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.