There is a lot of irritating noise coming especially from the North-West concerning the need for the presidency to return to the North in 2015. This should be discarded as sound and fury signifying nothing.

HIP, hip, hip; Hooray!
Lagos is now going to be a megacity. Under the able leadership of Governor Babatunde Fashola, the apostle of good governance, Lagos is undergoing a major makeover. The Atlantic Ocean will be banished, to be replaced by Eko Atlantic; a shimmering new 3.5- mile island built literally on the water behind a “great wall of Lagos.” Greenery has suddenly appeared in Lagos, displacing the concrete jungle. There are now parks with manicured lawns. There are now tree-lined roads. Pot-holes are now being tarred. Sidewalks are now provided for pedestrians.

THE United States still has not got the memo: we are no longer in the “American century.” The United States is no longer what it was, if indeed it ever was what it was supposed to be: the colossus of the international system. There are now small-state actors that exercise significant regional power without reference to American hegemonic pretensions. There is also a new pretender to the American throne in the form of the Peoples Republic of China, a country with 3.4 trillion American dollars in its reserves.

WITH only some 50 years of independent national existence, Nigeria is a country reeking with “new money.” The overwhelming proportion of the millionaires and billionaires in the country are “nouveau-riche;” they became rich literally “overnight.” We are talking of people whose wealth does not go beyond a generation.

In January 1987, as a member of “Vice-President” Augustus Aikhomu’s delegation to the meeting of the Africa Fund Committee of the Non-aligned Countries, held in New Delhi, India, I engaged the “Vice-President” in a discussion on Nigerian politics.