I do not know whether you also saw him, tastefully dressed on cable tv, appealing to us to shun the green white green and put on the red,green and yellow colours of Ghana. “ blah….blah…. me and my peeps blah…. Blah…. Support Ghana blah ….blah …blah…”

The misunderstanding was between me and my brother-in-law, the last born of the family. It would have been a minor incident but for the way it was handled. However, it was the quarrel that opened my eyes and made me aware of the kind of people I lived with. Most of all, that my mother-in-law was not the person I took her to be.

A nation divided right across with an imaginary battle line drawn between them. Whoever emerges as the president of this country under such arrangement will not be a Nigeria leader. He will be a regional leader.

COLONALISM was like slavery, one of the most vicious crimes against humanity. But the last 50 years of political independence in a country like ours deepened that tragedy; the colonial masters seemed more humane. The same banditry and misappropriation of our national wealth goes on except that each stage seems a worse pedestal than the previous.

After a tortuous four year qualification journey that climaxed with 32 teams qualifying for the grand showdown in south Africa, yesterday, the field was reduced to eight, the famous eight, one in which any of the teams therein can lay claim and rightly too, to the most prized diadem in world sports.

THE anti-historically impatient analysts may question the base line chosen for the identification of the issues addressed in these election reform series. There is good reason why the choice of the colonial as base is the relevant empirical base. The reason is that Nigeria’s transition from colonial condition to the post-colonial was evolutionary and that post- colonial changes in the structures and functions of our inherited institutions have been adaptive.

None however has been able to tell me what they would do except to slap him back. I realize I am just postponing the evil day by not making up my mind as regards the proposal with Layi. I can have all that any woman may desire from a marriage, material wise that is.

THERE has been a loud increase in calls for the adoption of the zoning principle from the North. Calls for the application of this unfair advantage has been coming, not unexpectedly, from that section of the Northern oligarchy whose hold on leadership in this part of Nigeria and, indeed, Nigeria at large has become a stranglehold.

Saturday Ghana did Africa proud by qualifying for the quarter final of the first ever world cup on African soil. Saturday, Africa, nay the world celebrated what was considered a welcome development in a world cup that has so far yielded tears for a continent that pulled out all the stops to guarantee a hitch free hosting.

MANY Nigerians have expressed shock at the street fight that exploded in the chamber of the House of Representatives last week Tuesday. I am not shocked because I expected it. The two sides – the so-called “Progressives” and the rest of the House supporting Speaker Dimeji Bankole – took time to prepare for it. The “Progressives”, led by loquacious, cantankerous and cheap Dino Melaye, had been making noise in the media, where they issued the Speaker a one-week ultimatum to resign or be exposed for alleged corruption and bad leadership.