ONE of the greatest philosophers that ever lived, Aristotle, opined centuries ago: “Men come together in cities in order to live; but they remain together in order to live the good life”. It is, however, becoming increasingly harder to live the good life in Nigerian cities today.

THERE has just been a major re-enactment of the Amakiri Episode of 1975. Amakiri was a practicing journalist in the then Rivers State, when on the orders of the Military Governor of the State, Commander Alfred Diete Spiff, he was thoroughly flogged and his hair shaved perhaps with pieces of broken bottles.

IF it is true that morning shows the day, it must also be true that our Judiciary under the new Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, Justice Maryam Aloma Mukhtar, may be heading for troubled waters, if not directly for the rocks.

ANYTHING that is misused is abused and anything that is abused is also devalued. We watched helplessly as the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria gradually reduced the “Take a Bow” procedure to the point of embarrassment.

ALL those who say we should thank INEC and the security agencies for the Ondo war that has just been successfully prosecuted certainly know what they are talking about.

OUR point of order is on Dr. Doyin Okupe who, in the character or a rabble-rouser, has become too loud and he is overheating the polity.

WE are going to impeach the President”. This is one of the most abused phrases in the Nigerian legislative arena. It has been taken to mean that the President is being removed.

EVEN where the President of a country dies intestate these days, it may not come as a surprise. After all, most deaths now come suddenly.

At times, it is prudent that you throw a stone on a house with a view to finding out the actual location of the house owner.

This stammerer in our little village, Oghada, woke up one morning and burst into tears, unwittingly coming up with what later became a song in the village: “Oghada come, come and see, come and see that a lame man has run faster than me”.

THE press in Nigeria has been attacked for poking its big nose in the affairs of others. It lambasts public officials with impunity and it attacks any governmental action with the supreme benefit of hindsight; it formulates bold policies without having to take responsibility for their implementation.

Nigerians are a peculiar breed. This shows up everywhere. In a football match with another country on our home ground, Nigerians would start off encouraging their team; but as soon as the Nigerian team falls into goal deficit, Nigerians would switch their support to the visiting team and, depending on their level of disappointment, they might begin to haul stones at the Nigerian players.

THERE is the seemingly pessimistic view that even without a government, this country cannot be worse than it already is. As a corollary, people may also add that even without a police force, the crime situation in Nigeria cannot get any worse than it already is.

THERE was something for which we kept applauding the military juntas of those days, without the least inkling that they were destroying us softly: We could go to bed one night in State ‘A’ and wake up the following morning to find that we were in State ‘B’ – during the night, a state had been created for us!

WE have just emerged from a gubernatorial contest in Edo State. The election is being adjudged as free, fair and credible(?). For fear of being labelled a sadist, one is forced to join the bandwagon and admit that even if the election was not an outright success, it was perhaps a lesser failure than its forebears.