PAUL, the youngest of the six children of Deogratias and Asteria Rutagambwa Kagame was two when his family fled their homestead in 1959. That was the year of the Peasant Uprising in Rwanda which became known as the Rwandan Revolution. That uprising brought to fore the ethnic tension in that country which eventually resulted in the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

I WENT to school last Tuesday. It was a privilege walking in the midst of some of the best serving and retired ambassadors in our country. This class had Ambassador Abdul Rimdap, former Ambassador to Germany as captain.

Iraq, an ancient civilization and Biblically, the homestead of Abraham before he was called to leave his father’s house, is an ancient civilization bombed into ruins. The supposedly civilized invaders from God’s Own Country (the United States) and Europe were not only disinterested in Iraqi lives, but also failed to protect historical sites like the famous museum built in Abraham’s claimed homestead.

WHENEVER I go to Rwanda, I visit the Kigali Genocide Memorial. A monument to the bestial level, human beings can descend, and a reminder that we must do everything possible to ensure that the massacre of over 850,000 people in 1994 in a hate rage, is never repeated.

MATHIEU Kerekou, a Major in the Benin Army on October 26, 1972, marched on the Presidency to seize power and save the country from anarchism and becoming a failed state. He then proceeded to clear the mines of ethnicity and political instability, mainly planted by France, the departed colonial master.

ALHAJI Lai Mohammed, the Publicity Secretary of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is ordinarily, a quiet, shy-looking man. That is how those of us who have known him over the decades see him. But as spokesperson of the opposition, he became so fiery and effective that under the Obasanjo administration, some feared for his safety. So I wrote a piece “Watching over Lai Mohammed”

I JUST spent about two weeks in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) my longest in that country. Each time, I learn new things. One of them is a joke that brilliantly summarises the situation in the country.

THE President, Muhammadu Buhari is a victim of the high targets and expectations he and his lieutenants are setting. They do not appear to have learnt lessons from the Road Map and manifesto they made which are littered with promises, very difficult to fulfill.

What dominated the Session was not peace, the refugee crisis, food,jobs or human rights, it was war, particularly, the Syrian war. The world leaders traded blame particularly on the Islamic State (ISIS) but not on solutions.

I LONG for the good old days whenever I think about the new bad ones. In confronting the ugly scenes of today, my mind instinctively, switches, like some defensive mechanism, to my youth, or even my childhood. They were the periods of innocence. When humanity was a child.