AT the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, twenty years ago, in 1995, Hon. Justice Ibrahim Gambari, was officially instituted as the eleventh Fulani Emir of Ilorin. His Royal Highness came to the throne eminently qualified and prepared for the position.

MY people have a proverb which says: a person who was not present when a corpse was buried runs the risk of exhuming it from the foot end rather than the head.

This week, perhaps on this very Wednesday that you are reading this, President Muhammadu Buhari would assign portfolios to the ones that must be considered lucky of the 36 ministers-designate. There have been media reports of anxiety among the ministers-to-be as to which of them would be lucky to be assigned portfolios.

I had my bee-keeping training at the Bee-craft Vocational Institute, Abeokuta, and my entrepreneurial training with the National Directorate of Employment. I was also on scholarship from the Goldman Sach Corporations in the USA to study Entrepreneurship at the Enterprise Development Centre of Pan-Atlantic University, Lagos.

If one is to believe Section 10 of the Nigerian Constitution which reads: “The Government of the Federation or of a state shall not adopt any religion as a state religion” then it is clear that Nigeria is a secular state. Section 14(2) (a) further states: “sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom Government through this Constitution derives all its powers and authority”.