Two years ago, I wrote about the bleaching epidemic in Nigeria and especially the alarming new trend of whitening, titled:Brown is the new white. It is shocking that the World Health Organisation report, revealed that Nigerians top the table with 77% users of bleaching products in the world. Togo came second in the league at 59%, Senegal, 27%, South Africa 35% and Mali 25%.

When the former Vice-Chancellor of the Federal University of Technology Akure (FUTA), 78-year-old Professor Albert Ilemobade was declared missing, nobody imagined he was butchered by those of his own house-hold. Nobody imagined his lifeless body would be found decomposing inside the garage of his Ijapo Estate, Akure home. Nobody imagined Prof. Ilemobade was killed by two of his domestic workers, his former driver Olayemi Bamitale and the security guard Daniel Ita. The duo admitted strangling the ex-FUTA VC to death with the aim of stealing his recently purchased Toyota RAV 4 SUV.

No fewer than five adults and four children were yesterday confirmed dead, after a commercial bus and an articulated truck collided in Fadeyi axis of Lagos State. Officials of the Emergency Response Team, ERT disclosed to Vanguard that five adult (4 male and 1 female) and 4 children( 2male, 2 female), died at the spot. Vanguard gathered that the accident which occurred at about 5:45 am, left other 10 passengers with varying degrees of injuries.

Last Sunday President Muhammadu Buhari in a national broadcast to mark his one year in office called for dialogue with the Niger Delta communities to find lasting solution to the spate of vandalism of critical energy infrastructure. He did not mince his words on militiamen testing the administration’s will and resolve. There was the choice of carrot-and-stick approach by the President which may be ideal. But the current agitators’ comprehension of the meeting between government and ex-militants in Abuja and Benin may not have been that of a conciliatory gesture considering the President’s speech to fish out the perpetrators, and their sponsors brought to justice.

Early one morning sometime in 1992, I alighted from the bus at Secretariat bus stop, second gate, at Alausa, Ikeja. I was a reporter for the Vanguard, covering Government House, Alausa at the time. A car, which by the way it appeared, seemed to have stopped abruptly by the road side with all four doors open. Curious, I joined the small crowd gathered on the pavement, right in front of the car park around a middle aged woman. She looked distraught, weeping as she told a heart wrenching story. Initially, I did not see the object of the whole drama, a little lifeless snake, by the roadside.