I exaggerate, of course. All the languages of the world will have died before English dies in Nigeria. And of all the languages threatened by extinction, English is hardly one, many thanks to the extraordinary success of England in colonising nearly two-thirds of the world before the sun did finally set on the great British Empire on which the sun was never to set.

WITH its huge population of over one billion citizens, India is the world’s largest democracy. But, the U.S. believes it is the beacon of democracy in our world. Last week, U.S. citizens went to polls for the mid-term election.

What is the forthcoming 2015 presidential election about? Let us first identify what it is not about. It is not about improving the economy of Nigeria. If you insist it is, then you will need to tell me what either the PDP or the APC has told Nigerians it will do with regard to the economy. As a matter of fact, the only party whose economic programme we know is the PDP. At least, we can see what it has been able to achieve in the last 16 years. However, the APC is barely one year old. I need someone to tell me the economic policy of the APC. It is non-existent.

On January 16, 2014, the President appointed new service chiefs to man the principal commands of the Nigerian armed forces. Among them was Air Marshall Alex Badeh, who was promoted from Chief of Air Staff to the Chief of Defence Staff. Badeh thus became the absolute top gun in the Nigerian military. He coordinates the effortsto flush out the Boko Haram insurgency in the North East.

There are genuine public concerns that with the receding sales price of crude oil in the international market, in recent months, our heavy dependence on oil revenue may diminish any promising prospect for inclusive economic growth in Nigeria.

This is the third in the series titled WHEN GENIUS FAILS. The first two were written in 2008 about two individuals, Professor Chukwuma Soludo and Dr Ndidi Onyuike, Governor of Central Bank and Director General of the Nigerian Stock Exchange respectively, at a time when most people in Nigeria were not aware that banking “Con-SOLUDO-tion” was failing and leading to banking disaster and that the NSE was heading for a crash. Mine was a lone voice shouting in the wilderness – until banking crisis became a reality and the Stock Market collapsed.

The love we are expected to have for God does not permit any other love. As a matter of fact, if we love God, we must hate everyone else. We must love our neighbour but not because we love him. We must love our neighbour because we love God. God’s love tolerates no rivals. He says: “I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God.” (Exodus 20:5).

Aribisala, in an astonishing demonstration of arrogance of ignorance piled more falsehoods into one paragraph than any respectable columnist and public opinion molder should be allowed to get away with in two years.

Philip O.C. Umeh studied English at the University of Lagos; taught English at the Government College, Umuahia where he was senior English Master until 1978, and where he himself had been a student, from 1955 to 1961, one year below the writer and political martyr, Ken Saro-Wiwa in the famous school, to whom he addresses a eulogy, “To Ken Saro Wiwa” in his poems:

A healthy democracy requires a decent society; it requires that we are honourable, generous, tolerant and respectful.-Charles W. Pickering