LAST Sunday, I did the closest thing to playing Russian roulette: travelled by road from Ilorin to Kaduna, using the old road, via Mokwa. It was a nightmare. In fact, every road leading to Ilorin is so bad that people seemed to have given up hope of ever finding succour.

WHETHER a political system is democratic or totalitarian, nothing is more important to its continued existence than its selection of candidates for office. This is so because some of these candidates will eventually run the government.

PROFESSOR Chinua Achebe was not the first prominent Nigerian (nor the only one) to reject the now controversial National Honours.

The combined news of Joe Frazier’s death and Manny Pacquiao/Marquez III happening inside the first half of the month effectively swung the November 2011 odds the way of the professional boxing sport. It must be noted, though, that this is a period many classify as one when such other rival disciplines as soccer, tennis, basketball and golf are either on vacation or on recess.

AT this stage even the most starry-eyed Nigerian must admit that the Nigerian state represented by the government of President Goodluck Jonathan is at the point of capitulating before the terror tactics of the fringe Boko-Haram group.

SATURDAY Vanguard, October 8, 2011 carried excerpts of the interview with General Don Idada E Ikponmwen, former Provost Marshall of the Nigerian Army and one time Director of Army Legal Services. The highlight of the interview was titled: “It’s sad, government can’t guarantee security Ikponmwen”.

DURING his time, the late Dele Giwa once wrote that we were fast becoming an un-shockable society. I am afraid that the doomsday of Dele Giwa’s prophecy is here. The first time the extremist group, Boko Haram, unleashed violence on the nation, we were all horrified.

THE latest gruesome harvest by the Islamist terrorist group, Boko Haram, had the exact outlines of the opening gambit deployed by Front de Liberation Nationale, FNL, to snatch independence from colonial powers, France . Just as in our case where Friday, November 4, 2011 was chosen by our local terrorists, the FNL opted for November 1, 1954 , a day usually set aside by the French colonial establishment to celebrate their All Saints Day.

Last Saturday’s friendly match had hardly ended when I had calls and text messages from colleagues asking for my opinion on what they believed was “ same of the same”

Hi Readers! As we sat waiting for the others to join us in the restaurant, I brought up again the issue of entering through the kitchen and what other diners might have been thinking as they saw us access the dining area from there. I told Tayo that ladies of class like us shouldn’t have done such a thing.

And for Soludo, security could only be guaranteed by creating banks which were “too big to fail.” Like the author of the great ship, called Titanic whose builder boasted that “even God cannot sink it,” Soludo, as we had noted earlier, got his wish.

Parenthetically, calculate the successive unsolicited and unrepaid CBN loans to the three tiers of government over the years and it becomes clear that Nigeria in reality is several times more indebted than Greece.

The number of brilliant people motivated by the pure love of knowledge to teach in universities has reduced considerably, one of the reasons being that the university system is steadily losing its mystique as a centre for academic excellence.

Too much inequality can harm the efficient operation of an economy…excessive inequality can have two perverse consequences: first, the very wealthy lobby for favours. Contracts and bailouts that distort markets; second growing inequality undermines the ability of the poorest to invest in their own education…These factors mean that high inequality can generate further high inequality and eventually poor economic growth.

Unionism has no doubt taken a firm root in Nigeria as every profession, occupation and vocation in the country now wears a well organized labour stance.