A repeat performance of the Jos bestial killings, within weeks; brings to the front burner the question of security in Nigeria and our approach to state policing.

ON Monday, Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) operatives planted three car bombs in and around the Delta State Government House compound in Warri…the venue of a post-amnesty dialogue that had been initiated by this newspaper and was being supported by Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan, the Delta State Governor.

A CHANCE meeting with Coach Shuaibu Amodu last Friday was a good opportunity to know his inner thoughts as he is again denied a place in the country’s World Cup party. He suffered the same fate in 2002.

[….at the Vanguard War Room at the Kirikiri base of the Vanguard Regimental Command….Enter Admiral KKK Omoregie, Major General One Leg Atamuna, VRC Adjutant, Major Olabisi Olakankinta, Major 419 Oboh Utueke,and for the first time since he abandoned the VRC to join forces with the MENDO Atlantic Revolutionary Suicide Squad, the good old RSM Okon Bassey is back on parade] .

I ONCE had the acquaintance of an extraordinary gentleman who had come from Jos to have a business meeting with me in Lagos. In the more cordial moments after business had been taken care of, I had remarked conversationally on how his name Malaky, knowing he was from Kaduna State, sounded rather unusual. I had heard of Mayaki, observed I, and wondered aloud if his name was but a variant of the latter.

Have you noticed the gradually increasing and worrisome political notoriety of some elements of the Nigerian Army? Shortly after President Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua assumed power and posted core Northerners to high and sensitive command positions, certain high-powered elements started inching the nation’s supreme force back to some of the behaviours which in the past occasioned the massive campaign for a return to democracy.

THE Governors Forum, an exclusive club of the thirty six state governors is emerging as the new power centre driving the politics of the country. Presenting itself as a patriotic, supra national and non politically partisan body, it makes magisterial pronouncements which to governors carries the weight of law.

So what? Yes, so what? A friend in Jo’burg saw me battling with this column and said “ So what is special about being in South Africa?”, aware that I have passed this way a couple of times.

The entire story was narrated on a train to Jos, in the presence of “the Hausa men and the Biroms from the Plateau”, and with Mallam Ilyia in the throes of death having been stabbed by his adversary, the rebel, Usuman, who claimed to be the son of an Emir, and who had orchestrated the murder of Ilyia’s wife in addition to burning his house.
It was a story of vengeance.

A NATIONAL newspaper of February 25, 2010 had the following blurb on its last page.
Carson to INEC : “Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has performed poorly over the past decade and has not served the interest of Nigeria well… I stressed that Nigeria’s next presidential and National Assembly elections scheduled for April 2011 must be credible. They must be free, fair and transparent and they must be a significant improvement over the country’s 2007 presidential election, which were deeply embarrassing and deeply flawed”.