We live in a free world, but virtually everybody is in one form of prison or the other. We are prisoners of nature and nurture. Nature refers to all of the genes and hereditary factors that influence who we are, while nurture refers to all the environmental factors that influence who we are. Nature is inherited from our parents, while nurture is environmental.

This scene is very familiar to those in the publishing business. You are owing the newsprint suppliers. They are threatening to stop further supplies unless you offset some of the outstanding credit. Those who are supplying ink and chemicals are also grumbling. The vehicles going all the way to Calabar in the East and the ones going all the way to Kano in the North need urgent repairs if not downright replacement. But there is no money. In fact, you are owing three, four months in salary arrears.

OUR sister, Araminta Ross who became famous as Harriet Tubman, was born a slave in Maryland, United States (US) in 1820. She lived the American nightmare but decided at 29 to change her life of programmed servitude to that of a free person to whom hundreds of slaves directly, owed their freedom.

THE chicken has come home to roost. It is time to end the tomfoolery or else… For more than forty years, state governors have gathered in Lagos (when it was still the Federal capital) and now Abuja, to share the federal revenue accruing mostly from our oil resources. It was a military-decreed sharing formula that ensured that the Federal Government would always get more than the states and local governments put together.

MEDIA accounts are often very graphic, and validate their claims by including statements ascribed to eye-witnesses and descriptions of the reactions of community leaders, security commanders or government officials.