AFRICAN newspapers take centre stage this week in the United Kingdom as the Department of African Studies and Anthropology, DASA, incorporating the Centre of West African Studies, CWAS, of the University of Birmingham, holds its annual Cadbury International Conference on 17th and 18th of May.

FOR at least six months before he finally passed on, President Yar’Adua was no longer in charge of himself to say nothing of the country. This made the three people who surrounded him at this time the actual leaders of the country.

IT’s exactly three years ago this week since President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua died after an unhappy presidency that was from the very beginning marred by ill-health.

IT was April 8 and I was browsing the net when I came upon the news on Yahoo News: Margaret Thatcher dead. The 87 years old former British Prime Minister, the news said, had died at the Ritz in London just seven hours before.

IN its holistic appraisal of corruption in Nigeria, from the individual through family and up to different larger sectors of society, the ICPC Report conservatively estimates that between $4 billion to $8 billion is stolen from the national treasury yearly and goes on to cite the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index for 2011 which ranked Nigeria 143 among 183 countries.

IN the March 20 and 27, 2013 editions of this column entitled “The ICPC/NUC report and sexual harassment in Nigerian universities”, I questioned the validity of the claim attributed to the ICPC chair, Ekpo Nta, based on a pilot study conducted by the anti-graft body and the NUC, that corruption ranked very high among corrupt practices in our universities.

Akuko gagara akuko gagara to fori apata se ’bugbe… Can things ever fall apart in the home of the teacher Chinualumogu the vaulting eagle on the riverside iroko

SEXUAL offence is therefore a fact of human life, perhaps more so now than in the past. In the particular instance of tertiary institutions, ‘sexual harassment’ is by no means the most serious of the problems confronting them. And this for reasons that there are regulations/laws within the university system, apart from the wider laws of society that can take care of this as that there are more pernicious factors that defeat the purpose for the existence of tertiary institutions than the advertised case of sexual harassment.

ON Wednesday March 13, 2013, Rebekah Havrilla, a former sergeant and bomb disposal expert in the US Army appeared before the US Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel investigating sexual offences.

HAD he remained in office Joseph Aloisius Ratsinger would have clocked eight full years on the throne of St. Peter as the 265th Pope of the Catholic Church in April.

ALL Progressive Congress, the political party that was cobbled together from at least four other major parties, is the opposition answer to the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, behemoth in a Nigeria where the idea of independent candidacy is yet to gain sound footing however desirable.

ONE look at the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and it’s clear it is one mad house of hostile room mates with clashing ambitions. But these apparently hostile roommates are nevertheless united by their common greed for power and the unmerited perks that come with it.

THERE is yet no news of any arrests of members of the group that attacked health workers in different parts of Kano many days ago. The most we’ve heard is that the Police have ordered additional security for health personnel working for the eradication of polio in the affected areas.

THE Constitution of this country has established the prime value of the currency of Nigerian citizenry, and our politics instead of being the cultivation of the appreciation of Nigerian citizenry, has been and continues to be a process of a structured depreciation of the value of citizenry.

CHRIS HUHNE, 58, was until last week a member of Parliament representing the Eastleigh constituency in Hampshire, England. But after more than seven years in the parliament, the leading Liberal Democrat resigned his seat after admitting to swapping speeding points with his former wife, Vicky Pryce, in order not to lose his driving license in 2003.

DOUBLE whammy is what the English will call it. But for Fela, its ‘c-o-n-f-u-s-i-o-n breaki boni’ because ‘deadi bodi geti aksident’ as he put it in his album, ‘Confusion Break Bone’.

I’M still at a loss understanding the purpose of President Jonathan’s visit to the Police Training College in Ikeja given the very confused and confusing comments coming from him and the presidency.

AMONG makers of history, at least as far as Nigeria goes, Rose Uzoma must stand high. She is the second woman ever to head the Nigerian Immigration Service, a male-dominated world in which to be a woman is to be a minority.

WE’VE had cases in this country of deputy governors who suffered impeachment or fell out of favour with their bosses for real or perceived acts of disloyalty when the governors were away from duty.

THE next presidential election in Nigeria is in 2015, more than two full years away but already the seat of government in Abuja is flooded with campaign posters of incumbent president, Goodluck Jonathan, in a pitch for four more years. The presidency has washed its hands off the posters but said it would not order their removal. Very correct response, as that would amount to abridgment of the right of the campaigners.

THIS, no doubt, is the appropriate note to begin the new year- with prayers for our own country. Not just because of the claim by many that the past year, 2012, was a terrible one. One can’t be sure if there would ever be a year when the whole country, to say nothing of the whole world, would be in agreement that a year has been so good nobody has something to cry about. One cannot deny last year was a hard year for Nigerians. Evidence abound that it was a tough year and up to the last few days, many could still point to incidents that brought tears to their eyes. There were still terrorist killings, unprovoked cowardly attacks that have been the hallmark of life in many parts of the country.

AS the year 2012 gradually winds down and goes the way of 2011, one of the prominent news items to be seen around the world is the fact that the year has been one of the deadliest for journalists. There can be no doubt that this year has taken a terrible toll on journalists.

SANUSI Lamido Sanusi, governor of Nigeria’s Central Bank, revels in controversy- or so it appears. From one controversial step to another Sanusi luxuriates in his loudmouth image. But if sometimes Sanusi seems mad, in manner of speaking, there is no doubt method to his madness

ALL literature is ideological, so says Karin Barber in one of her ever cerebral and insightful works on Yoruba literature.

WHAT’S left of their relationship when a political son takes on his father in public and tries to show he is not what he claims to be after all? Wahala! That appears to me to be the direction things are going with President Goodluck Jonathan’s criticism of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s handling of the Odi and Zaki Biam episodes in the early months of the latter’s administration.

EVEN if it still continues with its destruction of properties and killings in different parts of the North in a mindless campaign of terror that is bound to end in its defeat, there is every indication that the terrorist group that has been hiding under the veneer of religion and avowed hatred of Western civilisation to commit unspeakable atrocities is running out of steam.

EVER since he emerged governor of Lagos State in 2007, Raji Fashola has, arguably, had more favourable press than any other governor in Nigeria. He is certainly one Nigerian politician whose performance in office has not gone unremarked and in very favourable light too.

THINGS seem to be happening in our country at such pace as makes it difficult to keep track of them all. The best one can do is to select from a wide range of issues and hope that what one doesn’t see others would see.