IN the Sudan, they are known as the Janjaweed, which in Arabic, is said to mean “spirits on horseback”. The dominant Arab regimes in the country responded to increasing armed struggles for self-determination by the Negroid indigenous minorities in the Darfur, western and southern Sudan by arming nomadic Arab pastoralists to attack and terrorise villages owned by farmers. The farmers and pastoralists had been historically locked in tussles over land down the ages.

There can be no end in the foreseeable future to a do-or-die fight for the presidency of our nation. The unbridled struggle for the position of top dog has generally been motivated by the attraction of the prospect of almost absolute power over our lives and our nation’s resources, particularly the proceedas from the oil wells of the Niger Delta.

A colleague brought a fourteen year-old girl to see me. Apparently, her mother’s prophet had a horrific dream about her portending great danger. His antidote was just as horrific. He told the mother that her daughter would have to bathe naked publicly at Bar Beach, Lagos or she would meet a bad end. Despite her protests, her mother put her foot down: the word of the “man-of-God” must be obeyed.

Skepticism continues to trail the on-going conference called by the President in Abuja to determine Nigeria’s future path. There questions of the legitimacy of the conference. Such a question has been raised because there is no obvious constitutional backing for the conference.

Last week, I received a text message from an anonymous critic (Mr. X for convenience) who responded to my riposte on the national conference going on in Abuja. In the text, Mr. X called me a hypocrite for criticising the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) anytime it embarks on indefinite strike to press home its demands from the federal government while at the same time complaining that lecturers are not well paid.