IMMEDIATE past president of Cote d’ Ivoire, Laurent Gbagbo was on January 28, 2016 hurled before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague charged with crimes against humanity. He had already spent five years in jail awaiting trial by a court that ordinarily has no jurisdiction to try him as the ICC is not the court of first instance. The ICC is a court of last resort trying only cases national authorities cannot or will not prosecute. This is not the case with Gbagbo whose wife, Simone has already been tossed into a 20-year jail, and son, Michel, to five years imprisonment. If Ivorian courts could try and sentence the Gbagbo family, they can try him also.

My very dear childhood friends, Datta, Kio and Kaine Amachree, recently lost their wonderful mother, Otunba Benedicta Olunike Oluwole. She was born in 1936 in Kaduna and was one of five children of the late Chief Ben A.F. Oluwole – a relative of the Balogun of Ijebu-Remo and member of the Latawa Sagamu royal family – and Mrs Marian Taiwo Oluwole (nee Odupele).

I CAN understand the pains that descended on Dr. Alex Otti, the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in Abia State during the 2016 general elections. It has nothing to do with the vast personal fortune he sank into the venture. After all, he knew what he was going into and yet went into it, knowing he could win or lose.

I ARRIVED Yola on Monday this week, for my first visit since 2013. But the prelude to this trip came four days before the gubernatorial election last year. As is my wont, I had written my column in the early hours of the Wednesday before the election, during which I endorsed a couple of candidates: Kashim Shettima in Borno; Nasir El-Rufai in Kaduna; Aminu Tambuwal in Sokoto; Umar Al-Makura in Nasarawa; Aminu Bello Masari in Katsina and Umar Jibrilla Bindow in Adamawa.

EACH time we hear of minority rule, our minds quickly go to apartheid – the former political system in South Africa in which only the white people had full political rights while other people, especially blacks, were forced to live away from the white population and they attended separate schools and churches. Sufficient