THE Nigerian government led by President Goodluck Jonathan appears to be leading the push for the forceful ousting of the government of President Laurent Gbagbo of Cote d’Ivoire.

SENATOR Saminu Turaki was a promising politician in 1999 when he became governor of Jigawa State. He later claimed to have transformed the state into a digital revolution.

Reference to the colonial by Continental Africans as a constraining development condition is now dismissed as an excuse just as reference to legacies of slavery by New World Africans is judged to be escapist. The refrain is “The colonial is long gone, 50 years gone- what have you done since October 1st 1960? What have you done since Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation?”

DECEMBER 2010 was Dakar, the capital city of Senegal’s, week of festival. From 10th of December to 31st the country hosted the 3rd World Black Festival of Arts and Culture otherwise known as FESTAC.

WHILE I was still on vacation, an anonymous source sent an interesting text message to me. It reads: “Tinubu’s democracy in action! His wife, Remi Tinubu, picks the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) senatorial ticket of Lagos Central. His daughter, Sade Tinubu, picks the ticket for Lagos State Assembly, Agege Constituency and Tinubu’s son in-law Oyetunde Ojo, House of Reps! Lola Akande, Remi’s elder sister, House of Assembly. Lagosians must resist this impostor and self-acclaimed custodian of democracy…”

As the Dr Amos Adamu saga raged last year, all attempts to keep mum were rebuffed.Precisely on October 25 2010, in a piece entitled “ Not the best of times…not “ I wrote what I considered to be a personal opinion.

Hi Readers! Praise God! We had very fine weather for the traditional wedding. There was some harmattan haze at first, but as the day progressed, this dissipated, revealing a clear sky. Early that morning, Seb sent text messages round that all our guests from Lagos should meet at one of his flats in town for brunch, so that he and I could introduce them to Robert and his parents.

The International media has in the last two decades or so sustained a tradition, which may best be described as ‘Nigeria bashing’. In this vein, they have always been eager to amplify any aberration and indeed, grievously distort any misdeed by Nigerian citizens anywhere in the world.

“Who calls them the happy people of Columbia?” I asked.
“Everyone’, said Dudley. “That’s why nothing ever happens here. The government doesn’t do anything here. They don’t have to. They know the people are happy, so they don’t give them anything”.

The greatest worry my teachers had about me in my younger days was my restlessness. I just couldn’t sit still, and my mind wondered non-stop all the time. My work was always done in a rush and was either submitted with seconds to spare or a bit late.

The months of maneouverings, ad hominems and scratch-my-back-I-will-scratch-yours for the Peoples Democratic Party’s presidential ticket are over. On Friday, January 14, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, the incumbent President decisively defeated former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar and “serial contestant” Sarah Jibril to clinch PDP’s presidential ticket for the April 9, 2011 presidential election.

The reason some people are getting results and others are not, is that some are taking steps while others are doing nothing. It is only what you make happen that happens. If you do nothing, you get nothing!

Dele Alake, former Lagos State Commissioner for Information and Strategy went home to vie for the post of senator in Ekiti Central Senatorial District.

When I wrote ‘2011: On a Wing and a Prayer’, I had jocularly asked the perplexing question: “between Jega and Joe who will take who to hell or who to heaven? Will they both make hell or altogether lose Eden?”.

I was privileged to attend the National Convention of the Nigerian Guild of Editors in Lagos on Saturday, January 15, 2011. I arrived early as Chairman of the occasion making me part of the opening ceremony which took-off with a prayer from one Christian and another from a Muslim.