I KEPT vigil like millions of humanity. We were breathless; will things go according to plan? It was Wednesday October 13, 2010 and Day 69 of 33 Chilean miners being trapped over 700 metres below the earth’s surface. It had been the longest case of people trapped in a mining accident being rescued.

These were relentlessly persecuted by the colonial masters, dismissed from work, their businesses wrecked and in many instances sent to jail. Amongst the latter was Osita C Agwuna who made the famous call to revolution and went to jail. He had publicly argued that “the redemption of Africa lies in the hands of Africans themselves and must be achieved by either violent revolution or by non-violent revolution”.

AS we struggle to understand our past as Africans, two veteran nationalists have dropped bombshells with the effect of category seven earthquakes over the fate of two African leaders.

AS we mark the fiftieth year of our flag independence, many Nigerians are despondent believing that our lingering problems are because we are cursed.

COLONIALISM was a vicious bandit whose primary goal was to loot and exploit the labour of the colonised peoples. There were admittedly, incidentals such as introducing Western education and building railways to cart the raw materials of the hinterland to the coastal areas.

EXACTLY a fortnight from today, Nigeria will be marking its 50th independence anniversary from colonial rule. The motives of colonialism are usually wrapped in layers of religion and the alleged sacred duty of the Whites to spread civilization.

ABOUT two years ago, I got a text message from somebody who said he was Soboma George. He wanted to react to a column I had written but could not reach me. I called him. He sounded surprised, spoke about my column and I promised to publish his reaction which he sent in a text message.

THE French in 1789 carried out what can be termed a universal revolution. It declared in its violent overthrow of the monarchy that all “men are born free and remain free and equal in rights”. Human beings, the revolution declared, can do anything with their freedom, provided they respect the liberty of others. In proclaiming freedom, liberty and equality for the human race, the French revolutionaries affirmed that resistance to oppression is legitimate.

He said the journalists who ask Babangida such simple and historically correct questions are “being lazy scholars”.
Yet his claimed ‘scholarship’ did not in any way attempt an answer, rather he makes the bizarre submission that “rather than condemn in such wholesale manner the annulment, we should also be able to commend the man who made the election to be credible in the first place”.

THEY are two worlds apart: Ibadan in Nigeria and New York, United States. Both have tales of (in)sanity, intolerance and cries of revenge rather than rationality or forgiveness. Humanity has immense propensities towards religious blow-outs ignited by the two dominant religions: Christianity and Islam.

NOW and again, I come across old friends who ask how I cope with being committed to the Nigerian project for so long even as things degenerate from one generation to another.

SUPER British model Naomi Campbell initially declined when invited to testify against former Liberian president, Charles Taylor at his ongoing trial at the United Nations special court for Sierra Leone in the Hague.

One fundamental difference between military and civil rule is that unlike in the former, the word of the governor is not supposed to be law. In fact, in a democracy, the governor or the executive do not make laws; that is the prerogative of the parliament.

SUNDAY, August 15, 2010 will be the 65th commemoration of the day the terrible Second World War ended. But no country wants to mark this; in fact, it is difficult to find any member of the human race marking the day.

THE Securities and Exchange Commission(SEC) finally woke from its deep slumber to sack Professor Ndidi Okereke-Onyuike, the Director General of the Nigeria Stock Exchange(NSE). Also falling under the axe is the NSE Council and its president, Alhaji Aliko Dangote. Onyuike had sailed from the New York Exchange to the NSE in 1983 as a consultant and metamorphosed into the Exchange’s boss.