One has seen, over the years, many unpopular government decisions/their fall-outs in this country, but the recent fuel subsidy removal, effective on the first day of the new year, takes the biscuit for being the most baffling, insensitive and reckless, so far.

When in November 2011 the Senate passed a bill prohibiting same sex marriage, slamming it with a 14-year jail term as punishment, international communities who considered the law an abuse on the emotional rights of homosexuals, threatened to put an end to all grants and aids given to Nigeria unless the law was abolished. Here, acclaimed singles and married counselor, Pastor(Mrs.)Ruth Nick-Essien, Founder/Presiding Pastor of Exodus Evangelical Ministry in Lagos, reveals her views on the issue.

A great and impenetrable pall has fallen of Nigeria. It is the pall of violence and division. Nigerians have known for a long time that its soul is broken into many disparate fragments; as many in fact as the number of ethnicities in this country.

ASUU strike is like a cycle in the country. There is hardly any year since 1996 that lecturers had not gone on strike. Sometimes, they tagged it warning strike, indefinite, etc. At the moment they have been on strike since December last year and they code named it Indefinite and Total strike.

I am still in the realm of the metaphysical, trying hard to rationalize a number of things that took place in the country in the last two weeks. I have seen strikes before in this country but not one that was peacefully conducted. I think the Arab Spring mentality has come home to us and gladly too because it will help mitigate the unmitigated powers of our leaders who feel they can sit in their cocoon to dish out choking air for us to swallow.