Let me start with a personal story. At a point in my life, I ignored the church like many youths in their 20s still do. It’s the rebel in us that wants to break away from the sermons and doctrines that we have been force-fed with in childhood and adolescence especially those who have attended mission schools. I opted for squash, Sunday luncheons, social visits, movies or simply to sleep off Saturday night hang overs. It didn’t help that I was in a profession that did not see Sunday as a hallowed day. But habits and characters formed in childhood are difficult to completely shake off and the lure of the church became stronger as I grew older.

I’ve just chanced upon an article that was written in The Will, an online publication, on January 11.

It stated that the PDP’s Deputy National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Abdulahi Jalo, “has tasked former President Goodluck Jonathan to speak out on the controversial $2.1bn meant for the purchase of arms to fight the Boko Haram insurgency during his tenure but which was allegedly shared by some influential politicians.”

THE African Union (AU) 26th Session which closed in Addis Ababa on January 31, held a lot of promise for a continent brought to its knees by insecurity and violence; some of it self-inflicted. The expectations were high and the organisation’s leaders were on point in their opening speeches. Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the Chair of the African Union Commission which runs the Secretariat, told the world that Africa is committed to “silencing the guns”. Explaining why the theme of the Session was “African Year of Human Rights with particular focus on the Rights of Women”, Zuma declared that the continent has refused to be indifferent to violent extremism, gender-based abuses and suffering due to conflicts.

THESE are certainly not the best of times for Nigeria’s former ruling party, the People Dempcratic Party, PDP. The juggernaut’s transition from power has been so painful, almost like a junkie forcibly weaned off an addiction, that recovery is becoming a frustrating experience. The ruthless vote-rigging contraption that used to arrogantly describe itself as Africa’s largest political party, has dissembled so rapidly, soon after it was thrown out of power last year

WHEN the journey to Maiduguri came on stream last week, I was all over the place with mixed feelings. I was there last 25 years ago. I wanted to see what had become of it in this Boko Haram era. There were two other things I wanted to see. The first was life inside an Internally-Displaced Persons’ (IDPs’) camp. The second was to make a personal assessment of where we really are with regard to the war on terror, beyond the banal propaganda pabulum that Buhari’s Information Minister, Lai Mohammed, and the military, regularly dish out.