“We should under no circumstances let terrorists divide us by turning Christians against Muslims because those barbaric killers don’t represent Islam and millions of other law-abiding Muslims around the world” – President Buhari after Muslims slaughtered Christians on December 25, 2019.

Fowler for those who might not know is from Lagos State and he was replaced by an Abubakar not from Lagos State. From the statement credited to Garba Shehu, who was just a loudspeaker and not one of the “we” who removedFowler, one would assume that Fowler was given definite revenue generation targets for each year in office which he failed to achieve.

“To know that which before us lies in daily life/Is the prime wisdom/What is more is fume” – John Milton, VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, VBQ.

Robert Fowler representing Lagos State is out as the head of the Federal Internal Revenue Service, FIRS. He was replaced by Abubakar. In another development, a former boss of the Social Intervention Programme, SIP – a fellow from Ogun State – was not only removed as the administrator of the legacy programme of the Buhari government, the job was taken North. In addition, about 30 aides of the former Oga were shoved out of Aso Rock. The Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, from Edo State now owes his survival in that position to one word from the President. If Buhari says “Go”, it is back to Edo or exile out of Nigeria.

Simplicity. Sincerity. Strength. Splendour. Those four words summarise the life and times of Nigeria’s most remarkable First Lady. When Maryam Babangida (nee Okogwu), born on November 1, 1948, passed away on December 27, 2009, at the Jonson Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of California, Los Angeles, USA, her death served as a reminder to all of us of our mortality. But, the public life she lived in the span of eight years during which she was Nigeria’s First Lady re-echoed the words of the poet: “Lives of great men [and women] remind us/ that we also can make our lives sublime/ and departing leave behind us/Footprints on the sands of time.”

By Dele Sobowale “The moving finger writes; and having writ, moves on. Nor all your piety, nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line; nor all your tears wash out a word of it” – Omar Khayyam, 1123AD, VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, p 57. Plutarch, 46-120, one of the greatest historians, introduced […]

“Decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperilled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself. It invites anarchy” – US Supreme Court Justice, Louis D Brandeis, 1856-1941, in the OLMSTEAD case, 1928.

To that I want to add that the true test of your integrity as a powerful political leader is how much respect you still receive long after you have been out of power. Obong (Dr) Obong B. Attah, a former Governor of Akwa Ibom State, AKS, and the Father of Akwa Ibom State, falls into that category of leaders who were born into wealth and privilege and who, after attaining great political power, retained the public esteem they enjoyed while in office. He was, to me, the best of the class of 1999-2007 Governors. He is still one of two human beings on earth, outside my family, who can call me in the middle of the night and ask me to come and I will go without hesitation. He did not buy the privilege. Attah does not pay for acclaim. He earned it by the many footprints he left on the sands of our time.

By Dele Sobowale “From the sublime to the ridiculous, there is only one step” – Thomas Paine, 1739-1803, VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, VBQ. “The records of some of his predecessors in office bespeak a greedy trail. When they go abroad they first ask: What is in it for me? What is there for my family? […]

Adams Oshiomhole, the Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, is not my friend, neither is he my enemy. But, I always feel sorry for any individual who, through years of brutal struggle, sweat and tears, finally reaches the top where fame and fortune await him but loses a lot on account of a flaw. Oshiomhole might not realise it, he is an endangered person in Nigerian politics generally. Like a man who had strapped on a belt of explosives in a crowded room, Oshiomhole constitutes a risk to himself and others around him. There is probably no other political figure who daily multiplies the number of his political adversaries as the Chair of the APC. He seems to have forgotten the warning made repeatedly on this page that in the political game, “a man alone hasn’t got a chance” (Ernest Hemingway, 1898-1961). Increasingly, the man who should be the second most important rallying point for the APC, after Buhari, has now acquired the image of its  uncontrollable destroyer sowing discord everywhere , attracting maledictions from members who should be subservient and uniting the rank and file against himself. He most probably will not last until 2023 unless there is a revolutionary change in his approach to leadership.