Not too long ago, I had been on my way home from a land so very far away. My journey each way included 2 rather long haul flights, two 3 hour stop overs and then a 4 hour drive before I would eventually be at my destination.

Poor Bankole. Victim or villain, scapegoat or sacrificial lamb, it does not matter anymore! He is already in the blender! Just don’t ask, ‘when will they blend him?’ Putting ‘accused’ persons in the ‘blender’ is about the worst our anti-corruption agencies have done! -they raise all hues and cries; they conjure the planetary winds and just when all the necessary tempests have been properly invoked, the ‘eagle’ descends from the troubled skies, and with its powerful tendons lift the prey.

Several parties are sharpening their knives with the unfurling of the hacking scandal of the News of the World and News International. There are even suggestions that the rot may have spread to other newspapers but the smear has not hit the other papers… yet.

About two months ago, one of the regular readers of this page asked me if President Jonathan’s ‘humility’ was not sufficient reason to give the man a second look. In a three part series, I dismissed humility as an attribute expected of great leaders.

Long ago in our early school years, when teachers had a good knowledge of their subjects before they delivered their lessons, it was constantly drummed into our heads that ‘ignorance is a disease’. Thus, we were encouraged to take much interest in everything and read widely so that we wouldn’t have the disease. Many children complied then, so, at siesta in the boarding school, you would find most pupils secretly reading novels, foreign magazines and journals which were educative.

Sometime last year, President Goodluck Jonathan launched the “Bring Back the Book” project, an initiative that seeks to encourage the reading culture in Nigerians. Probably in a future essay, I will dissect the negative consequences of dwindling reading culture even among the so-called educated class.

Sometimes, Nigeria, and things Nigerian seem made for farce. I put the emergence of Boko Haram as one of the aspects of Nigeria’s political theatre that is growing into farce while it of course retains its more tragic dimensions. What exactly am I driving at? Well, folks, this call by some Nigerians, mostly from the north – and I think it is about time we in the press find newer terms to describe this and stop the north-South cleavage in our national narrative – who are calling, in fact insisting on the Federal Government going into “negotiation” with the Boko Haram terrorists.

It is an old English adage that everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything bout it. That is not true. Since the Wright brothers pointed the way to the stars, around the beginning of the second decade in the last century, air travel, at least, has made the weather a compulsory topic in many ways.

STANDARDS are almost impossible to keep in Nigeria. In the instances that we opted for low standards, we are still unable to keep the marks that we have so lowly set for ourselves. The National Sports Festival is suffering the same affliction.

ESTHER SALAMI, a beautician, came to my house last Sunday to do a pedicure for a member of my family. When she had finished, I handed her a small wad of folded naira bills and she dropped it into her handbag without counting it.