TODAY’S piece is dedicated to Job Obanor and others like him who are physically challenged in one way or the other but who have refused to be tied down by their challenges. Obanor was a member of the defunct Bendel State House of Assembly in the Second Republic. He is now visually impaired and must be taken everywhere by a grandson.

ONCE it was public knowledge that President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan had a preferred candidate for National Chairman of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, I knew he was interested in the 2015 politics. Normally, every president in power in Nigeria would be interested even if he has exhausted his two terms. If he is not running again he will be putting someone of his own choosing as he vacates office.

IN the end, what the PDP dished was a standard menu of ‘consensus’; candidates were an outcome of a smoke-filled inner recesses horse-trading, which ensured that the power blocs in the party divided amongst themselves the spoils. President Goodluck Jonathan got his man, the venerable AlhajiBamangaTukur; just like the old despot, Obasanjo got his, a pair of them, really and the different governors.

YOU did not hear it from President Goodluck Jonathan, his deputy and the highest ranking northerner, Namadi Sambo, or any Minister, or Special Adviser, but it is now official.

ALTHOUGH right on the front page of The Punch of March 14, 2012, the image was not that visible. It was of a man perched dangerously on the mast of a telecoms company in the premises of the Federal High Court, Shehu Shagari Way, in Abuja.