Victor Ladipo Akintola, Akintola’s son in his book, Akintola: The Man and the Legend, wrote that there were demands by the late Oba D. C. Akran that he with his richer political experience deserved to be Deputy Premier not Fani Power. He wrote: “It was a silly, irrational demand since Fani-Kayode was a man whose extreme toughness would be useful to the party in the rough political ride that was to come”. And the rough and tough times actually came with burning and looting, thuggery and murder of political opponents.

Yet Mandela is simply a human being imbued with human frailties. His two marriages crashed before he found renewed love in the hands of Graca Machel, widow of the unforgetable African freedom fighter, Samora Machel. Quite humorous; when he knew his old age can no longer carry his punishing local and international schedules, he told the world: “Don’t call me, I’ll call you”.

IT is exactly 60 years today November 18, 2009 when armed British colonial policemen opened fire on defenceless coal miners in the Iva Valley mine in Enugu. In those moments of collective colonial insanity, the colonialists within minutes murdered 21 Nigerian workers and injured 51.

SOUTH Africa has again postponed the target date of its land reform programme. In its post apartheid election manifesto, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) had promised to redistribute 30 percent of agricultural land in its first five years in office. But by 2001, some seven years later, less than two per cent had been distributed.

PRESIDENTIAL spokesman, Olusegun Adeniyi is an intelligent person. That was why I was disappointed when he joined the chorus of government officials who argue quite illogically, that the scarcity of petroleum products which government attributes to hoarding and fraudulent activities by oil marketers, is a justification for the deregulation of the petroleum sector.