AS many Nigerians believe and hope, 1st of October every year should be a day of joy and this year‘s occasion should be marked in a special way – it is a day of celebration of Nigeria‘s fifty years of freedom from British imperialism. Some would however, observe that the country has exchanged liberal British imperialism for local despotism.

The Jonathan declaration was easily the largest crowd ever pulled to the nation’s foremost political arena. By most newspaper accounts, 23 governors attended. The entire National Working Committee (NWC), most members of the Board of Trustees (BOT) and the National Executive Council (NEC) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) were fully mobilised.

In 1945, the world had just emerged from World War II, totally bruised. The German Reich was virtually bankrupt following the heavy expenses accruing from the war. What should a country do if it was broke?

It has been a harsh and suffocating travail. In the years we pushed the project and combed the various US and European Ivory towers, visited the United Nations, prayed in the lush and somber gardens of the world renowned memorials, placarded in solidarity with fellow genocide victims and ran the dangerous streets of the world,

ELECTIONS and electoral politics assume that electorates are homogenous in outlook, values and interests but are divided in their opinions on how goals commonly shared are to be actualised. Elections assure that qualitative differences have been replaced by quantitative differences on methods. Elections therefore assume the electorate are united on ends but divided on means; they assume unity of objectives and divisions on strategies and means.

This is the concluding part of a two-part piece by Ginny Nwasoria, a public commentator based in Lagos.

PRESIDENT Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ, this is his official acronym, not GEAJ or GJ) jumped ahead of General Ibrahim Babangida, his main intra-party rival for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) nomination, when, on Wednesday, September 15, 2010, he officially informed Nigerians he would run for president through his Facebook forum.

Time there was when travelling was fun. Perhaps not anymore.
As a third year student of modern languages in the University of Calabar, we needed to go abroad for a year and I was one of those who benefitted Grenoble, France as destination. So started my romance with passports, visas, tickets, planes, hotels……name it.

EXACTLY a fortnight from today, Nigeria will be marking its 50th independence anniversary from colonial rule. The motives of colonialism are usually wrapped in layers of religion and the alleged sacred duty of the Whites to spread civilization.

I’M in South Africa at the moment, attending a conference called “Planning Africa”; and it’s been such an interesting experience to not only listen to speakers who want our continent to thrive but to observe, at close quarters, how the country is getting along l6 years after Nelson Mandela was released from his lengthy incarceration to spearhead the dismantling of apartheid.

AS many Nigerians believe and hope, 1st of October every year should be a day of joy and this year‘s occasion should be marked in a special way – it is a day of celebration of Nigeria‘s fifty years of freedom from British imperialism. Some would however, observe that the country has exchanged liberal British imperialism for local despotism.

SOME security beat reporters have written stories of how the former Inspector General of Police, Mr Ogbonnaya Onovo, was shocked at his sudden removal.

Once; he actually gave a date, flight number and airline, I went to the airport with the children, my sister and her husband and a younger brother of his too, we waited after confirming that the flight was actually coming to Nigeria, but you won’t believe that my husband was not on that flight, he’d merely fooled us all

EACH time we hear this noise about the independence of the Judiciary, we are quickly reminded of that husband whose wife keeps accusing him of hardly sleeping with her but as soon as the wife goes into the bath-room, this husband takes delight in peeping at her through the key hole.

Donald Easum was the tennis buff who in many ways created the Nigerian Tennis circuit. A Tennis circuit line that played from Lagos Lord Rumens to Ogbe Hard Courts in Benin to the Kaduna Clay courts. We picked his balls and were picking for him even at his residential home across Gerrald Road, Ikoyi, Lagos.