THERE is an aspect of the life and times of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua worth examining. This aspect holds the key to understanding the way that the late president sought to exercise power and to reshape the post-Obasanjo presidency he inherited.

WHEN momentous events occur we tend to remember what we were doing when we got the news. The news announcing the passing of President Umaru Yar’Adua came to me in Ibadan via a phone call from my younger brother. It was in the very early hours of Thursday, May 6- some 35 minutes or thereabout into the new day.

THE elections were not primarily for selection of persons for office in the colonial government but for the transfer of ownership of the British colonial estate from the British Government to Nigerian colonial parties organised to contest the elections.

”The national poverty ratings according to the UN, for Venezuela was 54%. in 1998. Ten years later
the same UN and the Economic Commission of Latin America have recognised that President Chavez Social
programs for Venezuela have reduced the poverty levels from over half the the entire population, to only 26%,
of the same population, with the abject poverty bracket going down to 7%.

Hi readers! It’s amazing what hope can do for you. After Dare told me that using Shola and his team to recover the debts being owed the company was the best solution for Seb’s company’s money problems, you should see how my spirit soared.

BEFORE we move on with our lives, we owe the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua this final footnote: A review of his legacy while in office. Did you notice the absence from his burial of two of his most important political partners when the journey to the presidency started in December 2006: former President Olusegun Obasanjo and new President Goodluck Jonathan, his former deputy?

The Dream Economy envisioned in government’s “‘Vision 20:2020’ seeks to position Nigeria as one of the top 20 economies in the world by the year 2020. In economic terms, this translates to having a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of at least US$900 billion by that date compared to about US$212 billion as at 2008”…. (Source: Nigeria Vision 2020 Economic Transformation Blueprint – pg. 26, work-in-progress as at 5/10/2009.

For the past two weeks, my phone has been the recipient of a lot of calls from abroad. The most guilty are the journalists from Sweden in search of up dates on their country man who has been given an opportunity to coach a World Cup team.

A man at an airline counter was frustrated at the lack of assistance he was getting and decided to get on the said counter and take off his clothes one at a time to make his point. He got the attention he was seeking a few seconds before his boxers came off and left a number of us wondering whether he was mad or a genius.

He had shown early in his tenure that he was a man of truth, a man who seemed willing and ready, with the opportunity he had, to make the difference between greed and graft on the one hand and service to the people to ensure their security and welfare on the other. He seemed ready to prove that the people are the masters, not the servants we had reduced them to over time.