There is one serious route not yet travelled by Nigeria in her quest for viable elections. It is the way of an enabled, enhanced and encouraged judiciary. Our attempts at any judicial reform have remained at the level of abstraction and total unseriousness.

All Nigerians are united in condemnation of the xenophobic attacks on foreigners in South Africa. Our countrymen and women residing in South Africa have also closed ranks in the face of common threats to their lives and wellbeing. No one is talking about Igbo, Yoruba or what have you. Back home, everybody is enraged at the victimisation of our people in a country which we fought to secure the freedom of the Black population from Apartheid.

Ekwulobia—Anambra State Government has flagged off the operation to evacuate heaps of solid waste deposited at Okpoko, a suburb of commercial city of Onitsha. The mountainous heaps of waste had been in existence for over 30 years and had for long posed environmental health hazard to the inhabitants of the community.

THE leader of the South African opposition, Julius Malema, says President Zuma and the South African state promoted a culture of violence and xenophobia which led to Black South Africans attacking migrants and foreigners whom they blame for their own economic misfortune.

FOR a full decade, we were in touch with each other only sporadically. Then one smouldering Texas summer evening four years after our last conversation, he called me. He had heard that I was done with my doctoral studies at Cornell and had taken up a position at Texas State University. He was in the US for personal reasons and wanted to congratulate me.