WHEN I almost concluded that the Nigerian elites are all dead to our cold realities came a rude awakening from an unusual quarter. The statue man of Imo, former Governor Rochas Okorocha (now a Senator) got up in the Red Chambers last Thursday to cause a stir among his fellow fat cats. He declared Nigeria does not need more than a Senator per state and three Representatives from each of the 36 states.

I DIDN’T know whether to cry or laugh as I listened to the tantrums thrown by the Speaker of House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, as he threatened to report the service chiefs to President Buhari over their refusal to obey the summons of the green chambers.

THE Economic Council under Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo may have been remarkable in the Ruga project (they say it is Livestock whatever now) but the government has yet to put together an economic team that can impactfully on the lives of all Nigerians outside the cow demography.

THE serial xenophobic attacks on Nigerians should not have been the best way South Africans could have repaid Nigeria for our contributions to the anti-apartheid struggle. I have been wondering what would be running through the minds of ANC cadres who joined us as students in Ife and Ibadan in our university days in the ’80s, seeing citizens of a country that was so nice to them being bothered on the streets.

I HAVE always had this friendly exchange with my brother, Adeyinka Olumide Fusika, SAN, for some years now that Nigeria is a failed state, but he would always tease me that lawyers are still going to court and judges are ruling on disputes. I don’t know whether the learned silk has seen the image of Katsina Governor, Aminu Bello Masari and a gun-wielding bandit after His Excellency finished a closed-door round table with bandits in the home state of the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria this past week.

TO speak English fluently in a world where the language is the lingua franca of trade and diplomacy is usually a big win in the lottery of life except in Cameroon where English as a mother tongue has become a curse, thanks to a colonial conundrum that made Anglophone underdogs in a union with overwhelmingly French-speaking Cameroon.

WHEN Warri folks can no longer analyse a man’s behaviour, their retort is always “dem swear for am?” It is the same question I am asking about our government today on the return of El-Zakyzaky abruptly from India where he was billed for medical treatment.

OMOYELE Sowore, the arrowhead of #RevolutionNow was clamped before the revolution could be televised on August 5. The DSS has since secured a 45-day detention order from Justice Taiwo Taiwo (Sowemimo jailed Awolowo in 1962!) while it looks for evidence to prosecute Sowore whom it already accused of a crime he was arrested for before he could carry it out.

ONE and a half weeks ago, in obedience to the above biblical injunction, I was engrossed in study of the holy texts, seeking inspiration to distract from my latest bout of melancholy, brought on by a sustained, but obviously unhealthy, contemplation of Lord Lugard’s crumbling ‘House of Cards’, only to experience the promised ‘epiphany’ in the book of ‘Judges’.

IT happened one day that Abimelech son of Jerub-Baal went to his mother’s brothers in Shechem and said to them and to all his mother’s clan the following nepotic words: “Ask all the citizens of Shechem, ‘Which is better for you: to have all seventy of Jerub-Baal’s sons rule over you, or just one man?’ Remember, I am your flesh and blood.”

MALCOM X made a fine distinction between the house Negro and the field Negro in one of his numerous speeches. The revolutionary leader eloquently defined  the two in the following words:

ONLY those who operate in crude faith and are not aware of Taqqyiya (deception) would operate on trust with fellow Nigerians on agenda-based issues and not regret it.

IT’s a monumental tragedy for Nigeria that our conversations in the last four years have mostly been about barbarism. At a time when even some African countries are making advancement in different areas of human endeavour, we have been bogged down with Miyetti Allah, cattle routes and grazing reserves.

The words of my Danish journalist-friend have been rushing back to me lately. Nick was in Nigeria when we started the latest experiment in civil rule to assess the state of things in a country rising from Sani Abacha’s ruinous years with a view to projecting into its future.

PRELUDE to the conclusion of its tenure, the eighth Senate assented to a bill earlier passed by the House of Representatives, which confirmed June 12 as Nigeria’s official Democracy Day, 26 years after the acclaimed freest and fairest election in the country’s political history was annulled via jackboot fiat. Accordingly, the National Holiday Act was rejigged to move Nigeria’s Democracy Day from May 29 to June 12.