SECTARIAN strife is nothing new in diverse parts of Northern Nigeria. Each dispensation seems to spawn its own type of religious zealots, people with one form of score or another to settle with others in their communities if not the state at large.

Yes, millions of Nigerians have for months questioned the huge amount of money set aside for the celebration of what amounted to them as a non-event against the backdrop of mounting external debt, infrastructural decay and sundry failures in the system- Nigerians had expressed their reservations about the entire celebration.

It came a little as a surprise, if for nothing but its loud echo of life under an odious dispensation, one governed by the ethic of unaccountable power- but it was all the same a little surprising to see media photographs of Igbo leaders locked out of the venue of a summit planned to hold at the Concorde Hotel in Owerri.

About three weeks ago, I commented here on the seeming camaraderie between the presidential aspirants of the Peoples Democratic Party, specifically President Goodluck Jonathan and former military ruler, Ibrahim Babangida. Both men had spoken in a language and manner that suggested they could be fast friends even as they individually had their eyes set on the same prize in the forthcoming 2011 elections.

This is the concluding part of a two-part piece by Ginny Nwasoria, a public commentator based in Lagos.

THE American Indian proverb, “Respect your brother’s dream” can be put differently and correctly as “Respect your brother’s success”. However, we oftentimes find ourselves in the opposite situation, scorning and slandering both the dream and success of our brother as the call to be our brother’s keeper is moribund.

THERE is much to be learnt from the Nigeria’s decolonisation politics on the issue of opposition parties in electoral and governance politics in Africa. Once the option of revolutionary opposition to the British colonial regime was precluded by Nigerian frontline anti-colonial parties, and agitation for self-rule was premised on constitutional reform of the colonial governments in the provinces of the British Empire, decolonisation as a process became progressive pressure for inclusion of nationalist parties in the running of the colonial government.

Check out his visit to the PDP office last week and others like that. Jonathan on the other hand has been and seems determined to remain a very good student of the IBB school, at least with regards to managing his emotions. Looking then at the manner the PDP has handled questions of the presidential contest within the party so far, one would be forgiven to think Nigerian politics has entered a new era of tolerance.

Clearly this was not the case, and so many people had to pay for it with their life. Even at that, the Police are still not taking responsibility for anything. Their spokesperson in Lagos, Frank Mba, has been telling sceptical Nigerians that their investigations have so far shown no police man put up a road block at the point the accident occurred.

If my memory serves me right, the book was about a young Nigerian job-seeker in Lagos. Each morning he leaves his humble home in search of a non-existent job, and his close observations of the struggles of daily living on the streets of Lagos constitute the backbone of the book’s narrative.