“Successful leaders at all levels love their status and power and are hesitant to leaving voluntarily”.
Jack Welch, Chairman, General Electric Company, 1988.

A few people are “alive” in the world today but who are on perpetual life support systems. They cannot leave the hospital and are virtually vegetables. The former Prime Minister of Israel, Sharon, has been in coma since 2006; so are about 200 people worldwide. None of them, however great will ever be allowed to govern their nations from their sick beds. As General De Gaulle had said, “The graveyards are full of indispensable people”. Yar’Adua and nobody else born of woman in Nigeria is indispensable.

This article could have been titled Obama and Media Executioners Vs Farouk and Nigeria and it will still be appropriate. But, the selection of the title was based on the need to come quickly to the conclusion before providing the supporting evidence.

CONTRARY to what many people think, the culprit is not NNPC.
As far as importing and making fuel available is concerned, the corporation had done its duty. There is sufficient fuel in Nigeria’s territorial waters to ensure that we do not experience any scarcity throughout the yuletide. The imminent deregulation of the downstream sector is not even the issue.

IF you think there is fuel scarcity in Nigeria then you must either be ignorant or a fool. There is no fuel scarcity; and that is authoritative – as you will discover shortly. But, there is scarcity of patriotism and abundance of saboteurs – again as you will soon find out.

James Ibori’s case which has been turned into a charade can serve as proxy for others pending in the courts. This particular case has demonstrated, as no other, how those expensive lawyers, Senior Advocates of Nigeria, SAN, and judges have conspired to delay justice. Granted, the great Dr Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784, had pronounced that, “A lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes”.

Let me at this point admit some of the constraints you and the president have. His selection and emergence as president have elevated some people into positions of prominence which will be lost if he steps aside. He is also keenly aware of the constitutional provisions stipulating that the vice president should take over if he resigns his office. Since the office of president was zoned to the North in 2007 that would mean that power will rotate back to the South in less than four or even eight years.

BREAKING News Commentary: Justas I was about to send this Sunday’s column to the Sunday Editor, news reached us that our dear President Yar’Adua had once again been admitted into a hospital in Saudi. He was on admission in January this year, which occasioned the column below – written in January 2009.

The Senate is not satisfied with the budget performance, and neither is the minister himself satisfied with the budget performance because in some places the performance is as low as 15 per cent, in some places 27, and in some places 30 something —Senator Ayogu Eze, chairman of the Senate Committee on Information and Media, November 4, 2009.

The gradual descent into anarchy and increasing escalation of violence occurred and grew out of control probably because the leaders of those two countries, at the time it mattered most, failed to put nation above self-interest until there was no nation to lead anymore.

It is a measure of the shamelessness of our elite and the institutions that fuel their values that Chief George could be awarded a national honour in our country and he could later sue some newspapers on account of the indictment report I prepared against him —Malam Nuhu Ribadu

First, I was alarmed when Bode went into politics and joined the PDP and quickly became part of Obasanjo’s inner caucus. I was alarmed because as Leo Tolstoy, 1828-1910, had warned us, “If you work with glue, sooner or later you are going to get stuck.” (Vanguard Book of Quotations, p.76). I knew that a PDP under the leadership of Obasanjo was going to be a cesspool of corruption – the sort to be avoided by decent people.

NOW with the gauntlet thrown down by the accused, one would have expected the reporters and the editors of the newspapers which publish the “news” to respond and bring proof. Instead what we have had is silence. Failing to provide proof, one would also have expected them as professionals to tender apologies for what has now been exposed as a rumour carried as news. Again, none has demonstrated such decency.

Journalists say a thing they know isn’t true in the hope that if they keep on saying it long enough, it will be true —Julien Benda, 1857-1952

And I must say very strongly as a senior Nigerian here in the UN Secretariat that there was a greatly missed opportunity that our head of state was not advised properly to come to this assembly…Nigeria missed an opportunity to really register its own views on the world, register its credentials as an African leader.