CALABAR—A long-drawn-out land squabble between Kasuk Qua and Ikpai Qua clans in Calabar, Cross River State, has claimed the life of a 21-year-old villager, Asuquo Duke with many others wounded. Niger Delta Voice gathered that hostilities broke out between the two communities at a sand quarry in Ikot Uduak, last week. Counsel to Kasuk Qua, Barrister Orok Ironbor, stated that fight erupted following the contravention of a subsisting Zone Six Police Command order barring the contending from the land in contention, which was allegedly infringed by the Ikpai people, who kept on excavating sand from the pit located on the land.

IKOT OBIO NDOHO— WHEN the Akwa Ibom State Governor, Obong Godswill Akpabio, breached protocol while on a state function, September 14, last year, by making a spur-of-the-moment stopover at the rural Ikot Obio Ndoho community, Mkpat Enin Local Government Area of the state, his security aides and other members of his entourage were taken aback.

By Paul Bassey As you are reading this, I am seated in the expansive and tastely furnished Aida Conference Hall of the Cairo Marriot Hotel. A quick glance around the hall that sits 101 other “African football students” I can see General Dominic Oneya, Dr Bolaji Oj-Oba, Mazi Amanze Uchegbulam and Samson Adamu. As Instructors, […]

I HEARD it first when President Goodluck Jonathan visited our heroic and patriotic troops in the liberated communities in Nigeria’s northeast. “Never Again” appears to be the rallying battle cry in this second Nigerian civil war.

The 2015 election is barely two weeks away and yet, not even close followers of events in the political space can satisfactorily articulate distinctive differences in the ideology of the two major contestants. Instead, Nigerians have been fêted to a reality edition of an otherwise Nollywood dramatization of a “rofo rofo fight” between two wives in a polygamous setting. Ironically, the protagonists expect the favoured husband to make the louder and less civil combatant his favorite!

The story that the King Mohammed IV of Morrocco declined a phone request from Nigeria President Goodluck Jonathan is no longer news. This broke early last week and has been widely publicised both in print and broadcast media, in and outside Nigeria. At first “contact” with the news, I had reservations about the authenticity. This probably was because I saw it first on the social media.

Although the dictionary included dishonesty among the definitions of corruption, President Jonathan had insisted that it is only stealing. I fully accept his definition of what happens in official circles. My mentor on this was the Abami-Eda himself, Fela Anikulapo – who left us with a track titled “Authority Stealing”. Jonathan, it can be assumed from his utterances and conduct, appears not to be prepared to fight corruption. But, will he wage war against stealing? Given the facts available to me, the answer is “definitely No!”

As the days grow shorter towards Nigeria’s general elections, two weeks hence on March 28, the stakes grow higher; campaigns fiercer, more laced with calumny and denigration, and the posturings are dense with hyperbole. In the high stakes game to win hearts and minds, politicians throw everything into the grinder, including the devil’s poop, to make a special kind of smoothie for public consumption.

Keep in mind that one of the reasons Gen. Ibrahim Babangida gave for overthrowing Buhari was that the latter is too rigid and opinionated to preside over a multiply plural country like Nigeria. Because of desperation to win in his fourth attempt to become President, Buhari now campaigns as if he has a magic formula to solve the myriads of problems facing the country within four years. His supporters think that as a retired general he can crush the Boko Haram terrorists at the snap of his fingers.

Malachi 3:8-10 is one of the favourite scriptures used by pastors to cajole people to give in churches. It says those who withhold tithes and offerings are robbing God.