One of the most frequently asked questions this week is, which Andrew? There was once an Andrew in the first coming of President Muhammadu Buhari who popularised that name.

FLORENCE Onyebuchi Emecheta, one of Nigeria’s most skilled novelists, passed away last month (January 25), aged 72, and was buried in London this week.

TURMOIL. That is South Africa’s state of mind. The manifestation of this, is violence at all levels; from the streets and campuses, through xenophobic attacks to last week’s battles in the hallow chambers of Parliament. The country is caught between Post-Apartheid Reforms that have in a quarter of a century, failed to deliver promised change, and implementation of the core principles of the 1955 Freedom Charter, a document which has been largely, side-stepped.

WHEN the news came that the newbie US President, Donald Trump, would call his ailing Nigerian counterpart, President Muhammadu Buhari, at exactly 3.45pm on Monday 13th February 2017, I was very expectant for several reasons.

I SAID when I wrote ‘Now that Yar’adua is back’ (02/26/10) that “Nigeria has become one huge Elizabethan theatre where clowns, harlequins and pantomimes now prowl the stage in an unending melodrama –sometimes more comic than Shakespeare’s ‘Comedy of Errors‘. And in this unfortunate milieu it seems we are no longer divided over issues. We are rather titillated by personalities.