ANY regular visitor to Abuja would notice the heightened security in the city. Some roads have been closed, especially near military facilities and important government offices. The surroundings of the Abuja International Conference Centre, tucked between some of the facilities of security, was a beneficiary of extra security when the Vanguard/Police National Summit on Security Challenges in Nigeria held there Tuesday and Wednesday.

FOR over eight years, Mitt Romney fought assiduously to be President of white Americans. He put up a considerable amount of his personal resources into this ambition. He also spent over one billion dollars of other peoples’ money; far more than the annual budget of most Nigerian states.

ALHAJI Yunus Sanni Giwa Akiyode, who turns 100 years today, is a reporter’s delight. With a toothy smile always on his aged but fair and handsome face, the former banker still accomplishes feats his age mates and those younger could only dream of.

It is no news that  the palatial building of former President Olusegun Obasanjo was gutted by fire. What is news is the mystery that pervaded the life of the former president in the past couple of years. Obasanjo had been in the news for his rumoured deaths  since 1999 when he became president and even after he  left the mantle of leadership in Aso Rock.

Hardly did a year pass without Obasanjo being rumoured dead.

He was  rumoured dead  in 1999,2002, 2003,2006, 2009, August 10,2010, January1, 2012  and recently on December 15,2012  which he had all dispelled, claiming that  ‘he dey kampe’.The former president escaped unhurt in the Thursday fire which razed his confidential secretary’s office  located nearby  his bedroom in his Hilltop building at Oke-Mosan, Abeokuta, Ogun State

capital. The fire, which did not spare anything in the office, occurred  20  minutes after he stepped out of the house. He was reported to have also held a meeting with  some people  before he left the palatial building for Ita-Eko, Abeokuta.

His wife, Bola, children and grandchildren, reported to be  holiday, were hurriedly evacuated from the mansion as the fire raged.

Obasanjo had, in one of his reactions to  his rumored deaths, said,  “I think people take delight in speculation and rumour. A friend of mine broke to me the news of my death this morning. He was trying to confirm, and he said he had counted seven times that I have been rumoured dead since the eve of my inauguration as a democratically elected president of Nigeria in 1999.

”Those who indulge in this will not give up. And there are those who have the superstitious belief that when there are rumours and speculations like this, it means longevity.”Whether longevity or not, what I know is that until the good Lord, who has created me, decides to say yes, I have reached my take-off point to return to Him, people may speculate, people may rumour, and that will be their own handicap.”

However,  a spiritualist, sighted  around the partially-burnt  residence of the former president  after the Thursday fire occurred, disclosed that the fire had to occur to save Obasanjo’s life.

According to the spiritualist, who pleaded anonymity, as a Yoruba man, when you are rumoured dead and you are alive, you must  lose some of your property or something substantial. Sunday Vanguard gathered that the fire started during a party in the building that had in attendance the former president’s wife, Bola and children as well as visitors who  were mostly foreigners. Sources close the mansion said the fire could have been caused by an electrical fault as  computers

and office appliances were among items said to have been destroyed in the inferno.

One of the officials of the rescue team, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC, identified as  Kunle Famakinwa, sustained injury while joining his colleagues to put out the fire. The fire, which was said to have started around 4:30p.m, destroyed some documents and household items.

It took security agencies 30 minutes to put out the fire. Two fire fighting trucks of the Ogun State Fire Service, marked  OG 122 AO9 and OG 127 A09, arrived the scene one  hour after the fire had been put under control.

The development forced the former president to return to the mansion to ascertain the level of damage.

Addressing newsmen, Obasanjo expressed appreciation to God, explaining that the fire did not affect the entire building. He said: “You have seen that it is only the office of my secretary that is burnt. The house is almost intact.”

Singing in Yoruba language, the former president said: “Ile Obasanjo to jo ewa lobu kun, ile Obasanjo to jo ewa lobu kun, eyin Press ema wibe, ewa lobu kun”(which when translated means “fire that gutted

Obasanjo’s house has only made it more beautiful, you pressmen sing along with me”).

Meanwhile,  there was a mild drama  when  Obasanjo’s son, Oba, seized and smashed the phone of a journalist taking pictures of his father’s burning house.

Mr. Dimeji Kayode-Adedeji of  the Premium Times  and Johnson Akinpelu of Alaroye newspaper  incurred the wrath of Obasanjo’son who transferred his anger on them and destroyed their equipment.

Oba  descended on Kayode-Adedeji when he  was taking pictures of  his father’s  house. He grabbed the photojournalist’s phone and smashed it on the ground.

According to Kayode-Adeniji” he (Oba) just approached me and before I knew what was happening he had collected my Blackberry phone from my hand and the next thing I saw was my phone scattered on the ground.”

