[….at the Vanguard War Room at the Kirikiri base of the Vanguard Regimental Command….Enter Admiral KKK Omoregie, Major General One Leg Atamuna, VRC Adjutant, Major Olabisi Olakankinta, Major 419 Oboh Utueke,and for the first time since he abandoned the VRC to join forces with the MENDO Atlantic Revolutionary Suicide Squad, the good old RSM Okon Bassey is back on parade] .

I ONCE had the acquaintance of an extraordinary gentleman who had come from Jos to have a business meeting with me in Lagos. In the more cordial moments after business had been taken care of, I had remarked conversationally on how his name Malaky, knowing he was from Kaduna State, sounded rather unusual. I had heard of Mayaki, observed I, and wondered aloud if his name was but a variant of the latter.

Have you noticed the gradually increasing and worrisome political notoriety of some elements of the Nigerian Army? Shortly after President Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua assumed power and posted core Northerners to high and sensitive command positions, certain high-powered elements started inching the nation’s supreme force back to some of the behaviours which in the past occasioned the massive campaign for a return to democracy.

THE Governors Forum, an exclusive club of the thirty six state governors is emerging as the new power centre driving the politics of the country. Presenting itself as a patriotic, supra national and non politically partisan body, it makes magisterial pronouncements which to governors carries the weight of law.

So what? Yes, so what? A friend in Jo’burg saw me battling with this column and said “ So what is special about being in South Africa?”, aware that I have passed this way a couple of times.

The entire story was narrated on a train to Jos, in the presence of “the Hausa men and the Biroms from the Plateau”, and with Mallam Ilyia in the throes of death having been stabbed by his adversary, the rebel, Usuman, who claimed to be the son of an Emir, and who had orchestrated the murder of Ilyia’s wife in addition to burning his house.
It was a story of vengeance.

A NATIONAL newspaper of February 25, 2010 had the following blurb on its last page.
Carson to INEC : “Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has performed poorly over the past decade and has not served the interest of Nigeria well… I stressed that Nigeria’s next presidential and National Assembly elections scheduled for April 2011 must be credible. They must be free, fair and transparent and they must be a significant improvement over the country’s 2007 presidential election, which were deeply embarrassing and deeply flawed”.

THOUGH the police tells us 150 and not 500 died and became part of the increasing casualty of Nigerians, latest victims of both ethnic and sectarian crises in Jos, there shall be no mourning in our house.

Hi readers! Tayo may be a hell-raiser you would sometimes wish were left by herself on another planet,but what can Treena do without her in her life?

HAVING examined some sociological issues that often spark off violence between the Hausa/Fulani and their host communities, I would like to discern the root cause of the Sunday March 9 tragedy in Dogo Na Hawa, near Jos in Plateau State.

“In spite of the effusive enthusiasm of this Administration, some Nigerians refuse to celebrate the recent debt relief conditions granted by our major creditors of the Paris club. “Under the terms of the Paris club deal, Nigeria will see $18bn of its total debt of $30bn cancelled on condition that it pays the remaining $12.4bn between now and March 2006.

Adulthood is supposed to be the period in our lives when we take full responsibility for our actions, our responses to other people’s actions and general well being. It’s that period of our lives when we determine who and what we are on our own terms. The choice of determining how we are treated is not ours as children but emancipation should ideally come at the onset of adulthood.

The title of our essay today appears contradictory or, at best, puzzling. How is it possible that something changes and still remains the same, when the very idea of change entails that that which has changed cannot be the same thing again? We know that reality, in all its diverse manifestations, is subject to flux.

Reflect on this irony: a young army captain helps to organize a military coup and supervises the liquidation of his commander-in-chief and the host governor, another senior military officer, of a region to which he was paying a state visit. The facts are bare: even in a military situation under a properly trained and disciplined military officer, a General must be accorded his full compliments even in death.

More than any other gory event I have seen recently, the organised killings on the Plateau point to the total absence of God in our lives, in spite of whatever religion we profess to embrace. I am not referring to religion as the peg on which the problems on the Plateau are always being hung.