AMADIN: My brother, you should know by now that I am not easily given to pessimism. But the truth must be told. The way things are going in Nigeria, there is every cause for worry. I know you are equally concerned and that’s why I want to talk to you as often as I can.

THIS column last week was about Chinua Achebe, his works and his legacies. I knew that there will be a backlash, and had even attributed some of it to the legacies the late legend left behind.

Akuko gagara akuko gagara to fori apata se ’bugbe… Can things ever fall apart in the home of the teacher Chinualumogu the vaulting eagle on the riverside iroko

CHINUA Achebe’s stoic and gradualist approach to life was evident not only in his unhurried diction and surgically measured prose but also in the kind of solutions he proffered to the vexing questions of the post-colonial world. Particularly, in Nigeria, the country that vexed him the most — to the point of death in exile.

AT the sixth edition of her Town Hall meeting, the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, senator representing Lagos Central Senatorial District, the immediate past First Lady of Lagos State and wife of the national leader of the ACN, Mrs. OluremiTinubu asserted that the formation of All Progressives Congress, APC, is a divine opportunity to save the country (Daily Sun Tuesday 19 March 2013).

It sounded comical.That Jossy Lad, yes the same one, fell ill. That Oyo state government, had spent “four hundred thousand naira on him” without improvement.

GOVERNOR Henry Seriake Dickson of BayelsaState is worried about the activities of rumour mongers in his state.

At a recent forum in Lagos, on Tuesday, 19/3/2013, President Goodluck Jonathan insisted that “we cannot continue to waste resources meant for a greater number of Nigerians to subsidize the affluent middle class, who are the main beneficiaries (of fuel subsidies)”.

At university, I was a student of Philosophy. You had to be, if you studied Political Science. I therefore find it highly amusing that, in a discussion about the existence of God, Douglas Anele tries to dazzle me by dropping the names of philosophers like David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Bertrand Russell.

There is the Igbo story of the wood pecker who proclaimed without doubt that he would honour his father in death by pecking down the great Iroko tree. But the day came when his father died, and the woodpecker suddenly grew a boil on its beak. I feel like the woodpecker. Chinua Achebe’s death last week left me tongue tied.