I am not the coiner of the word ignorancy. Bishop David Oyedepo is. Yes, I have come across the word ignorance, and have met hundreds and thousands who show how ignorant they are on issues of import. Democracy is one issue of import and millions of us in this country are ignorant of it.

I knew that one day the question of political parties would be addressed, but I least expected that it would come via a route that is undemocratic- the pronouncement by legislative fiat that Two (or Five) Political Parties should emerge and bang, they appeared! In fact, the number is not the point or the issue. That the number can be decreed by a lawmaking body is.

Believe me when I tell you that I did not think of mines when I set out to comment on the increasing unacceptable targeting of journalists outside due process, and the new dimension it took at a venue where justice is to be accessed by those who complain about the absence of due process.

The issue I want to raise here is sensitive, but I want to be able to sleep well after I have said my say. I did mention last week that the passing on of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua was a relief to many because all the plots, the shenanigans that were engineered in his name had to end.

He had shown early in his tenure that he was a man of truth, a man who seemed willing and ready, with the opportunity he had, to make the difference between greed and graft on the one hand and service to the people to ensure their security and welfare on the other. He seemed ready to prove that the people are the masters, not the servants we had reduced them to over time.

Even as I write, there is an attempt to accommodate those who have criminal records to access office as long as they are declared winners of elections that may not have been held. So who is afraid of generals or men in uniform? Having discovered that going to the farm is less paying than accessing power through the vote, our men in uniform opted for the latter.

They say you cannot eat your cake and have it. This is what some people up North are trying to do, and I warn Acting President Goodluck Jonathan not to be trapped into a scapegoat position. He must stand his ground that our President is ill and that as Acting President, he calls the shots, brooking no instructions or intrusions from anyone or quarters.

What Iwu was quoted as saying and which I challenged him in my piece in this column on March 25, 2007, to deny, made me write him off as a man who could be trusted to do justice to all manner of people. The phone on Uba’s table had been ringing, but he would not pick it because of the interview. Iwu, said the reporters there, burst into the room and discovered a team of journalists were there. He was quoted as saying, “Sorry sir, I didn’t know you were granting an interview.

I do not know when lawyers and journalists will be permitted to see our president. The clerics have seen him, both Muslim and Christian. They must be the ones at the top of the ladder of the holy. We here, on distant earth from heaven, call them the men of God.

My point of departure today is the Niger State Governor, Dr. Muazu Babangida Aliyu. He is at present the Chairman of the 19-member Northern Governors’ Forum. I am relieved at his concern for the falling status of our country in the direction of failed states.

I was at Benin on March 18 to speak at the 8th triennial conference of the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria. I was asked to speak on Nigeria at 50 – Issues and Challenges. I likened the mystery that is Nigeria to an elephant that three blind men encountered and reported authoritatively o

Only one little pin prick ends the life of a balloon. Yes, one little pin prick. When you hear the pop, you look in the direction of where, some moments ago, the balloon was dancing to the music of the wind.

More than any other gory event I have seen recently, the organised killings on the Plateau point to the total absence of God in our lives, in spite of whatever religion we profess to embrace. I am not referring to religion as the peg on which the problems on the Plateau are always being hung.

Jonathan’s days are numbered, and this is where he is poised to make history, if he knows what to do with numbered days. But let us establish the fact that Jonathan’s days are numbered. I was not responsible for numbering his days.