All over the world, especially in the 20th century, nations have emerged through voluntary associations or by brute force.

THE proposed amendments of the 1999 Constitution are in the closing stage. It is actually a stage because it is a comic play crafted by the leading political players in the name of the people.

ON Sunday July 11 we were reminded once more of how precarious life has become in Nigeria when four journalists, including Wahab Oba, the Lagos chair of the Nigerian Union of Journalists and their driver, fell into the hands of kidnappers in Abia State.

OUR new understanding of the scope of African involvement in the slave trade is not historical guesswork. Thanks to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, directed by the historian David Eltis of Emory University, we know the ports from which more than 450,000 of our African ancestors were shipped out to what is now the United States (the database has records of 12.5 million people shipped to all parts of the New World from 1514 to 1866). About 16 percent of United States slaves came from Eastern Nigeria, while 24 percent came from the Congo and Angola.

I WATCHED the Northern political summit of Thursday, July 15, 2010 , which took place in Kaduna with keen interest. I was not surprised or disappointed with the outcome, which virtually endorsed President Goodluck Jonathan’s perceived presidential ambition. Northern governors will soon meet to take a stand on the zoning controversy. My prediction is that they will continue to dilly-dally till the “last minute”, and finally, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governors will throw their weight behind the President.