We all stand before history. I am a man of peace, of ideas. Appalled by the denigrating poverty of my people who live on a richly endowed land, distressed by their political marginalisation and economic strangulation, angered by the devastation of their land, their ultimate heritage, anxious to preserve their right to life and to a decent living, and determined to usher to this country as a whole a fair and just democratic system which protects everyone and every ethnic group and gives us all a valid claim to human civilization, I have devoted my intellectual and material resources, my very life, to a cause in which I have total belief and from which I cannot be blackmailed or intimidated.

LAST Thursday was a day most of us wished was not a day. By “us” I mean the community of people of African origin in the small university town of Carbondale, Illinois.

Pastor Tunde Bakare is a friend of the Buhari administration; an unusual role for a man who normally thrives as an opponent of governments. Apologetically comparing the Buhari government to that of Goodluck Jonathan, Bakare says the Buhari government is not “clueless” but “helpless.” That is a pity because a government in need of help but helpless cannot be expected to be of much help to needy Nigerians.

If there is one thing uniting the thirty-six state governors, irrespective of political affiliation, it is the fact that the two bail-out arrangements fashioned out by the Federal Government have not solved the problem. Doctors in the medical field know the phenomenon too well. It is called treating the symptom instead of the cause(s) of a disease. And, like cancer, which starts as a small lump and becomes bigger on life-threatening, economic tumour starts slowly; get bigger; and eventually might lead to economic calamity.

PARLIAMENT of the Streets: Mass strikes and street protests that shook Nigeria in 2012 is the title of my newest book. Although written over three years ago, it has just come off the press. It seeks to document those turbulent days when government had control of Aso Rock, the Government Houses and the apparatus of state power, while the populace took firm control of the streets in an historic power struggle.