I still remember the travails of late Professor J.A. Omotola, former VC University of Lagos, who worked tirelessly to ensure that the university became the primus inter pares among tertiary institutions in Nigeria. Despite mistakes here and there, Professor Omotola tried so hard to ensure massive positive transformation of UNILAG within the shortest possible time.

Femi Fani-Kayode and Tunde Fagbenle, without saying it, implicitly, believe that the Southwest will be better off on its own. To be candid; they have reasons for the optimism. The “Oduduwa Nation” (for lack of a better name), will be an oil producing nation – Ondo, Lagos and Ogun have oil. It has on the average the best collection of educated manpower and its educational institutions from primary to tertiary are the best nationwide. So, on the face of it, nothing stops it from becoming another Croatia or Pakistan. Nothing, that is, except guarantee of perpetual peace

As a child growing up, I had in my possession, one of the most auspicious letters of all times. It was a letter that for years, I pasted on the wall of my room and committed it’s contents to memory so well that even if I was suddenly woken up from sleep, I could recite it. Beyond committing the letter to memory, I also had a mental picture of the writer of the letter.

Not all the story of the exploits and achievements of Nelson Mandela would have been told decades from now. His towering sense of patriotism, his indomitable spirit of resistance to evil, his soaring charity of forgiveness and several other facets of an unforgettable character which he has bequeathed to the world as a model for sterling human interaction, will survive him for a long time.

Among the (depressingly few) lights that twinkle in the firmament of Nigerian sports, none shone brighter in 2013 than the so-called ‘beautiful game’.