WHEN the Ukrainian government, against warnings by Russia, this Sunday, sent a tug boat, the Yani Kapu, and two gunboats, the Nikopol and the Berdyansk, into the Kerch Strait in the Crimea controlled by the latter, it could not have been hoping for a joyous reception.

IMAGINE  being transported forty years back. Things appeared blurred. Peering into faces that seemed lost in time, and stretching the power of recall to its limits. It was the reunion of my Class of 1978.  But we were not the only ones that  had changed; so also has  our country. In four decades, Nigeria is now a mix of rust and modernism calashed on a canvass of degeneracy. Our politics also reflected this; a mixture of retired military adventurers and their para-military and civilian clients using the funds cornered mainly during a collective  29 years of military rule and a follow up nineteen-year civilian ‘democracy’.  A democracy without democrats; a crop of people offering what they do not have.

THERE is a convergence point for people who are ordained and the acts they carry out. However,  rationalising  their acts in religious homilies, scriptures and tradition, does not exculpate them.    This rope ties the eighteen American Presidents including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe who believed that “All men were born free” but owned slaves; Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman accused of ordering the murder of  journalist Kamal Kashoggi, and the war crimes being perpetuated in Yemen and the Palestine.

BABAGANA Kingibe has   had it good. Nigeria has been quite fair and very kind to him. Even his Ordinary  and Advanced Level education in London were paid for by the Nigerian authorities. In 1981, at 36, he was  appointed Ambassador to Greece,  then Pakistan and High Commissioner to Cyprus. Kingibe was Director General of the 1988 Constituent Assembly, Chairman of the Social Democratic Party, SDP,  one of the two official parties in 1990.   He  was Vice President-elect in 1993.  That same year, his reward for betraying the Presidential Mandate was to be clothed in a Minister’s  toga by  the bloody Abacha regime first as Foreign Minister, then from 1995, as  Minister of Internal Affairs  and from 1997,  Minister of Power and Steel.

WE gathered at the Communication University, CUC,  Beijing. We were media and Communication scholars from a dozen countries. Eleven from Africa, and host China. It was for frank discussions on how Africans and the Chinese perceive themselves, and how to advance mutual interests.  The gathering  this Saturday, November 10, 2018 chaired by Professor Zhang Yanqiu, the CUC Director of African Communication Research Centre was not primarily concerned about the misinformation peddled by other countries and institutions worried about the growing cooperation between the African and Chinese people.

I STAND on the Great Wall of China. Not for the first time. This time on Monday, November   5, peering down at sprawling   Beijing, and literarily, the whole of the country. Trying to understand this gigantic dam almost going burst; whose waters of over production, full financial rivers and fast rapids of technological leaps and knowledgeable labour, is being systematically, released on the world.

WITH the approach of the February 2019 elections, we are back in the season when the political class, like Father Christmas,  come with  packages. But while the latter comes with gifts, the packages of the politician are promissory. They are promises which in many instances are not kept after the votes have been secured.

A BEAUTIFUL looking lady, perhaps  in her mid- twenties, smiles into the camera. The chubby-cheeked child she is carrying is wearing a cap, but he is shirtless. They are part of the over 7,200 Latin Americans who embarked on an estimated  17-day walk towards the United States, US,  border.

THIS period has been a sobering one for me even as the country appears gripped in the excitement of politicking leading  to the general elections next February. I am not excited about whether incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari will be returned or be  flushed out of office. I am more preoccupied by the unquantifiable damage our leaders have inflicted on us especially since the 1980s by their incomprehensible, illogical, slavish and criminal de-industrialisation of the country and the attendant massive job losses that has turned our once promising country into the world’s capital of poverty.

A BEAUTIFUL looking lady, perhaps  in her mid- twenties, smiles into the camera. The chubby-cheeked child she is carrying is wearing a cap, but he is shirtless. They are part of the over 7,200 Latin Americans who embarked on an estimated  17-day walk towards the United States, US,  border.