It is a bit difficult to celebrate with others when one is not so joyous, it can be a little trying to be happy for others when one is anything but that. I like to engage people in often painful and truthful arguments, the truth can be very bitter but it is also liberating; misery likes company and happy is not always best of friends with sad. I was sitting down listening to the heartfelt angst of a young friend and it took me back to the years when I was in the group of “misery likes company”, you know that group, all of us have one time or the other been active members.

I met Obong Umana O Umana, October last year at the Catholic Church in Uyo, when he attended the first year memorial service for the late first Lady of Akwa Ibom State, Alison Attah. He had only recently ceased to be the Secretary to the State Government, SSG under conditions still shrouded in mystery. Until then, he was regarded as one of those on the other side by those close to Obong Victor Attah, the former Governor; including me. We got together after the service and exchanged cards. Something told me that this was a man to watch closely. Thank God, my instincts, on matters like this, never deceive me. It is already news that Umana had emerged as the flag-bearer for the All Progressive Alliance, APC, in the state just a few weeks after decamping from the PDP where he had been a member since 1998.

Earlier in the week, the United States of America made another mark in their record of what some people have described, and accepted, as the trait of their “exceptionality”—that, is their attribute of being exceptional, or of being like no other, in their ways.

This season, called the Ember months, always fills me with some trepidation and I usually heave a sigh of relief when it rolls to a crescendo on January 1. About this time next week, it would be a year since a dear friend Sesan Ogunro lost his life to armed car snatchers. Till today, to the best of my knowledge, none of his assailants has been apprehended.

John came back from his village recently. For some reasons he has not been there since the new millennium. His trip was a mixed bag: happy to be back to his root, but came away with a cultural shock: Many of his relatives and age mates had 10 or more children with some having many wives. But that was not his concern; his concern was that many of them are poor and unemployed, with those employed not earning more than N15, 000 monthly. “What goes on in these people’s minds? How do you just breed without thinking about how to cater for them?