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”.