‘PING-PONG’ diplomacy paved the way to a political rapprochement between the USA and China in the 1970s. Those were the days of China’s Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, US President Richard Nixon and his diplomatic soldier and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Now, Dennis Rodman is trying to use ‘basketball diplomacy’as an instrument to defrost the ice-cold US-North Korean relations.

AS we begin our historic journey into the new, pre-election year with its promised political tumult, I wish to congratulate the All Progressives Congress (APC) for its great success story so far. When Senator Bola Tinubu of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), his partner, Major General Muhammadu Buhari of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and the National Chairman of the defunct All Nigerian People’s Party (ANPP), Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, started the merger moves that spawned the APC, few who were conversant with Nigeria’s history of failed mergers expected the venture to come to this juncture where APC is almost co-equal rival of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

On Saturday, three goals down, I had promised my friends that I was not going to write about the match. “ Win some, lose some,” I surrendered.

The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), at its meeting last week, retained Central Bank’s benchmark interest rate at the industrially destabilising level of 12%, to avert the threat of inflation.

Since President Goodluck Jonathan signed into law a ban on same-sex marriage in Africa’s most populous nation, there have been rumblings in some quarters. It is not whether Nigeria did pass ban on same sex marriage into law, it seems it is about the acceptance from certain international quarters.