Last week, I recalled Alhaji Atiku Abubakar saying, when I interviewed him many years ago that he regretted the fact that it was very difficult for average citizens to survive or thrive if they didn’t have access to influential people who were willing to help them and that he would be very happy if our society eventually evolved to the point where the government provided safety nets that would enable everyone to get what they needed and deserved.

AS we struggle to understand our past as Africans, two veteran nationalists have dropped bombshells with the effect of category seven earthquakes over the fate of two African leaders.

LAST week I asked for involvement of the sports community in the politics that would produce leaders in 2011. It is obvious that sports would be neglected again if those who are its stakeholders do not prod candidates in the elections to create platforms to develop sports.

In a recent outing, Prof. Ben Egede of the Department of English, Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, summarised the views on this side most succinctly, when he quipped rather angrily: “What is there to celebrate? Fifty years of looting from our national treasury by organised criminals masquerading as leaders of their people?

Nigeria had its own version of Gandhi, in the person of Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, who built on the sound nationalist foundations of Pa Herbert Macauley. “Zik”, as his admirers fondly called him, was the doyen of African nationalism, who inspired other Black African giants such as Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, Madiba Nelson Mandela and the others.

The living always modify or falsify perspectives to justify what they think of the dead. But, that is understandable especially when the dead lived a life so complex and ordinarily incomprehensible to most people.

AS we mark the fiftieth year of our flag independence, many Nigerians are despondent believing that our lingering problems are because we are cursed.

About three weeks ago, I commented here on the seeming camaraderie between the presidential aspirants of the Peoples Democratic Party, specifically President Goodluck Jonathan and former military ruler, Ibrahim Babangida. Both men had spoken in a language and manner that suggested they could be fast friends even as they individually had their eyes set on the same prize in the forthcoming 2011 elections.

SUNDAY September 12, 2010 NEXT on Sunday under its Brief’s carried a story on Angola’s intent to send military, police officials to Bissau to study, according to Angola’s army chief, “how to help the West African state to reform its troubled army”.

performance against his team, was quoted as saying that one day, a referee’s corpse will be picked on the field of play.

On the threshold of our golden jubilee, we have a crop of presidential aspirants who are depending on ethnic and sectional calculations for their winning the race.

Hi Readers! Do know that feeling of deflation you have, when on rushing home to report to your mother a clever thing you’ve done, and you meet a blank stare from her, indicating that what you considered ‘being clever’ was actually an act of stupidity? That was how I felt when I got home and told nanny of my encounter with Belinda in the office in Ikeja.

Over the Labor Day weekend, the GCUOBA, the alumni association of the Government College Umuahia met in Columbus, Ohio for the now annual GCUOBA-USA conventions.

A couple of years ago I served under an individual I found very charismatic and while I was driven by a zeal to work for the greater good; my faith was challenged when I, like many others, began to see past the charm. What we discovered was a Machiavellian character that was so ruthless that the veneer of charm was just a tool to manipulate and ingratiate to the powers that be.

Now, is this the kind of President Nigeria needs at the moment? Certainly not, because we desperately need an honest, transparent, disciplined, intelligent and focused servant-leader who has compassion for the masses, a leader who will boldly confront the grotesque status quo and radically change it for the better. Our people are tired of morally over-contaminated leaders.