The Niger Delta Avengers have left a trail of kept promises and a crippled economy. They are in unambiguous terms, economic terrorists. They have tried to hide their sophistication with a fig leaf of poorly scripted twitter feeds. They pretend to defend the interests of the people of Niger delta but are not ashamed to publicize their diabolical affiliations with corruption. The Avengers may indeed be naïve and reckless. But those, whose surrogates they are, who have instigated this violence , are cold , and criminally manipulative.

At Alaba Rago in Ojo Local Government Area of Lagos State, nothing goes to waste. Every discarded object –pieces of iron, paper, plastic, wood, bottle, just name it – comes into use. There is no recycling bank there, but all kinds of condemned objects find a role to play in the economic life of not only the people (especially Hausas generally referred to as Aboki, an Housa word for friend) who run the place, but also outsiders who throw away those objects in the first place.

Today we are in the club of nations producing petroleum and not knowing what to do with it; groping and wallowing in memories of long-gone old days of not knowing what to do with our petrodollars. Collectively we have not been able to utilize our innate releasing mechanisms to stimulate triggering instinctive behaviours to tackle identified challenges.

I’ve been in London for the past five months, but I read Nigerian newspapers online every day and I am in regular contact with Nigerian friends, colleagues and relatives.

IT is the Biblical story of David and Goliath enacted on African soil. More appropriately, it is the case of two Goliaths against a tiny David. Western Sahara is a tiny African country which may be one of the reasons it was bypassed during the so called ‘Wind of change’ that swept through Africa in the 1960s decolonising most of the continent. In 1960 alone, 17 African countries became independent.