Last week, I told you that I was abducted from my Port Harcourt residence last month and held by kidnappers for nearly 13 days in a remote creek location. This terrible experience has inspired me to reflect deeply about the meaning of Life and has taught me a few lessons that I’d like to share with you: Before the kidnappers abducted me, they entered my bedroom and demanded my jewellery.

JOSEPH Sepp Blatter, FIFA President and institutional memory of world football, was pulled up by Swiss police on Friday, September 25, 2015 and his offices searched. It was an expected move, and the Swiss, working as proxies of the United States (US) did not disappoint. Blatter is being investigated “On suspicion of criminal mismanagement and-alternatively-misappropriation”

ALL is not well between Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and the man widely referred to as the “unofficial vice president”, Mallam Nasir el Rufai, the governor of Kaduna State. Proof: after a meeting of the National Economic Council (NEC) held on 17th September, 2015, el Rufai showed up in Osinbajo’s office and both took a photograph, all smiles; and splashed them all over the internet. Purpose: to debunk the “rumours” making the rounds that they had exchanged insults. To confirm the story further, a meeting of the All Progressives Congress (APC) National Working Committee (NWC) a couple of days ago tabled as an item for discussion/resolution the “face-off” between Osinbajo and el Rufai.

OUR country marks its 55th independence anniversary today. In a very fundamental sense, Nigeria’s story is also the story of my life, because I was born in the very last month of colonialism in our country, on September 5, 1960.

IT would be uncharitable to say that Nigeria has made no progress since independence. That would be wishing away all the massive expansions to our highways, airports and seaports; plus the fact that at independence, we had only a single university but we now have a multiplicity of universities and other tertiary institutions. We also built a befitting National Capital, which is now far removed from the susceptibility of enemy attacks from the sea, air and land.

OUR obsession with the drama and intrigue of politics has relegated discourse on policy and national development to the background. We all know what Saraki is accused of but how many of us can detail his agenda as Senate president? What were his plans to reform a body which in the eyes of the average Nigerian, is merely a retirement home for former governors or for privileged, would-be influential Nigerians, all barely present (or awake when they are physically present)?

TWO days to another  October 1 independence anniversary, and all is bleak and depressing on the Nigerian front.  No self-congratulatory messages.  No stadium march-pass and celebrations.  All we are getting is a steady diet of prison-rations: “Nigeria is corrupt.”  “The treasury is empty.”  “Recession is knocking at the door.” With all the attendant political hullaballoo; you get the impression that even the very country called Nigeria is going to be probed and sent to jail.

By Yinka Odumakin “Our enemies are the political profiteers, the swindlers, the men in high and low places that seek bribes and demand 10 per cent; those that seek to keep the country divided permanently so that they can remain in office as ministers or VIPs at least, the tribalists, the nepotists, those that make […]

“The Ministers are there to make a lot of noise; for the politicians to make a lot of noise…People from different constituencies want to see their people directly in government, and see what they can get out of it.”President Muhammadu Buhari.

IT is three days to the end of September 2015, the magic month within which President Muhammadu Buhari promised to appoint his ministers. It is expected that in spite of his foot-dragging and reluctance, he will publish the names of the nominees before Friday this week.