Speaking with Sunday Vanguard on the fire incident, the Public Relations Officer of the NSCDC in Ogun State, Olanrewaju Kareem confirmed that one of his men sustained injury in the cause of saving Obasanjo’s house.

Kareem disclosed that, the Corps got the hint of the fire incident through some of his men attached to the former president’s house,saying, the fire was quenched by his men with the support of other agencies that were present.

He had just been made a Sergeant two months ago.
And he had served the Nigeria Army for 19years.
That was the once exciting life of Sergeant (Sgt) Emmanuel Stephen.
All that gone like a candle light in the wind!
Last Tuesday evening, a sombre, small crowd of mourners gathered in front of Sergeant Stephen’s House at Block 87, Other Ranks Quarters, Command and Staff College, Jaji.

Is Iran funding the Jamaatu Ahlil Sunna Lidawati wal Jihad, otherwise known as Boko Haram; or is there any form of foreign funding for the sect, the Under Secretary of State for African Affairs, Ambassador Johnny Carson, was asked during a congressional hearing on the possibility of designating the group a Foreign Terror Organisation, FTO? He did not believe so, he said. This was some time in the middle of the year.

May it never happen; but it could! Imagine some Boko Haram terrorists threatening President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan to meet a particular demand. Then imagine Mr. President trying to call the telephone line, possible to track them and make arrests only for the call to ring from the telephone in the pocket of his orderly. What should he do? How would he feel?

I am from Uromehe community in Urhonigbe North ward, Oriomnwon local government council of Edo State. I was born 55 years ago, attended St Pius Primary School, Uromehe as it then was, now Iyobosa Primary School; it was a Catholic institution. From there I wrote my common entrance examination and passed.I had the choice of attending either ICC, Edo College or Western Boys High School,but, because I am a Catholic, I chose to attend Immaculate Conception College (ICC), Benin. When I finished at the ICC, I proceeded to the United States immediately where I got my first degree in political science and thereafter to the Law School where i got my doctor in jurisprudence degree. I proceeded again to specialize in international and comparative law in Washington. After that, I came back to Nigeria and went to the Law School;i was called to the Bar on October 17, 1986.

In addition to the fact that a number of Black people were beaten up and some killed in the racist reaction to Obama’s victory, recent polls show that hatred of Blacks and Hispanics has gone up since Obama became president in 2009.

In particular, a group on the extreme right of the Republican Party would essentially form a faction that came to call itself the Tea Party.

Unwilling (truly not unable) to fight dirty, Barack Obama would come out looking weak before an American public whose love of the sport of gladiators underpins the popularity of boxing and the visceral fascination with the violent body knocks of their most favourite sports, American football.

Four years ago in 2008 the entire world was engrossed in, and enraptured by a global political phenomenon about to happen: The United States of America was about to elect a Black man as its President and Commander-in-Chief. It had been a long tough run-up to the elections. A young first time member of the U.S. Senate whose first introduction to the political world was when he gave the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Party Convention in Boston at which Senator John Kerry was nominated to run for president against Republican candidate and incumbent President George W. Bush, had simply done what for most was only conceivable in a dream.

If the bomb ferrying man’s mission was to kill, an unsuspecting commercial motorcyclist popularly called okada helped seal the fate of those present at the St. Rita Catholic Church, Badarwa, Kaduna last Sunday, a Sabbath day.

That was the day a man of fiendish disposition, determined to end his life and those of other innocent people in a macabre manner, loaded explosives into a Mercedes Benz SUV, black in colour, and headed for the Church.

Dogon Dawa is a sleepy village of about 20,000 residents of mostly Hausa traders and sedentary Fulani herdsmen, sitting by the roadside, 90kms east of Zaria city and about 120kms further east of Birnin Gwari town, the Emirate it falls under. Sunday Vanguard has been able to gather and reconstruct the gruesome murder which took place last Sunday.

I can’t remember the number of killings we have done since we came into this business. It is always like we were at war when in operation. I am not rich but I am comfortable. Those who are rich and are really making money from the business are the sponsors, they are the beneficiaries and they are highly placed.’’

IT was a tearful home coming for Mrs Justina Ekwu Nwakwe (nee Madu), a mother of triplets in AMAC Estate, Lugbe, off Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, Abuja, last Sunday, when she returned after six days in kidnappers’ den.

There is an irony in the situation of Andoni and Opobo/Nkoro local government areas of Rivers State. They are endowed with oil which should translate into petrodollars. Yet there is little or no development there. In fact, the LGAs are not connected to the national grid, forcing them to power their communities with generators.

I don’t think it is a good idea because I believe governors will use it as a tool or weapon to fight their political opponents. Speaking of stability, introducing state police will bring about more instability in the country.