I was at Benin on March 18 to speak at the 8th triennial conference of the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria. I was asked to speak on Nigeria at 50 – Issues and Challenges. I likened the mystery that is Nigeria to an elephant that three blind men encountered and reported authoritatively o

Why Senator Joy Emodi was dubbed the Joy of the Senate by the President of the Senate, Senator David Mark has never been revealed. But the woman who was removed from the Senate last Thursday by the Court of Appeal was an accomplished legislator who left a memorable legacy in her legislative and personal conducts that inspired joy in the gloomiest days of the Senate.

As expected by most Nigerians, we are beginning to feel some movements in the polity. For those who know, all movement has a melody that could either irritate or please. It all depends on where you are coming from, different movements could evoke different responses that is what the two critical moves from the seat of power in Abuja this week have done.

SOME cruel jokes have emerged in the light of the departure of the Ministers of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. They became jobless on March 17. There was even a debate whether they had any job in the first place.

THE fiftieth commemoration of the Sharpville massacre rolled by on March 21. It was a landmark because that massacre was conclusive proof that Apartheid could not be ended by peaceful protests or deputations. Africans had poured out on March 21, 1960 in the South African township of Sharpville to protest laws that forced them to carry passes in their own country.

LAST week, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) planted a couple of car bombs in Warri on a day when a Vanguard Post-Amnesty Dialogue was due to take place.

The same American experience, would not fail to reserve a chapter or more for George Washington, the gentleman, the same writers refer to as the father of the nation. President Madison, the petit intellectual from Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, the unrepentant democrat from the same Virginia, down the line

RESOURCES are of course a big part of it. In keeping with the theory of scarce resources, the scarcity in itself is usually enough to make love to wax cold and neighbours to turn against neighbours. It is an archaic concept, really, conjuring images of the homo erectus clubbing his neighbour upon the head because the latter has been more successful than he has been in his hunt for meat, and man must wack.

THERE has been some excitement since the news broke that, after all, there might be a change of guards at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). If this happens, it will further heighten the expectation that Acting President Goodluck Jonathan may have chosen to chart a course that is not business as usual. The INEC Board led by Professor Maurice Iwu was already looking forward to conducting the next general elections.

THE recent passage of Dr. Stanley N. Macebuh closes a chapter in Nigeria’s golden age of journalism, inspired by two New York imports. Macebuh was one, Dele Giwa the other. Macebuh and Giwa were hired to work in Daily Times.