IN a week free of the usual news of violence, it is not out of place to look at other national matters of great importance. This does not exclude funny comments, howbeit uncharitable, on political events.

My dear friend, Henry Abebe, who quietly passed away a few days ago in an Abuja hospital after a bout of ill health, is being buried today.

WE resumed National Conference last Monday, to be confronted with huge tomes of publications that were reports of the conference. We then got the unrealistic time line of two days to read these reports and by Wednesday, to adopt these as the finale of the work that we did over the previous four months. The standout volume was the third, which was titled “DRAFT CONSTITUTION”. Now, that volume was to threaten the outcome of the National Conference, because it proved to be the most controversial documentary outcome of the Conference. The roots of that controversy, on the one hand had been sown even before the Conference and it actually reflected the conflicting views of the different sides in the contestation for Nigeria. There was a tendency, which was basically Southern, which believed that there was the need for a new constitution as a replacement for the 1999 Constitution, often derisorily described as a military-imposed document that was not reflective of the aspirations of the Nigerian people.

IN this part of the world, until recently, there was no scientific explanation for death because all deaths, including those from fatal accidents, were attributed to witchcraft.

BABATUNDE Raji Fashola, BRF, a barrister, is one of the front liners among the 36 governors, especially the outgoing class of 2007 – 2015. There are those who like his handling of Lagos, especially his determination to recreate the mega-polis from a sprawling former federal political capital of the 20th century to a new, modern city; a befitting economic capital of the biggest economy in Africa.