THIS January was filled with activities and reminiscence of what officially was said to be the fiftieth commemoration of the first coup in the country; the five Majors coup of January 15, 1966. There were speeches and the newspapers were clogged with all sorts of features and advertorials.

IMMEDIATE past president of Cote d’ Ivoire, Laurent Gbagbo was on January 28, 2016 hurled before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague charged with crimes against humanity. He had already spent five years in jail awaiting trial by a court that ordinarily has no jurisdiction to try him as the ICC is not the court of first instance. The ICC is a court of last resort trying only cases national authorities cannot or will not prosecute. This is not the case with Gbagbo whose wife, Simone has already been tossed into a 20-year jail, and son, Michel, to five years imprisonment. If Ivorian courts could try and sentence the Gbagbo family, they can try him also.

BEKO Ransome-Kuti was the unarmed general of the people who led them in countless campaigns against the perpetuation of military rule and for the enthronement of democracy. In the course of those struggles, he was dragged from his office or the streets and detained, several times. Imprisoned in the Kirikiri Maximum Prison, charged to court countless times, and when he remained unbowed, the Abacha regime decided on a final solution; his elimination. So he was charged with coup plotting; he did not get the death penalty but was awarded life imprisonment. He survived the harshness of the Kaduna Prison.

THE African Union (AU) 26th Session which closed in Addis Ababa on January 31, held a lot of promise for a continent brought to its knees by insecurity and violence; some of it self-inflicted. The expectations were high and the organisation’s leaders were on point in their opening speeches. Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the Chair of the African Union Commission which runs the Secretariat, told the world that Africa is committed to “silencing the guns”. Explaining why the theme of the Session was “African Year of Human Rights with particular focus on the Rights of Women”, Zuma declared that the continent has refused to be indifferent to violent extremism, gender-based abuses and suffering due to conflicts.

I AM not a fan of Kaduna State Executive Governor, Nasir El-Rufai. I find him rather brash. Even with some of my friends serving in his government, I did not think highly of administration. Then last week, I got a call from a close friend. He said his extended family in Kaduna who run a private school is thinking of phasing out conventional education and taking a different course. The reason is that most of its students have moved en-mass to public schools. But he says his family school is not the only private one limping; a number of others are tottering at the point of collapse for the same reason.

ETHIOPIA is primarily in the news this week, but not because it is hosting the on-going African Union (AU) Heads of State Summit. Rather, it is about two worrying developments. The advancing drought for which needed international funds are in short supply and an estimated 350,000 newborns are expected in drought-affected communities between March and August, 2016.

ELDER Statesman, Chief Bisi Akande was Executive Governor of Osun State for four years from 1999 during which he led his colleagues who were unwilling to pay workers the National Minimum Wage. I was then in the Nigeria Labour Congress, and we went to appeal to him to change his mind.

TURKISH leader, Tayyip Erdogan decided to change his country’s ceremonial Presidency to an executive one. So he told his countrymen: “There are already examples in the world. You can see it when you look at Hitler’s Germany. There are later examples in various other countries”. But he came under international criticism for allegedly casting Adolf Hitler in a favourable light. He immediately began a series of summersaults saying the governance system in Hitler’s Germany was not an effective one and that “if the system is abused, it may lead to bad management resulting in disasters as in Hitler’s Germany”.

THE name, Asuquo Ita may not ring a bell in the country. But, Eskor Toyo does amongst intellectuals, academics, economists, trade unionists, human rights activists, leftists and in university campuses across the country. However, both names refer to the same person. The real name of this revolutionary professor of Economics and moral leader of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) is the former, while Eskor Toyo was his nom de plume which stuck and under which he became a professor.

ERITREA is a relatively unknown African country. Little news filters out. In October 2012, I wanted to pay with a hundred dollar bill in a Washington supermarket, and the cashier declined. He asked me to pay with a smaller denomination, which I did not have. Noticing his features, I asked if he was of African decent. He asked if I knew Ethiopia. He said his country is near Ethiopia. I asked, Eritrea? “Yes” “So why didn’t you simply say you are from Eritrea?” “I tell people, and they never seem to have heard of such a country”