When I read that each of the mostly President Goodluck Jonathan’s handpicked delegates to the national conference going on in Abuja right now will collect N12million at the end of their three-month meeting, I was outraged. My reaction was based on the following considerations. First, as a very senior academic in one of the best universities in Nigeria, my emolument in a year after sundry deductions at source is less than N4million.

Where do you begin? They say, it does not rain but pours. In Nigeria, the misery keeps pouring down in buckets. And when you think that you have seen or heard the zenith of all the depravities meted by Nigerians to fellow Nigerians, then the mother of all depravity comes along and overshadows the last.

Life is like a revolving door, people seem to be passing through all the time. There are some who believe I have been hardened by a lot of sorrow early on in life and they could be right. What they observe is my calm acceptance and almost indifference to tragedy. I have found that I cant fight reality, so I tend to just roll with it. I do my 3 B’s checklist and I move on.

IN several countries, the position of Attorney General is usually held by a lawyer because the holder is expected to serve as the permanent legal adviser to the government. In Nigeria, it is one post that has always attracted top legal experts especially during the military era. At a point, it was resolved that only a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) could be the Attorney General of the Federation.

The tragic circumstances in which no less than nineteen young Nigerians recently lost their lives in vain search for jobs in the immigration office is heart-rending enough without the sloppy manner in which the authorities have reacted to it. The details are odious in the extreme.