WE take nature for granted, extract our living from it, abuse, pollute and exploit it to the extent that we have changed the climate thereby endangering our very existence. However, there is a Nigerian Reverend, architect, poet and environmentalist, Nnimmo Adolf Bassey who has made it his duty to defend our environment, reverse climate change and guard our collective existence on earth. Not unexpectedly, in the last three decades,  he has also had to guard his own life against those who find him a dangerous human species standing between them and profit.

WHEN United States, US, President Donald Trump arrived the Sentosa Island of Singapore, he appeared psychologically unprepared for  his June 12, historic summit with the Democratic   Peoples’ Republic of Korean, North Korean President  Kim Jong- un. Two days before the summit, he had a verbal brawl at the G7 Summit with some of America’s closest allies; the trusting  but miffed Germans, the  exasperated French and traditional ally,  Canada.

TOMMORROW, the 25th Commemoration of the annulled June 12 Presidential Elections, is to be recognised as ‘Democracy Day’ in Nigeria. That quasi recognition of the injustice meted out to the people by a conscienceless, kleptocratic  and brutal military dictatorship should not be just  about the elections, but the sustained, sometimes bloody struggles to force a historical and conservative state to recognise the electoral wish of  the people and bring murderers to book, even if it has to be done, a quarter of a century later.

ARKADY Babchenko, a veteran of the Chechen wars in Russia became a  Defence Correspondent working mainly for the Novaya Gazeta. For over a decade, he covered wars like those against Georgia and the on-going separatist conflict in Southeast Ukraine. He incurred public displeasure in December, 2016, when, following the crash of an airline carrying a 64-member military choir and other passengers to war-torn Syria, he wrote: “I have no sympathy, no pity.” He said death threats followed.

KUNLE  Ajibade who turned 60 on May 28 titled his prison memoirs: Jailed for Life. He was indeed sentenced to life imprisonment in 1995 by General Sani Abacha and his henchmen for alleged coup-plotting when all the weaponry he ever wielded was the pen. A number of our colleagues in the media; Mrs. Chris Anyanwu, Ben Charles-Obi and  George  Mbah received a similar treatment. Some, like Dapo Olorunyomi went abroad. One day, his wife, Ladi Olorunyomi, also a journalist, came to see me, all shaken. She informed that Gbolahan  Olalemi had just been seized from his home by Military Intelligence. She reasoned that if the very quiet Lemi who is virtually unknown having spent the last few years living in London, could be picked, I was in imminent danger and advised I go into exile. I told her I will think about it, and we went to the naming ceremony of Babafemi Ojudu’s child, just a street away. The next morning, I was woken with the news that soldiers had at 1.00 am  broken into the Olorunyomi’s home and taken Ladi to an undisclosed location. She was detained without trial a few more times, before she too fled the country with her children. Bayo Onanuga was also in exile.