This column could just as well have been titled HOW TO MANAGE YOUR ENEMIES – A COURSE FOR PRESIDENT JONATHAN; and, it would be just as apt. Back in my days as a Senior Lecturer/Consultant with the Nigerian Institute of Management, NIM, one of my functions was writing course notes. Among more than three dozen, my two favourite course notes were TIME AND SELF-MANAGEMENT and HOW TO MANAGE YOUR BOSS.

Last week I argued that we cannot abandon our world to misanthropes in the guise of religious fundamentalists, despite the real dangers associated with criticism of religious dogmas, because doing so would imperil human civilisation. This time around, in consonance with my conviction that columnists must help spread enlightenment especially about religion among the reading public, I undertake, in the following series of essays, to lay the ground for atheism.

Where were you in 1960? That is fifty-two years ago, the year of Nigeria’s independence, and what should be considered a memorable year, in any event. It was on the first day in the month of October, and the anniversary is actually in two days’ time, which brings it to the first burner at this time.

We are in difficult times as a nation. We are getting deeper and deeper into the abyss of inaction and poor rendition of leadership essentials. It is becoming humiliating and shameful to some of us seeing the level Nigeria has plunged into. The transformation mantra that heralded this administration has since plummeted and the fresh air that was promised has since become a hollow ritual.

Two close friends of mine who are senior members of the ruling PDP, got caught in the face-off between Arik Airline and the FAAN last weekend. One, a Senator in the last dispensation, spent the entire day at the airport in an ordeal that started a day earlier when he had to queue up for over an hour to purchase an airline ticket, only to be told some two hours later, that the flight had been cancelled.