“My Fellow Countrymen”, behave as if history does not count for anything. It is no longer taught in the schools. And OBJ in one of his most destructive statements once said the teaching of social “sciences” should be discouraged in schools! That is ‘leadership’ for you!! I started reading Medicine, ended up graduating in Economics and now I wish I read History. For me, History and Philosophy are the most interesting of all subjects. What has that got to do with tsunamis and armed robbery? Plenty.

This article could just as well have been written under the title IS JOURNALISM A PROFESSION? Since our return to civil rule in 1999, the rapid turnover of editors, columnists and reporters, after every election points to the fact that in Nigeria, unlike most of the advanced countries, media work is seen by journalists as a mere stepping stone to something else – not a career in itself.

“Nigeria is not my country; I am not coming back to Nigeria”.
Lamide, 5 years old, two days after arriving in London on her first visit to the U.K.

At a time when most Nigerians were covering before the brutal regime of General Sani Abacha, a few brave souls were fighting, what to most of our fellow countrymen, a lost cause. To those brave souls, we owe this day. I was also busy on this page writing columns in defence of freedom, which one of my old friends, Ayo Olagunjoye, former Managing Director of National Bank, called suicidal.

One of the worst things the IOCs do to Nigeria is to turn ordinarily articulate Nigerians into enemies of their own countries. Their stock-in-trade is bribery and corruption, not only in Nigeria but worldwide. Tolu typifies the Nigerian working for an IOC – extremely well-paid and brainwashed to defend EVERYTHING the IOC does -right or wrong.