The amnesty programme of President Umaru Yar’ Adua was a success. This is obviously his biggest achievement so far, even though in Nigeria it pays to withhold praise from politicians.

At the peak of the crude oil price boom in 2007, this commodity sold for as high as $150/barrel on the international market and Nigeria fortuitously garnered her highest ever external reserves of over $60bn. This figure would have exceeded $72bn, but for the ‘illegal’ withdrawal of about $13bn to exit the controversial Paris and London Club debts just over three years ago!

I doff my hat for technology. For advancement in communication science. It is that technology that made it possible for me to get out of Nigeria on Wednesday, destination Lubumbashi, via South Africa.

Hi readers! On the way to Tayo’s guest house, I was suddenly filled with remorse, concerning Shola’s plight.

Journalists say a thing they know isn’t true in the hope that if they keep on saying it long enough, it will be true —Julien Benda, 1857-1952

AN independent country is largely self-reliant and does not need foreign aid. Notwithstanding her incredible wealth, Nigeria receives a lot of aid regularly from the West.

A COUNTRY would not be a country if it was not anchored on laws. But a country can be described as one without laws where it has laws that are not enforced or that are enforced more in the breach than the observance.

SOMEBODY brought up the subject of another Nigerian living in Baltimore who had committed suicide despite living what seemed to be a beautiful existence.

MY attempt this week is to bring some attention to the subject of the Asaba massacres, one of the haunting ghosts of Nigeria’s last civil war. I pay particular tribute to Emma Okocha – Onye Amuma Cable – author of Blood on the Niger, the chilling account of the Asaba massacres of October 7, 1967.

We are familiar with the culture of “wasting” our great and talented citizens. When we cannot waste them we neutralize and shut them out of effective participation in nation-building.