THANK YOU to all the Vanguard readers who kindly sent commiserative emails and text messages when they discovered, via last week’s column, that I had been very ill. Many comments were made about the fact that I only started to recover from my ailment when I was flown out of Nigeria and handed over to British doctors.

SOME moments stick out in the public space, not just for the drama of the occasion, but for the fundamental impact they make on our appreciation of the depth of the rot which envelopes us as a country. One of such moments happened the other day, within the haloed precincts of Nigeria’s presidency.

IF it is true that morning shows the day, it must also be true that our Judiciary under the new Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, Justice Maryam Aloma Mukhtar, may be heading for troubled waters, if not directly for the rocks.

THE President’s men are busy putting out lengthy repudiations of allegations and suspicions that he has an agenda to scuttle the numerous initiatives towards arresting corruption and waste in our oil and gas sector.

EVEN if it still continues with its destruction of properties and killings in different parts of the North in a mindless campaign of terror that is bound to end in its defeat, there is every indication that the terrorist group that has been hiding under the veneer of religion and avowed hatred of Western civilisation to commit unspeakable atrocities is running out of steam.

WHICH of the following statements, in your opinion, best reflects President Goodluck Jonathan’s “honest-to-God” attitude to corruption?

Week end, I read some funny stories credited to Coach Jossy Lad “blaming the NFF for Falcons poor showing in Equatorial Guinea” Going through the story I did not see any substance relating to what the NFF could have done that it did not do.

With the euphoria of the election over and ahead of his second inauguration as governor of Edo State, it was tempting to ask Comrade Adams Oshiomhole if he would fall into the trap of second term governors who do nothing in office.

Amoda
THE recent resurgence of demand for state police stems from observed security lapses or deficit at the Federal level. The introduction of this column will consist of appreciation of a sample of opinion advocating or opposing the proposal.

The sad story of Justice Ifeoma Jombo-Ofo brings back to the fore the tragic situation of Nigeria’s negative socio-political development, better known as the “indigene-settler” syndrome.

“The bill gives significant powers to the Customs Service and ordinarily this should not be a bad thing, but it does remove powers from the President and the minister that we think are necessary to ensure that the economic agenda of the country are properly carried out as directed by the President and delegated to the minister.”

“In modern Japan the good of the nation [is] more important than the good of the class. A poor talented and diligent boy had a chance to rise as high as he could…modern Japan was perhaps the world’s most efficient distillation system, in which remarkably little was wasted..a vital part of it was the education system: it supplied the nation with the right number of workers, the right number of engineers, and the right number of managers for every need of a modern society, but, also important, it brought to the poorest homes the sense that there were better possibilities for the children “, David Halberstam, in THE RECKONING, p 277.

The Christian concept of hell; a place where God allegedly burns sinners forever in the world to come, is non-existent in the bible. Contrary to popular belief, Jesus never preached it.

Dr.(Mrs.)Dumebi Owa, a Dental Surgeon and trained health counsellor, is a multiple Masters Degree holder in Public Health, Environmental Management and Public Administration. After her first degree at the University of Ibadan, she had gone to the UK where she got married and had her children.

“Economists are like theologians. Every religion other than their own is the invention of man, whereas their own particular brand of religion is an emanation from God”.