IN 1992, (then) Rev Father Matthew Hassan Kukah wrote an interesting book entitled: Religion, Politics and Power in Northern Nigeria. Though the focus was on the North, it ended up a great eye opener to understand the mentality of the Northern establishment that inherited power from the British colonialists. That book shot (now) Monsignor Kukah to national and international limelight as an intellectual titan.

FROM time to time, things happen and provide us the platform to interrogate Nigeria’s chequered history and relive its bitter impact on one section or the other of the country. When, about a year ago, Professor Chinua Achebe joined his ancestors, the system virtually exploded. His views in his last book: There Was a Country, portrayed Achebe’s views about the ways the nation handled the events before, during and after the Biafra/Nigeria war. It became an occasion to reopen an old wound, which, to our shock, we discovered was still sore and suppurating rather than healed even after forty three years.

I AM wondering how former Governor of Borno State, Alhaji Nmodu Sheriff, is still strutting around the political landscape a free man. He ought to be cooling his heels somewhere for the roles he played in lighting the spark that has become a full-scale insurgency of international scope.

Suspended (not “sacked’, as some mischievously or ignorantly put it) Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, is a double-edged sword: he cuts both ways. In his five years of reign at the apex bank he has been able to demonstrate his ability for good and foul deeds almost in equal measure.

AS you read this piece, Nigeria will officially be marking her 100 years of amalgamation by her British colonial forebears.