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.