soldiers, 18 others killed in Tiv/ Fulani clash in Beme; an undergraduate murdered by cultists in Bauchi; an ASP killed and five civilians injured in Kano; man butchers neighbour over political argument in Kaduna; bodies of two little siblings found buried under the rug in Uyo.

IN the brouhaha that followed the agitation by the Northern Governors for increased revenue allocation to their states, I was conscious of the fact that we were missing a point. The point was whether we really want to deal with poverty in the land.

ONE can rightly say that anybody who, in his or her lifetime, witnessed a blackman, Barack Obama, become the President of the United States of America and who also witnessed the glorious burial accorded Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu has had a fulfilled life.

NIGERIANS, naïve as ever, have been implying that Boko Haram is “faceless”. But it was clear that with the increasing audacity of the Northern intellectuals, technocrats and journalists free lancing for Boko Haram, it was a matter of time before we linked up all the dots. Boko Haram is no longer so faceless, given the audacity of its apologists and spokesmen.

SOMEHOW death brings out the hidden side of the Nigerian. I mean, really, that death, especially that which offers photo opportunity, exposes the hypocritical side of the Nigerian.

THE call for National Conference has received several reactions, including opposition, from Nigerians. Those opposed to a National Conference fall into three main categories: Those who subscribe to the doctrine of “settled issues”, those who say it would be used to dismantle the Nigerian state and those who believe that it is aimed at further weakening the stranglehold of the North on the nation.

THE Igbo say that you can tell a blind man that there is no oil in the soup. But you cannot tell him that there is no salt or pepper in the soup. It is self evident that Nigeria is in a serious turmoil. In the last 12 years angry Nigerians have wielded as much illegal guns against the country as the Nigerian Armed Forces wielded during the civil war.