The 2019 elections are starting early in Kaduna State and the first slogan of the campaign for those elections is El-RUFIA MUST GO – at least that should be expected from some quarters in the light of the disaster that is Southern Kaduna. He can go and run for President since he is rumoured to be interested in presiding in Aso Rock

It needs to be stressed, however, that this is not a Christian versus Muslim conflict. It is herdsmen versus everybody else – people who get compensated for losing cows after destroying peoples’ farms, churches and homes

The seventh of my seven children – all girls – finished university last month and is now waiting for National Youth Service call up. She is also the seventh graduate and she had completed fro me a long term programme which started in May 1970, at Beth Israel Hospital, Boston, USA, when my first child and daughter was delivered by one Dr Macovitch. Like most selfish young men, especially Africans, a boy was my choice; but a girl was what God had decreed.

While others had their eyes glued to the pages carrying the President’s budget address to the joint session of the National Assembly, NASS, some of us were paying greater attention to movements in the global oil sector. Like it or not, the volume of oil exported next year and the average price per barrel will still be the major determinant of how the Nigerian economy performs next year – just as it was in 2016 and years before it.

Tell me quickly which appointed Federal Government official received the highest vote in the 2016 Budget? If your answer is Babatunde Fashola, the Super Minister of Power, Works and Housing, you are dead wrong. The biggest “pot of gold” or naira actually was handed, again on paper, to someone who is not even a Minister. She is just a Director, but a really Super-Super Director.

This article was written before the election; and the peace we are witnessing can be attributed to President Buhari’s stand (whether his stand is right or wrong is another matter all together) on the APC primaries. By standing firmly behind the Chairman of APC, Chief Oyegun, Buhari whipped most APC members back in line

An acquaintance of mine, resident in the US had been in Nigeria for over six months for undisclosed reasons. He was here during the primaries and with the emergence of Hillary Clinton, as the Democratic Party candidate, and Donald Trump, as the Republican Party candidate, he announced that “Clinton will win by a land slide”. Before making that statement, he had asked me what I thought would be the outcome of the Presidential election. My answer to him was: “Trump might win because he is saying what white Americans would like to be done”. My friend followed with almost two hours of “analysis” aimed at proving to me that Trump could not win. He ended up by asking me to “take a bet one dollar from me to one naira from you” that Trump can never win. I don’t bet – out of personal principle. But, I told him we will talk after the November elections.

When Amaechi’s political antagonists went after him, after the altercation with Mrs Patience Goodluck they least reckoned with two factors – the man’s resilience as a politician and the shifting sands of Nigerian politics. They brought all the powers that the Presidency could muster against him. The former Commissioner of Police in Rivers State and the force under his command were deliberately rude and hostile. On two occasions the wife of the President stormed Portharcourt with all the armed forces represented; Amaechi was literally locked into the Governor’s mansion. The scenes reminded me of the early years of the Second World War when Hitler’s armies overran the French and marched triumphantly through Paris.

Mr Rotimi Amaechi, the Honourable Minister for Transport and I have never met. The closest I ever came to him was at the Award Ceremony organized by VANGUARD about three or four years ago. But, it is impossible for anybody to be the Governor of Rivers State without receiving more than ordinary attention among governors. So, in eight years, as governor, he drew my attention to himself – first as a PDP Governor and later as an APC leader in the state. To describe him as a tough political operator would amount to a great understatement.

And to this Norman Cousins, one of America’s best known editors, had added that: “Wisdom in people consists of the anticipation of consequences.” They both wrote long before Reuben Abati was born, but they might as well be writing for him. Reading the article he wrote talking about demons in Aso Rock, one cannot help feeling sorry for him. By global, not just Nigerian standards, he is intelligent and can be persuasive with his erudition.