Before I go into the subject of our discourse today, it is important to make some classifications in order to avoid possible misunderstandings about my motive for deciding to review a book written by a Muslim scholar concerning the death, resurrection and ultimate fate of Jesus, the alleged founder of Christianity.

All this is disturbing, considering the enormous amount of resources, both human and material, that have been mobilized to ensure that the 2011 elections are better than the previous ones. The blame lies squarely at the feet of desperate politicians and inept corrupt INEC officials, although we should not lose sight of the fact that the 1999 Constitution is flawed in many areas, thereby allowing morally crippled unpatriotic Nigerians to exploit the system for their own narrow egoistic interests.

Dear reader, yes, yesterday, the first of the three-part elections this month was concluded. According to the election time-table released by the partially-dependent Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), elections into the two chambers of the National Assembly were slated for yesterday, Saturday April 2, to be followed by the presidential election this Saturday, April 9.

According to Sugata Masaaki, an expert in the religion, “Shinto is so woven into the fabric of Japanese daily life that people are barely aware of its existence. To the Japanese, it is less a religion than an unobtrusive environmental fixture, like the air they breathe.”

Ever since homo sapiens emerged on this planet after more than three and a half billion years of zigzag evolutionary progression of life from what some scientists call the primitive soup, members of the species have been making concerted effort to control nature. In an important sense, civilisation is the synthesis of both the intended and unintended consequences of human activities meant to domesticate nature for the benefit of human beings.