“The report of 14 Nigerian banks which were appointed by CBN as “Asset Managers” of Nigeria’s reserves was carried on back page of The Guardian Newspaper of the October 5th, 2006. Festus Odoko, the CBN’s Head of Corporate Affairs, confirmed in the report that “already deposits worth $7bn representing part of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s “share of foreign reserves” presently estimated at about $38bn had been released to the banking consortium”.

To start with, when Gowon came back to Lagos, some top federal civil servants were surprised at the scope and depth of concessions he made to Ojukwu. Consequently, they advised him, wrongly, not to implement it because, in their opinion, the agreement was “unworkable.” Given that the Aburi summit essentially affirmed the structure of governance in the first republic which worked so well before the coup of January 15 truncated it, the only reasonable explanation of their negative stance was myopic selfishness motivated by desire to preserve their exalted positions in Gowon’s government.

There are four gospels in the New Testament bible said to have been written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. However, these books were written anonymously, there were no names in any of the original manuscripts. As Rev. Dr. Hooykaas says: “The titles placed above them in our Bibles owe their origin to a later ecclesiastical tradition which deserves no confidence whatever.”

This time last year, he was the toast of Nigerian politics; the man who had stitched together the contraption called the All Progressives Congress, APC, almost single handedly, to score the first major upset of a sitting African President. No exaggeration of his political sagacity and his brilliance and strategist was regarded as excessive. He was the all-conquering hero and Buhari was just the tool for the realisation of his ambition to rule Aso Rock.

Independence Day came and went. And in case you blinked, you would have missed it. I may have been in the minority as I know that some diehards took the trouble to dress up in the celebratory green, white and green to mark Independence Day.