Super Eagles technical adviser, Lars Lagerback had his first ever physical encounter with the players he would assemble for next month’s 2010 Fifa World Cup finals in South Africa in Abuja on Thursday and advised that no one should hide whatever injury he is suffering from.

News of the sudden demise of a dear friend often makes one feel as if left stranded with an intimate conversation that would now never get to be had, a story long crafted waiting to be told at the earliest opportunity that might never be, a message that would never be conveyed, a deep emotion placed in layaway waiting for the right time to be shared but that could now only be expressed in silent soliloquy except perhaps some day in a memoir.

“My wife finally left the house and promptly travelled abroad. She’d been away ever since. With time, I learnt to live with the betrayal- it’s not something a man could forget. She has access to the children who all school abroad and we try to be civil to each other when we meet. The few times I’d seen her, I’d wondered what devil could possess a wife who seemingly had everything to sleep with a pastor in her matrimonial bed?!

*President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan – his actions and inactions are going to largely determine the future of Nigeria in the coming months
*Vice President Mohammed Namadi Sambo – Nigerians would be watching his moves and attempt to compare his role as vice president with the likes of Atiku Abubakar and Jonathan

Mr. Bello Adoke had challenged a pressure group of transparency and anti-corruption advocates who are pushing for the prosecution of former military president, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida over allegations of corrupt handling of the said $12.4 oil windfall. Last week, the Attorney-General pledged, in a letter to the group that he would set up a committee to ascertain the veracity of the report, review the allegation, and if there’s any meat in it possibly commence a criminal charge of the former military dictator.

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.

2010 is probably a year that many innocent Nigerians will be made to pay for the lack of policy direction and recklessness of their leaders. When Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iewala became minister of Finance and the chairperson of Obasanjo Economic management team, she introduced the excess crude revenue account to which monies realised from the sale of crude oil above the budget bench mark was saved. The account, in no time, blossomed following favourable oil price. It rose to as much as $20 billion. States, local government started the agitation for its sharing.

This column could easily have been entitled HOPE RENEWED IN JOS and it would have been just as apt. For three days last week, I was back again in Jos because it is an enduring story and it represents one of the many puzzles we must solve as a nation for unity and peace to prevail.

There is always a temptation in the affairs of men which makes them see what is right as wrong and what is wrong as being right. There are things that are acceptable by Nigerian standards and yet, there are things that may be right but not acceptable. The crisis of leadership that has confronted Nigeria since independence but which became grandly accentuated in the last 365 days and which, judging from present signals may attain new heights in the next 365 days, is the inability of Nigerian leaders to properly locate that nexus between being seen as a strong and firm leader and doing what is right on the one hand, and being naïve and contrite yet, believing that personal interests aggregate national interests.

A staunch member of the Stakeholders Forum that masterminded the removal of former Chairman of the Nigeria Football Association, NFA Alhaji Ibrahim Galadima has called on those yearning for the total sweep of the current NFA Board led by Alhaji Sani Lulu Abdullahi to be careful in order not to make the same mistake of 2006.