Hate us, love us, one thing is for sure; you can’t ignore us! Even if all you do is to stop and marvel at some of the more bizarre and absolutely mind boggling things we get up to as Nigerians.

It is true that there is no country in the world without its peculiar problems. Even among the politically stable states like USA and Great Britain, there are problems of how to maintain a high standard of living and to remain prosperous. In the United States for example, unemployment rate at 8% has surpassed a tolerable rate of 3%, while in Britain, the cost of living has risen with the introduction of harsh economic measures.

(ifekaokonkwo@yahoo.com) is the most vociferous reader of this column. Highly opinionated, unrepentantly blunt and almost gleefully unsychophantic, he takes his democratic and human rights very seriously indeed and flatly refuses to be as bovinely philosophical as most of us are about the multiple disappointments that the average Nigerian faces.

WHAT constitutes power and influence? The most powerful and most influential among us invariably becomes our leader or is made our leader. Information and the acquisition of which constitutes knowledge becomes the leader. Secrecy, the hoarding and guarding of knowledge, becomes the ‘sole preserve’ of the powerful. When we choose our leaders we have hand over the power we have to them. If that power is misused, we have the right to take back our power and give it to someone else. Until now, the Secrecy of the powerful and the consequent ignorance of the people have always made such processes of taking back the power from an erring leader virtually impossible.

WHEN I lived in the North (NigerState to be precise) I got to know the importance of Jama’atu Nasril Islam, (JNI).