BY early last Friday morning, SKY NEWS had started reporting the scrum of humans at some supermarket outlets in places like Manchester. People went and camped out in front of the big shops very early to get advantage of being amongst the earliest customers in these shops. Didn’t they say the early bird eats the choice worm? It was Black Friday in England last week and the frenetic pace of life literally blew away the cold weather. Black Friday used to be an American phenomenon, and was usually tied to the American Thanksgiving holiday.

I arrived in London on Sat-urday after the two weeks that I spent in the United States, in California and Texas. Let me start by confessing that I love food, especially that opportunity to taste foods of the different cultures of our wonderful world.

Let me begin by expressing relief that House Speaker, Aminu Tambuwal, finally dropped out of the race for presidency in 2015. Not that he is not eminently qualified; but in the circumstance, he was clearly being set up to fail, and it was also to scuttle the chances of the APC in the 2015 presidential election.

I arrived in Los Angeles, California, on the 15-hour Emirate Airline flight from Dubai, last Saturday. This is the second leg of my four-week holiday, out of Nigeria. I spent last week in Dubai; and I think a conversation I had with a mother and daughter from Norway, just summed up the city.

IT was a Law student, Lucien Trinnou, speaking last Friday in Ouagadougou, that gave this description of the uprising in Burkina Faso, which swept away, Blaise Compaore, one of the most despicable characters to ever seized power in any African country. When Compaore murdered the revolutionary icon, Thomas Sankara, in Octtober 1978, he murdered the hopes of millions of the working people, the youth and poor people, not only in Burkina Faso, but all over the African continent.

All Nigerian elections are like wars. Correction: they are wars, involving massive deployment of resources, losses of investments, political ambitions, lives and limbs. Victors emerge, but they rarely have time or space to savour victories because the war never really stops.

LAST week, the Senate removed wages from the Exclusive Legislative List and placed it in the Concurrent List, as part of the Constitution amendment process. Stripped of legislative language, it means there will no longer be a National Minimum Wage in Nigeria and each state can pay whatever it deemed fit.

By  Is’haq Modibbo Kawu LIKE other Nigerians, I was taken by surprise when news broke last week that the Nigerian government had reached a ceasefire agreement with Boko Haram. The announcement was swiftly followed by the Chief of Defence Staff’s directive to all troops to stop engagement with Boko Haram. It became even more curious […]

THE NATION newspaper’s HARDBALL of Tuesday, October 14, 2014, mischievously described it as the “BEGGARS’ ORCHESTRA”.
The occasion was the triumphant return to their old PDP base of some political grandees, from Ogun State led by former governor, Gbenga Daniel (but wait a minute, didn’t incumbent governorAmosun say Gbenga isn’t from Ogun state?).

IN the past two weeks, I have been travelling in Kano and Kogi states. Two weeks ago, we were back in Kano along with colleagues from other parts of the country, to see the fast paced developments of the past three years in the city.

LAST weekend Sokoto hosted the cream of Nigerian political society. They were in the ‘Seat of the Caliphate’ for the turbanning of the Speaker, House of Representatives, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, as the new Mutawallen Sakwato. And in the Nigerian political manner of doing things, most of those who turned out were from the opposition APC party.

THE past week has not been a fine one for the rightwing Pentecostal Christian movement in Nigeria. And by extension, the moral burden of Nigeria’s ruling class and all our compatriots who swear loyalty to these two sets in our nation’s firmament, also got heavier.

WE must thank DAILY TRUST for the investigative piece of Thursday, September 11, 2014, titled “161 pro-Jonathan billboards in Abuja”. The nut and bolt of the piece was that Abuja has literally become swamped in a surfeit of billboards “praising President Goodluck Jonathan’s achievements and urging him to seek re-election in 2015”.

IT was late afternoon on Saturday last week that I heard of the tragic killing of THE SUN newspaper columnist, Dimgba Igwe. I put through a call to THE SUN MD and President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, Femi Adesina.

LAST Thursday, President Jonathan launched the National electronic Identification Card. The national ID Card project has been one of the most scandalous avenues of heist in Nigeria for decades. In cahoots with all kinds of crooked foreign businessmen, members of the Nigerian political elite have exploited the absolutely necessary need for a national identification system to fleece Nigeria of billions of dollars.