There is little doubt that the present Nigeria owes its fragile existence to the amalgamation in 1914 of the Southern and Northern provinces by Lord F. Lugard. It appears like a miracle that of all the world‘s painfully contrived associations of multi-ethnic groups in the 20th century, Nigeria alone remains superficially united. Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and other mature societies have dissolved themselves into smaller, but independent countries.

THIS week the Kwara State House of Assembly held a public sitting on a proposal to re-name the four-year old Kwara State University, after late Dr. Abubakar Olusola Saraki, the politician that bestrode the state’s political terrain like a colossus for over three decades.

WE see aspects of misinformation, and sometimes, outright disinformation, in the Edo hanging row.

A LITTLE over six years ago, Jigawa State was rated by the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, as the poorest state in Nigeria. At a public lecture in Kaduna, former Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Prof Charles Soludo, after reviewing the figures from across the North, reached the sad conclusion thus: “Poverty is still a Northern phenomenon”.

IT took Egypt only two years after its first taste of democracy to give the latest demonstration of Africa’s abiding paradox: every flower of hope is turned sooner, rather than later, into the weed of despair.