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.

A 1963 Scotland-trained medical doctor, Prof.(Mrs.)Ibironke Akinsete is one of the few Nigerian women who have engraved their names on the sand of local and international medical practice. Currently the Chairman of PathCare Medical Laboratory, Prof, as she is fondly called, is a Haematologist of great repute. A former Chairperson of the National Agency for the Control of AIDS and Presidential Adviser on HIV/AIDS, she sits on the board of several organisations. Prof Akinsete who will be seventy-five in May stresses the need for preventive healthcare in this interview.

Chinua Achebe, the internationally celebrated Nigerian author, statesman and dissident who gave literary birth to modern Africa with Things Fall Apart, has died. He was 82. I was in my office when I heard of the passing of our elder, Chinua Achebe. The news shook me to the core, then I scrambled to the nearest computer pot. I was stunned there was no mistake, it was true that Chinua Achebe was no more.

Until a few months ago, the topical issue in my State – Edo – usually centred on the beautification of major towns in the State. The story-line appears to have changed as a new topic has since taken over. These days, the matter of the moment is the directive of the State Government to teachers to produce their primary school certificates.

Therefore, in my opinion, the most important challenge for Jonathan is not ethnic inequality per se in the distribution of key positions, but to justify his choices on the criteria of excellence and performance in spite of ethnicity.

“A sucker [fool] is born every minute”. P.T. Barnum. If it takes God’s Own Country a whole minute to produce a dunce, then Nigerian mothers must be dropping them every second. At Unijankara, we are getting fed-up delivering lectures to Fellow Compatriots who refuse to learn street wisdom – which is our 100 level Course. Like the suckers they are, they fell for two stories, on the same subject, both for the marines.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, family was everything to us. Parents, siblings, family members, all came first in our lives. You couldn’t do without them. They were the first you turned to in adversity and in sharing of good news. The family had so much influence on the individual that you thought twice before you engaged in any act of misdemeanour, as a list of dos and don’ts had been drummed well into you right from childhood, and you were raised, to know that you must not do anything that would bring dishonour/disgrace to the family. You were loyal to your family and you chose your confidants from among the members.

On Monday, Tiger Woods reclaimed the number one spot in golf— a coveted position he had surrendered in early 2010. During his time in the wilderness, he had had to battle the demons that assailed him when he suffered a hip injury, a loss of form and a public demystification which ended in a costly divorce.

Chief Oluwole Awolowo was definitely not a saint. He never had a chance. He was expected to be a “rascal”, a word freely used beyond and beside its real meaning, way back in our grapple with the English language in Yorubaland.

In these parts, death is taken as seriously as life;sometime even more so. Indeed, in Africa the style in which you bury your dead especially one’s parents is a measure of your stature as a man or woman of means, and is a testament to how well (or not) the dead have raised their children. It’s a paradox.