The word ‘intoxicant’ means an intoxicating agent. It is derived from the verb ‘intoxicate,’ which stands for “ to make drunk: to excite to enthusiasm or madness; to elate excessively.”

I said last week that by his assumption of duty as Acting President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan has become, de facto, the sole administrator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. This means that he is right up there being the only person in the executive arm that was elected.

Understandably, more ladies reacted to this write-up than men. Many women and young ladies felt that the way we in the developing world ape our sisters in the western world is not in our best interest. Not only in what we eat and wear, but in our social lives and character.

Among the most sustained mythologies of postcolonial Nigeria is the myth of a “northern domination” or the hegemony of the north. Many of us buy into this quite unreflectively, and it has become the rallying cry in Southern Nigeria, whenever the issue of political bargaining arises.

It is remarkable that as the Senate basks in accolades of commendation over its seeming positive role in stabilizing the polity that mention is today being made of its equally very efficient “mortuary”. That is the Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions.

Every day, since Jonathan was circumstantially made to stand in as “Acting President”, new developments have been popping up that make the current calm a very uneasy one. The latest is the issue raised by the President of the West African Bar Association, Mr Femi Falana, that constitutionally, Jonathan can only “act” for three months after which the law stipulates that an election should be called.

I SPRINTED into a shop in Algiers. The weather was very cold. Although it was not raining, people were getting wet. Even in the streets, here and there, you found pools of water. I was fully kitted wearing layers of shirts, a sweater and two trousers. Surprisingly, there were youths with just T-shirts and jackets, some with their trousers not around their waists but their buttocks. This clearly was the American gangster influence.

IN the past couple of columns, I have dwelled on the President’s continued absence and the courage that was so magnificently displayed by Prof. Dora Akunyili, the Minister of Information. I have also said that even though I regard the President as a basically decent man, I despise those of his loyalists who aggressively resisted moves to make Dr Goodluck Jonathan Acting President and think that a medical team should be sent to Saudi Arabia to find out whether Yar’Adua is likely to recover enough to return to his desk at some point in the near future.

Acting President, Goodluck , stands at history’s crossroads. The road he chooses to travel will make all the difference for him as a historical figure in Nigeria and for Nigeria itself. He is faced with the choice of either charting a new course and laying the foundation for the new Nigeria of our dreams or following the ignominious familiar road which we have travelled in the past.

AND the incumbent won. Ordinarily, there is no big deal about that, to use the pedestrian parlance, except you consider that the re-elected Anambra State Governor is no ordinary politician.

When former President Bill Clinton made a historic trip to Africa in March 1998, he hailed Presidents Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, Isaiah Afwerki of Eritrea, Laurent Kabila of Congo DR, Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda as the new leaders of Africa taking charge of their own backyard. As it turned out, the so-called “new leaders” were just old win in new bottles.

MICHEAL Kaase Aondoakaa, Attorney General and Minister of Justice until shoved aside on February 9, reminds me of the infamous Clement Akpamgbo. He held the same portfolio in the insidious military regime of General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida.

IT was many hours after the actual event, precisely at the very hours the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria broadcasts its flagship news at 7 in the morning, that I would hear the maiden broadcast of Goodluck Jonathan, the Acting President.

IN Matthew Holden’s(JR.), The White Man’s Burden, he addressed a question asked by St. Clair Drake, a Black American of West Indian background, an Africanist, urban sociology and anthropologist, the author of the tome titled Black Metropolis: “Why is not the United States more like South Africa”.

”It matters not who the voter, what does matter is who counts the votes”-Russian Dictator Joseph Stalin.
”As far as we know there is one state in Africa that never had one king for all.