Magu started well. Ribadu had so much zeal, the public treated his penchant for flagrant transgression of rights with levity. Magu is a great improvement on Ribadu. Ribadu attended to widespread rot with uncommon but unchecked enthusiasm. And the public responded with uncritical goodwill and doting adoration. That honeymoon era is gone. After Ribadu, the EFCC lapsed into willful docility. Farida’s agency fell into the hands of its enemies. And they smothered it . Corruption then was treated with the sort of sympathy normally reserved for addictions.

At the Unconventional Resources Technology Conference last week in San Antonio, United States, ExxonMobil commercial adviser Ken Golden was of the view that the calls for ban on fossil fuels for now were unrealistic. Examining global energy trends, Golden was of the view that though fossil fuels use posedanger to climate change,the clamour for alternative and renewable fuels in wind and solar would contribute less than 3 percent of global energy use by 2040.

One of the things that made this evening interesting is that it was totally unexpected. I did not know when I woke up that morning that I was going to have dinner outside my hotel. My guide, driver and custodian for the day simply let it out that we were going somewhere to have dinner just as we were rounding off the day’s event. He saw the look of surprise on my face and he jocularly but aptly said that I had entered a ‘One chance’ vehicle.

LAST week, I published a sad letter I’d received from a Northern Christian from Borno State. He complained about myriad injustices that the Muslim majority had been inflicting on his people, whom he described as a silently suffering voiceless minority. And I, ever-eager to leap to the defence of the oppressed, sympathised.

DRAMA is when the President of a country boycotts the elections being conducted by his government. This week, it was the turn of Sao Tome and Principe to re-enact that play which was last staged by the over-rated and over-indulged former Malawian President, Joyce Banda. Manuel Pinto da Costa was Sao Tome’s founding President at independence in 1975.