ONE of the most brilliant lawyers in Nigeria, Chima Nnaji (you will see him from time to time on Channels and the African Independent Television discussing current affairs) once said: if you close your fist everybody’s eyes will be attracted to it. Everybody will want to know what it is you are hiding in that fist, until you open it and they find it is a mere piece of paper. Hiding that piece of paper creates suspense, a heightened sense of expectation and yearning for you to open that dratted hand.

One of my favourite wise cracks is the Law of the Hammer which says, “Give a young boy a hammer and he suddenly decides that everything he sees needs to be hammered immediately. Nigerians voted for change, without obtaining a clear idea of what we wanted changed and when. Commonsense, which incidentally is not common, would suggest that not everything needs to be changed. And surely not all existing systems and structures can be altered at the same time.

“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” (1 John 4:18). Therefore, Christians should resist any attempt by anyone to scare them into doing anything pertaining to the righteousness of God. That is precisely what mercenary pastors do in order to arm-twist Christians to pay tithes; a requirement now inapplicable under the New Testament.

The Code of Conduct Bureau, CCB, should be renamed the Code of Corruption Bureau, CMB, as long as Mr. Saba is in charge. The fellow either has no sense of recent history or is just plain untrustworthy for such an important position. In his many years as Chairman of CCB the organization has brought only two important people to court. The first was Bola Tinubu, former Governor of Lagos State, in 2011; the second is Senator Bukola Saraki – the current Senate President in 2015. The CCB apparently, wakes up every four years to select a victim to justify its existence – which had become almost a criminal drain on our resources with nothing to show for it.

Sam Onwuemedo, Director of Press and Media for the Government House, Owerri, a position generally known in common parlance as “Chief Press Officer to the Governor,” shot-off a protest e-mail to me quite recently. It was, he said, “nauseating” – those were his words – that I had it in for Mr. Anayo “Rochas” Okorocha, Governor of Imo state. I could sense Sam, even in the cold alphabets of his mail, straining to remain polite, and maintain the good-keep between us built on a long relationship. He was, after all, once my colleague in the Vanguard.