The country’s first President after its July 15, 1960 independence from France was Leon Mba. Popular protests and an army mutiny forced him to resign in February 1964 but within two days French paratroopers intervened and reinstated him.

There has been a deliberate attempt by the government of Nigeria to impoverish and take away the resources of the people that God has blessed and put in a very difficult terrain”…Governor Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi

As Professor P. Ekeh once noted in “Government and Development in Nigeria” that, ‘whatever other gifts the Fulani aristocracy possess (and there are few other groups that are so well endowed in Nigeria indeed elsewhere in Africa), economic production has not been one of its strong points’.

He was a pioneering indigenous bureaucrat of distinction who started to make an indelible mark on public life during colonial rule and famed patriot whose dedication to excellence and the common good won him admirers all over this country.

FOR the legislative arm of our civil rule, the beginning was nothing less than troubled. It was a time when the first speaker, Ibrahim Salisu Buhari, also known as Imam, was found to have lied about his educational qualification in order to get into the House in the first place.

They eventually took pity on him and let him go. Kidnapping has become the favourite crime in the South East and South-South, with Rivers, Abia, Anambra, Akwa Ibom and Edo states as the red flag states. Armed robbers are now migrating to kidnapping because it is obviously seen as more lucrative and safer for the criminals.

That night, we all had to share the giant bed as there were no beds in the spare rooms. More so, the sitting room too only had single chairs. I couldn’t get much sleep until the early hours of the morning. But just as I was drifting off, I was woken up by the sound of soft moaning.

By Owei Lakemfa SEVEN years ago, the Nigerian Telecommunications Plc  (NITEL) was a beautiful bride.  It was courted by many suitors most of them out of lust.  NITEL was the telecommunications gold mine, and many miners, most of them illegal, sought to steal its precious metal.

The world has, in the last many months, worried about the effect of the “global financial meltdown”, but what has been happening to Gordon’s cabinet since the expenses scandals broke and only days to local and European elections is a clear case of “executive meltdown”, the cabinet is the equivalent of a sinking ship and everyone is in a hurry to bail out.

Tri-Star Investment Ltd and Marubeni Inc with a mandate to “bribe” Nigerian decision makers of the executive branch of government, NNPC and NLNG officials and other political leaders “according to a sealed indictment filed at the U.S District Court in Houston, Texas” (See March 29 Sunday NEXT) was invented as a means to outwit their home governmnts’ bank monitors and their national regulatory authorities. The scheme was not invented to defeat Nigeria’s EFCC but to avoid detection by the contractors’ legal authorities.