It seems the Teflon Don is finally getting his judicial just desserts or so it seems. On Monday when the Italian prosecutors demanded that the former Italian President Silvio Berlusconi, should be handed a prison sentence as well as a life time ban from politics, outside the court building the judgement was greeted with equal measures of cheers and jeers. Such reaction is typical Silvio he, often divides the emotions of Italians over the years and it seem that whatever he does or says, he gets away with it.

Pardon my ignorance; I really did not pay closer attention to the existence of Governor Chibuike Amaechi until the private jet situation. The River State governor,it must be said has a passion for the finer things of life. And I guess, he does feel his office demands the absolute respect wherever he goes in and out of his state. His ego must have taken a huge dent when he was told that his private jet cannot take off.

I do not think much of our progress in relation to crime fighting and justice. And the federal government then goes and throws the proverbial spanner in the works and proved me right. If Nigerians regularly compile crime statistics, they will be staggered by how much crime is committed in our country on a daily basis and it shows no signs of abating.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?” – Mahatma Gandhi

A quick disclaimer: I am a Muslim and no, I am not a terrorist and I do not have, never will have or harbour terrorist tendency and I wholeheartedly condemn any act of violence, killing and segregation in the name of Islam. Good, so that we are clear, very clear from the word go. The Niger State Governor, Babangida Aliyu, put it so well that Boko Haram “does not represent Islam and that it is not a Muslim organisation.”

“With all due respect, sir, I have done battle every single day of my life and many men have underestimated me before. This lot seem bound to do the same, but they will rue the day.”-Margret Thatcher.

As they say, those with ear should listen. I believe that boat has long sailed with us in Nigeria. We have instead been grappling with the day to day hustle and bustling. Majority of Nigerians cannot look beyond the day to look at the bigger picture; that of saving our land.

All eyes were on Rome for the inauguration of Pope Francis. On addressing the devoted and the world leaders immediately at the Mass where over 200,000 gathered, he called on world leaders and people all over to defend the weak. He seemed to address the leaders directly that the young, old and those in need were often neglected and ignored.

There are times when it seems pointless talking about the obvious and after awhile it does get to you and it has got to me that I refuse to slip into the doldrums of doom and negativity. I assure you it is very hard when you talk about the shenanigans of our government and lives of the masses.

“I am, because we are”. -Ubuntu Philosophy
A Zulu philosophy that explains that a person with ubuntu knows his or her place in the universe and is consequently able to interact gracefully with other individuals. One aspect of ubuntu is that, at all times, the individual effectively represents the people from among whom he or she comes, and therefore tries to behave according to the highest standards and exhibits the virtues upheld by his or her society.

The lady doth protest too much! So the president’s other half, Patience in her inestimable candid humility would like the Senate and the House of Reps to pass the budget of N4 billion earmarked for her “pet” project- The Ladies Mission House. This edifice she tells us will be left for the people of Nigeria and she in her words “will not carry the building with her when her tenure ends”.

I have been long troubled at the level of violence and casualties in the senseless waste of human lives in the last couple of years. There is a big elephant in the room and it seems the elephant in the room is getting so large and yet no one seems to want to talk about it! This big elephant that no one dare speaks its name is Boko Haram.

The world was reeling from the announcement that Pope Benedict XVI had announced that he would step down at the end of the month. It was a seismic announcement where I was and there all manners of conspiratory theory abound among which is; he is going to make a confession or was there an inside job in the Vatican?

I read with bewilderment Dr. Reuben Abati’s article titled ‘The Hypocrisy of Yesterday’s Men” (3rd Feb.2013) which was published in almost every newspapers in the land.

The blinkers are finally slipping off the eyes of die-hard Nigerians, who have just cotton on to what many have been saying so loudly, for so long. It is one that they customarily brushed aside, with the usual “God save Nigeria! Or “Nigeria will get better”.

The depiction by the Channels TV regarding the appalling state of the Police College, Lagos has indeed given us the reasons why our police are the way they are. It goes further than that: it is a microcosm of how every aspect of our everyday living condition has gone to pot.

“Look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both state and people can only praise their uprightness; but once they are fattened on the public funds, they conceive a hatred for justice, plan intrigues against the people and attack the democracy.”– Aristophanes

“Most leaders spend time trying to get others to think highly of them, when instead they should try to get their people to think more highly of themselves.

Some say having a girl is like tending a neighbours’ garden. This is narrow minded and condescending perspective of low sense of value placed on females in our society. This is borne out of the way people react to the arrival of the birth of a baby boy: that of jubilation and in contrast,the arrival of a baby girl is often greeted with muted commiserations from friends and family. If the truth be told, the mother is often made to feel a failure if she does not provide the family with a male and a heir.

“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong, Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.”- George Washington Carver.

“We will not enjoy security without development, we will not enjoy development without security, and we will not enjoy either without respect for human rights.”-Kofi Annan

“Those whom God wishes to destroy he first makes mad.”-Seneca
Last week one of James Ibori’s accomplices,Bhadresh Gohil, sought to appeal against his conviction because a prominent newspaper revealed allegation against the Met police investigating the case of corruption in which Ibori, his wife and his solicitor are doing time in her majesty’s prisons.

The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice.-Mohandas Gandhi.

The last couple of weeks has been a roll call of the who is who of the great and notable of Nigeria’s glorious past. These luminaries have contributed to the landscape of Nigeria’s political, judicial and sociological history.

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favour freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without ploughing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning.”- Frederick Douglass

One of the most durable and destructive legacies of discrimination is the way we’ve internalized a sense of limitation; how so many in our community have come to expect so little from the world and from themselves.-Barak Obama