BEYOND the media image I know pretty little about the late Ghanaian-born BBC presenter, Komla Dumor.

THE National Executive Committee meeting of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that led to the ouster of its beleaguered ex-chair, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, had all the gripping details of a tragic drama. The exit of Tukur was a tragic melodrama that underlined the superior voice of the majority over that of a very powerful but tiny minority.

CHIEF Olusegun Obasanjo’s December 2 open letter to President Goodluck Jonathan certainly did more damage to the President than either he or his supporters care to admit. Aside the fact that Jonathan’s response to his estranged benefactor’s letter lacked both the interest and passion generated by the initial letter, his reply appealed more to the zealotry of his own supporters than it addressed the substance of Obasanjo’s allegations.

NIGERIANS believe the worst about their leaders. No, that’s not how I meant to say that. Or rather let me state it in another way. Nigerians believe nothing by their rulers. They hear them quite all right. They listen to the many words that are spewed at them by paid publicists; words too many to make any sense. But they believe nothing they hear.

IT’S the first day of January and it’s only proper to wish Nigerians a happy New Year with hopes and prayers that 2014 ends on a note of great joy and prosperity for us all. We pray it is a year in which the Nigerian Dream takes on the colour of reality. But the Goodluck Jonathan government ended 2013 with its ill-digested approach to revenue generation and overall development of the country.

AFTER the initial attempt at putting up a disclaimer by an impostor Nigerians including her befuddled father must now be reconciled to the fact that Iyabo was the author of the letter that exploded the burble created by OBJ’s own letter to Goodluck Jonathan. It was beginning to look like a comedy of the absurd of the Baba Sala variety when the impostor purported to be Iyabo sent out her disclaimer denouncing the letter which was the equivalent of a public flogging of her father as a fabrication and threatening legal action.

IT was a kind of love letter, a labour of love the writer titled ‘Before it is too late’ but which has been variously renamed by commentators. I’m talking here of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s letter to his political protégé, President Goodluck Jonathan. It was, or meant to be, a private letter which eventually found its way into the public space.

TIME was about 10:30 pm Nigerian time and the BBC’s Hard Talk was on the screen on this dark night of December 5, 2013. I had only minutes before finished writing my original copy for the column this week.

IT’S by no means certain many Nigerians saw the bottle breaking event that took place in Kano last week as a form of the kind of intolerance the terror insurgents that have taken over many parts of Northern Nigeria are notorious for. But, however, insidious it may seem, what happened in Kano is but a variant of religious intolerance.

Nobody with some knowledge of Nigerian politics would be surprised by the outcome of the so-called election that took place in Anambra on November 16. The result of the charade which has been declared inconclusive by INEC was always going to end up as such.

It all looks and sounds so surreal that Festus Iyayi is dead, victim of yet another case of executive lawlessness. By executive lawlessness I’m not just referring to the irresponsible and rampaging conduct of Idris Wada, one of the sorry cases now functioning as state governors in a Nigeria supposedly under the rule of law.

These are political times in AnambraState and any comments critical of politicians and the parties they belong in are likely to be controversial and read from partisan standpoints. There is, however, nothing inevitable about such readings which are in fact no more than a reflection of the dismal nature of our politics.

MRS. OKONJO-IWEALA may want Nigerians to believe that her father, a respected professor turned monarch, is a trustee of ASUU as her spokesman seems keen to advert

THEY are extremely ambitious and determined. They also wield enormous powers and are without the shred of a doubt the most influential clique of President Goodluck Jonathan’s kitchen cabinet.

AS I got down to write this a day after the Muslim holidays one of the items in a review of newspapers on television is the report that airline fares have been increased. Above the headline of this report in the National Mirror was a photograph of the Aviation Minister, Stella Oduah, whose tenure seems perpetually steeped in controversy ranging from charges of corruption, ethnic bias to highhandedness.