On a cool Friday evening, a few days after President Goodluck Jonathan had unilaterally proposed a name-change for the University of Lagos, I went to the Senior Staff Club to relax a little after spending over six hours working on a research paper I was writing.

Last week, Sam Momoh a reader of the “orbit,” posed a number of questions to me in reaction to my column. The most poignant of his four posers speaks directly to the rest, and in summary, to the so-called “national question.” Sam Momoh asked, “Which other country in the world has been created by a colonial authority that contains more than 200 nations having their own languages and cultures?” I think I owe him some answers as a foreground to my thoughts today.

Permit me, if you would, to start with the words of late Segun Olusola: “It is unfortunate that many people have missed opportunities to make peace.

Nothing has of recent given Nigerians more anxiety than the unprecedented high level of insecurity in the nation. Any one who watched the 2012 ministerial platform where the Minister of Police Affairs, Navy Capt. Caleb Olubolade (rtd), reeled out incredibly high figures of such crimes as robbery and kidnapping adding that 766 firearms and 31,175 ammunitions were recovered from suspects in year 2011 must have become apprehensive especially with the spate of bombings in parts of the country.

“Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed”. I.F Stone. US Journalist, 1929. (VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS p 80).

I was in Calabar to see the Eagles beat Rwanda 2-0 in a Nations Cup preliminary match. And just like I reminded Samson Siasia during his time that his team had only exhibited only 40 percent of what his dream performance was, I say same of Stephen Keshi’s team today.

NIGERIA, as some would say, is a funny place inhabited by funny people. It is a place, as many believe, ‘where anything goes‘. Many people believe, and truly so, that nothing is impossible in this great country of ours.

If Madame rolls up her stylish sleeves and leads a successful moral and practical transformation effort, she will silence the multiple detractors who are currently baying for her blood; and I will hail her from the rooftops.

SOMEHOW, in the course of our short but eventful history as a nation, we’ve lost sight of a fundamental reality: Passion is an invaluable and inexhaustible national resource.

IT didn’t take a long time for me to accept to participate in the Third Presidential Media Chat, when Reuben Abati, Special Adviser on Media to President Goodluck Jonathan, called on Friday evening.