You know the story. The account is rendered in the Holy Bible of how Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon (605-562) had a dream, the details of which he could not readily recall. He was troubled. So he called for all his wise men and sorcerers and magicians, Chaldeans all who were reputed to tell the meanings of dreams, to give him the interpretation of the dream. It would have been a fairly routine matter, but for one snag: the king could not remember the dream. All the same, he demanded the meaning of, it to the consternation of his “technocrats” of the esoteric.

Monday, July 11, is World Population Day, a day set aside by the United Nations Development Programme since 1989 to focus on the urgency and importance of population issues globally. In the last 300 years, especially, the world’s population has exploded. According to available records, the world’s population hit the one billion mark for the first time in 1804. It took about 123 years for the world to double its population to two billion. By 1959, however, it increased to three billion, four billion 1974, five billion 1987, six billion 1999 and it hit seven billion by October 2011. It is expected to hit eight billion by 2025.

I had brunch with a small but select group some two weeks ago after the Sunday service. Good conversation flowed with the food and wine as the day’s dailies passed from hand to hand. It was inevitable that the issue of the Niger-Delta activists would come up especially since the papers had carried their latest acts of pipeline vandalisation. Two of the guests included a retired NNPC Chief Executive and his lovely wife who made it very clear that her view on the activities of the Avengers was different from the general view at the table. Many of those at the brunch table had posited that the group was cutting its nose to spite its face.

To begin with, I never lost the election. Everyone who followed the 2015 Delta Central Senatorial District election in Delta State expected me to win in a landslide, which I did. But the electoral thieves, who believe they can rig their way into office every four years brazenly invaded polling units and ward collation centres to change the results. Like every criminal, they left credible evidence at the crime scene. At the senatorial collation centre, we found out that parties that did not participate in the election were awarded votes. On this criteria alone, we annulled so many unlawful votes and I was ahead by over 16,000 votes. Ordinarily, I should have been declared winner that day but when you have the entire machinery of the state government deployed against you, things don’t come easy. As a consequence, we had to go for a supplementary election which they rigged again. That was how Chief Ighoyota Amori was unlawfully declared winner.

Identical twin sisters: Sarah Mariuz and Leah Rodgers, gave birth on the same day, same time of the different zones.