ALHAJJ Issa Hayatou has been President of CAF since March 1988 almost 22 years ago. Some of today’s players in Angola had not been born then. Hayatou was his country’s 400m and 800m and member of the national basketball team of Cameroon at the 1st All Africa Games in Brazzaville. He was President of Cameroun Football Federation when he assumed the CAF presidency.

Jos (Jesus our Saviour to many) is a fine city with an agreeable climate and a melting pot of many cultures and various traditions. Jos in the past, was a place Nigerians would like to spend their retirement days in peace and tranquility.

IN last week’s column, I adopted an objective attitude towards the Jos crisis and described Christians who have slaughtered innocent Muslims – and Muslims who have slaughtered innocent Christians – as religious renegades who are just as evil as each other. Here are some of the responses I received from readers:

IT used to be politically correct to bash Obasanjo, particularly in the media. The three-time Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces was peculiar in his response to criticism, and even social/reputation battery. He did not, like others before him, court his critics with nice words and ‘invitations to chop’.

These Christians go to Jerusalem, must also undergo the Hajj but at the slightest opportunity are serious worshipers of Ogun, Shango and Amadioha! Their forefathers took the Yoruba Vodoo to Brazil, the Benin Oromokpo to Cuba and the Ibo Igba Ndu Vodoo to Haiti. All these characters have been mobilized to pray for the GOC to wake up. This no time to put the distressed family…..

”On August 22,1791, Boukman, presided together with an African born Priestess and conducted a ceremony for slaves of Saint Dominique .

THE Father of the Nation, former President Olusegun Aremu Obasanjo is livid. He is angry because some children of the nation accused him of imposing a chronically ill man, President Umaru Yar’Adua on the country.

“As it is for the United States so it is for the Nigerian elite; state power security issues take precedence over intra-party and inter-party democracy and democratic government. It is important also for the difference between electoral parties and state power parties to be recognised. State power parties define the context and condition of the existence and relevance of electoral parties. The Taliban of Pakistan and Afghanistan are state power parties”.

Its ready army of recruits are to be found in many of those so-called places of religious miseducation as produce the almajiris, no different from the madrasas of Afghanistan and other centres of fundamentalist religion, now proliferating in the Moslem North. Until Nigeria rises to the challenge posed by such breeding centres of radical insurgency and cuts down on both covert and overt accommodation of criminality in the name of religion, she can’t be anything but a sponsor of terrorism.

In response to the anomaly of increasing income coexisting with increasing poverty in Nigeria, I embarked on a close observation of the operation of the national economy sometime in 2001, and discovered that the root cause of our problem was the subsisting monopoly of the CBN in the supply of both the dollar and naira in the economy.

There was this interesting but visibly annoying mail from Eric Ekanem addressed to members of the CAF media in the ongoing Orange Africa Cup of Nations. In it, Mr. Ekanem wanted us to explain to him why it is Zambia and not Cameroun that topped Group D.

Why not allow the law to take its course while you go about your job of restoring the broken financial system?We can do with a little more maturity while rebuilding public confidence in the banking sector

By Helen Ovbiagele, Woman Editor “Look Helen,” whispered a friend to me at her friend’s private school’s end of term and prize-giving day ceremony, “I can’t bear it anymore.

T oday, I celebrate the life of a great man, Mr. James Emeziem Nworgu, Classicist and Justice of Peace. News reached me that Mr. Nworgu passed, this past week into immortality. I felt an immediate twinge of regret for I had missed one last opportunity to see him last June when I buried my own father.

“Successful leaders at all levels love their status and power and are hesitant to leaving voluntarily”.
Jack Welch, Chairman, General Electric Company, 1988.