YOUR Excellency: I have on two occasions applied for a German visa in as many years and both applications have been conference-related. If I have, as a Nigerian academic, come this far without yet visiting Germany, it is nothing short of gratuitous insult for your embassy to imagine that a visit to Germany is de rigueur for my academic career or even worse, that such a visit is for economic migrancy.

I have found it necessary to address this letter to you in view of certain developments at your Lagos Consulate with regard to visa requirements which have very adverse implications for academic practice in Nigeria. I am scheduled to attend a conference at the Cologne African Studies Centre, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Cologne at the end of the month, precisely from May 30 to June 2, 2012.

POLARISING as the same sex marriage issue has become in America, and around the world (no thanks to the manner Americans tend to universalise matters that concern them), it simply won’t go away.

IT was a year last week since, on till then, the most wanted man in the world, Osama Bin Ladin was killed by American Special Forces, specifically the Seals.

WHILE it is possible for me to describe Governor Aregbesola’s attitude to religion as one best summed up in the philosophy of ‘Live and let live’, for which reason he gives free expression to his religious beliefs, even in public and with the implicit understanding that other citizens could and, very often, do the same thing, one must also admit that the Governor’s attitude, for the very fact that he is governor, might lead other people to different conclusions as are now being made by opposition elements in and outside the state.