I wonder if she had any premonition of how that day was going to end for her… I’m sure her main focus was simply to get through the high profile night without any mishap. No doubt the organizers would have talked her through the process, and as her citation was being read, she must have been going through her acceptance speech through her head.

“F rom North, South, East and West we come to FGGC Calabar. With honour and loyalty yield ourselves to thee, to mould and groom. Rolling land of pleasant memories, nursery ground of feminine graces; we adore and make the promise to shine for thee, FGGC”. That was our anthem in school, Federal Government Girls College, Calabar.

In the last three weeks, the nation has been treated to dismal figures of poverty in many parts of Nigeria, especially in the Northern state by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). The figures show that about 70% of the Nigerian population live below the poverty line with income of less than $1 per day.

A FOND farewell to James Udensi Akwari Iroha, OON, the iconic veteran comedy actor, scriptwriter and director who died earlier on this week.

HOLD am!” I’m sure you know what that means. You may also have heard children at play, spoofing police officers at checkpoints: “Park well, my friend. Show me your particulars!”

I call him, “the fabu-lous one”, and he was indeed fittingly named for it. FABIO Lanipekun chose to be himself though he might have been something else – something more acceptable in the evaluation of the public, or in the estimate of some of his friends and acquaintances.

SOME time in August 2008 I found myself in Benin City. I had missed a flight from the Enugu Airport so I had to take a segmented road rip back to Lagos. While the bus loaded up in Iyaro Motor Park the heavens opened up and it started raining monkeys and baboons. It was my first time in Benin under a rainy condition.

WE may really not have opted for the type of liberal knowledge that we all now possess. It is quite healthy that virtually every Nigerian is now an economist, an electrical engineer, a borehole expert, and so on – all in default, because those who are paid to provide services are not doing so.

LAST weekend, the deputy president of Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, held an interactive session with lawyers of South-eastern origin in Lagos. The topic of his presentation was “Constitution Amendment, Ndigbo and Quest for State Creation”.

IN the last two years or thereabout during which the Action Congress of Nigeria succeeded in chasing the Peoples Democratic Party out of most parts of the South-West, talks of integrating the economy and politics of the region have assumed an upward swing.