I know Dr Junaid Mohammed; maybe not very well, but enough. Apart from what I had read about him over the years, our paths crossed a couple of times in the heady days of the Second Republic. Late Senator Mahmud Waziri’s Louis Solomon Street apartment in Victoria Island was one of the places top military and government officials often met after the then NTA network news to discuss national issues.

‘’Don’t trust anyone over thirty.’’ That is Jerry Rubin (1938-1994),U.S. activist and author’s quote. I do not know whether some will believe himbut itseems to capturethe sour relationship between two assembly pals and ally, Speaker of the House of Representatives,YakubuDogara, and immediate past Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, AbdumuminiJibrin over 2016 budget proceeds. Jibrin in a fit of temper has had what some regard as a childish display of rage. Others say it is good for our democracy.

When I watched South Sudan President Salva Kiir Mayardit make a short speech on the floor of the African Union, AU, Heads of State conference in January 2013, I was impressed. He said King Mohammed VI of Morocco had called to congratulate him on the independence of South Sudan from Sudan.

We often simplistically refer to “The North” as if it is a monolithic unit. It is easy to forget that there are actually different Northerners and that a significant number are not Hausa-Fulanis or members of the Sunni Muslim majority.

THE expression ‘between Scylla and Charybdis’ came from the personification of two phenomenal hazards of navigation, both occurring off Italy’s narrow straits of Messina: one hazard named ‘Scylla’ was a ‘rock’ dangerously positioned against the ease of marine movement; the other named ‘Charybdis’ was a freak of perilous ‘whirlpool’ on the opposite side of Scylla and equally as threatening to sea-going vessels.