Contrary to the wide publicised statements credited to the just released Chairman Lagos Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Mr. Wahab Oba, from kidnappers den that the sum of N3 million was seized from them, the kidnappers were said to have denied the amount saying they only collected about N1.6 million from them.

SENATE President, David Achelenu Mark is angry with the state of insecurity in the country. He is proposing undemocratic solutions — anathemas to his exalted position as leader of Nigeria’s legislative business.

ON Sunday July 11 we were reminded once more of how precarious life has become in Nigeria when four journalists, including Wahab Oba, the Lagos chair of the Nigerian Union of Journalists and their driver, fell into the hands of kidnappers in Abia State.

OUR new understanding of the scope of African involvement in the slave trade is not historical guesswork. Thanks to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, directed by the historian David Eltis of Emory University, we know the ports from which more than 450,000 of our African ancestors were shipped out to what is now the United States (the database has records of 12.5 million people shipped to all parts of the New World from 1514 to 1866). About 16 percent of United States slaves came from Eastern Nigeria, while 24 percent came from the Congo and Angola.

WITH effect from this month, federal civil servants are to earn an enhanced pay based on the harmonization of salaries following negotiation of the Federal Government and the trade union side of the Joint Public Service Negotiating Council.