(ifekaokonkwo@yahoo.com) is the most vociferous reader of this column. Highly opinionated, unrepentantly blunt and almost gleefully unsychophantic, he takes his democratic and human rights very seriously indeed and flatly refuses to be as bovinely philosophical as most of us are about the multiple disappointments that the average Nigerian faces.

It has to be said that Nigerian oil barons are not famed for passionately campaigning for the victims of oil exploration.

LAST week, I criticised Anglican traditionalists who have prevented women from becoming Bishops. I expressed the opinion that female and male priests should have equal status and identical promotion prospects in this day and age.

ON Tuesday, the Church of England’s General Synod said “no” to women bishops. Even though the modernisers were only narrowly beaten – by a mere six votes – the traditionalists’ victory is immensely significant, not least because this matter cannot be voted upon again until a new Synod is elected in 2015.

THANK YOU to all the Vanguard readers who kindly sent commiserative emails and text messages when they discovered, via last week’s column, that I had been very ill. Many comments were made about the fact that I only started to recover from my ailment when I was flown out of Nigeria and handed over to British doctors.

I FEARED that Barack Obama would lose the American presidential election but he sailed through; and I am grateful and relieved to the point of tearfulness.

Sure, there have been some interesting and radical new developments in recent years – such as the emergence of the first-ever Niger Deltan President, his appointment of the first-ever female Minister of Petroleum and the fact that millions of ordinary Nigerians can access the internet and own mobile phones.

Last week, 4 University of Port Harcourt students were brutally murdered in broad daylight by a baying mob in Aluu, a community in Rivers State.

EKITI State Governor Kayode Fayemi, said, during a lecture he gave at the Pan African University on Tuesday, that although the post-colonial era is being run by Nigerians, the system of governance at the centre is still “alien and predatory” like the colonial system.

WHY do militant Muslims keep looking for excuses to inflict murder and mayhem on various societies and make themselves objects of near-universal loathing?

AT the time of writing, Mrs. Patience Jonathan is said to be in a German hospital, being treated for food poisoning.

WHILE he was addressing a Nigerian Bar Association conference in Abuja earlier on this week, President Jonathan claimed to be the most criticised President in the whole world and I think it is fair to say that this is a huge exaggeration!

I LIKE to think of myself as a student of human nature and, having travelled widely, I can confidently say that there is a level on which most citizens of the world are fundamentally similar – identical, even – regardless of their racial origins, nationalities, financial circumstances, spiritual convictions, etc.

A FEW days before the Olympics ended, when it had become depressingly obvious that Nigeria wasn’t going to win a single medal, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, the Sports Minister, addressed journalists in London and told them that:

IN last Tuesday’s Vanguard, Henry Umoru reported that Senator Arthur Nzeribe has accused National Assembly members of lacking the moral courage to impeach President Jonathan for poorly implementing the 2012 budget.