Yet Mandela is simply a human being imbued with human frailties. His two marriages crashed before he found renewed love in the hands of Graca Machel, widow of the unforgetable African freedom fighter, Samora Machel. Quite humorous; when he knew his old age can no longer carry his punishing local and international schedules, he told the world: “Don’t call me, I’ll call you”.

We join millions of Nigerians in hailing your courageous and peace-encouraging decision to meet, last Saturday, with the MEND-appointed Aaron Team led by Admiral Okhai Mike Akhigbe, and comprising distinguished Nigerians like Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, retired military strategist, General Luke Kakadu Aprezi and Architect Denzil Amagbe Kentebe.

I want to start by congratulating the Nigeria Football Federation for Nigeria’s qualification for the 2010 World Cup, the first World Cup in Africa.

“I do not think that it is the ight thing for one to write one’s epitaph. So, I am afraid I would have to ask that I be excused from writing my epitaph…. what I want is that when it pleases God to send for me, well my contemporaries would be in the position to write whatever they like, pro, or contra, about me. But History will be my witness.’’

THIS two-part series is a response to Hon Gozie Agbakoba’s Bill in the House of Reps seeking to convert Nigerian citizens that have dwelt continuously in any part of Nigeria to indigenes with full benefits.

IT is exactly 60 years today November 18, 2009 when armed British colonial policemen opened fire on defenceless coal miners in the Iva Valley mine in Enugu. In those moments of collective colonial insanity, the colonialists within minutes murdered 21 Nigerian workers and injured 51.

At the end of the tournament, the Spanish coach embraced the Swiss national coach, Dany Ryser.

It was always going to be problematic. That much was certain- from the moment the Federal Government made its offer of ‘amnesty’ to those we’re now obliged to call former militants of the Niger Delta. How, some had asked, do you give amnesty to an individual never found guilty of a crime?

THE world without Israel was heathen, gentile, who “were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12).

A Bill in the House of Representatives seeking to convert citizens who have lived in a state for 10 years into indigenes is said to be enjoying the cold attention of legislators. Sponsored by Hon Gozie Agbakoba, it says that any Nigerian who has lived peacefully in a state for 10 unbroken years and fulfilling all his civic obligations shall be entitled to privileges of an indigene, including scholarship, appointments to public office and voting and being voted for.