SUNDAY PUNCH of August 11, 2013, on pages 70 and 71 provided the names and pictures of people it called “Opposition Power brokers: The Strongmen of APC”. It reads to me like pictures of WANTED men at a Police Station. For a start, the list had no single woman – that tells us a lot about the gender discrimination in the new political organization. It is doubtful if this new “progressive” political contraption is what will take us to the promised land.

Next June, it would be exactly a quarter of a century since my graduating class left the University of Jos. We had been admitted into the University of Jos in the middle of the 1980s, just at the cusp of the end of the term of Professor Emmanuel U. Emovon as Vice-Chancellor.

There were no dry eyes in our group when we discussed the story of 24 year old Gloria Asuquo, who was diagnosed HIV positive which she had got from blood transfusion, at the tender age of 12, and who sometime later, had thought that death would be the best option for her situation.

If the stories around a ‘certain deportation’ leave an unpleasant taste in the mouth, the division it has caused leaves a more bitter taste. Almost every account you read has some ethnic colouration. It is even worse online where the comments tend to be down right rude and abusive— and these from our young minds!

A constant reader of this column has politely asked me to point out the difference between the Transformation Agenda of President Jonathan on the economy and my own often repeated but seemingly crude phrase of commonsense economics.