In serious international diplomacy, there are diplomatic niceties, but hardly gentlemen; you have people representing their countries’ interests, and if need be, rolling up their sleeves to defend their motherland

I’VE just read, in the Political Economist, an online publication, a shocking article about Africans being openly bought and sold in Libyan “slave markets”.

Speaker Yakubu Dogara meant it as a joke. When he dared Kaduna State Governor, Nasir el-Rufai, to remove the log in his own eye by publishing the state’s security vote and how local government funds were disbursed, Dogara was sure it would be over the governor’s dead body.

Awards are good only to the extent that they serve as vehicles for moving society forward

FOR Nigeria’s Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Raji Fashola, this is certainly not the end but the beginning. This is one man who is not easily given to empty praise-singing.