The Nigerian political left is decimated, or at best lies flat on the ground like the lizard with a belly-ache. This fact itself makes one ask the question, what is the meaning of “opposition” in Nigeria, given that the field is absolutely dominated by politicians with the same fundamental worldviews about society? Extremely socially conservative and fiscally conservative, their political goals are far often too constrained by the immediate gratifications of power to warrant any ideological scrutiny in any case. Very often, a cohort of politicians gather together and call themselves “progressives” – and the term is indeed very ambiguous because no one actually knows from where they are progressing and to what

It’s again, one of those sad weeks in Nigeria, when tragedy struck and coloured the already melancholic landscape of our lives. The true nature of tragedy is that it is always that quiet, preventable death at an obscure bend in the road. The killing last week of novelist, scholar, and labor activist, Festus Iyayi is that kind of tragedy: his death is a totally needless and preventable death. If he had not been compelled to rush off to Kano to sign-off on the final negotiations between the Federal government and the striking union of Nigerian University professors, perhaps he’d still be alive today in Benin city.

The columnist’s obligation is oftentimes to lay to rest ghosts of miscreant sentiments often imported to distort public issues by people who also sometimes hyperventilate on non-issues.

Annually, for the past decade, the alumni of the Government College Umuahia in the United States and Canada meet under the auspices of the Government College Umuahia Old boys Association, the GCUOBA-USA, to discuss the situation of their alma mater, find possible solutions, generally keep the flag flying, and while they are at it, loosen their collars a bit. These are very busy men and they come with their equally busy spouses – those honorary and graceful Umuahians we call “young girls” perhaps because they defy gravity and age – who have been pillars of support for both the old school and their alum-husbands.

I like Stella Oduah. Her fierce feline eyes – those bold saucers by which we enter into her soul –leaves one in no doubt that she is a force of nature. It is not for nothing that she is considered one of the most powerful ministers in the Jonathan administration. As minister for Aviation, she has certainly taken very bold steps; made tough and demanding decisions, and accomplished quite some visible milestones.

At the Aka-Ikenga dinner celebrating the founding of this association of Igbo fat cats in Lagos, Governor Raji Fashola, either out of postprandial volubility, or in a bid to be charming among friends, or even as some have suggested, enhance the political fortunes of his friend and fellow partisan, Dr. Chris Ngige in Anambra, offered what had been termed an “unreserved apology” to the Igbo. His apology was for the apparent mischief of selectively targeting and “deporting” some Igbo to Onitsha in one of the most unprecedented constitutional gaffes in Nigeria.

George Kofi Awoonor-Williams became just Kofi Awoonor. He chose to be piquant and to shed the vestiges, at the same time, of his colonial past. He died last week. He was 78 years. He did not die from age related problems. He was still quite active; mentally alert and vigorous. He was killed in the Nairobi terrorist event staged by Al Shabaab, the Somali equivalent of Boko Haram, which had taken over the Westgate Mall, a high end shopping Mall in Nairobi last week, and massacred mall visitors. By last count, the death toll from the four-day siege and holdout had been officially put at seventy-two people. More are suspected to be crushed under the rubble of the collapsed mall, and therefore unaccounted.

While he was enjoying the perks of public office, Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode did not call for the break-up of Nigeria; he in fact earned a reputation as an attack-dog for the president and the government of the day, which for him was the meaning of Nigeria. A child of privilege, Mr. Fani-Kayode has, it seems, often taken it for granted that Nigeria would always carter to his desires. It was not, as is often expected of his peers in other places, about public service. It was always about the convenience of his claims to unearned privileges. His father, the late Remilekun, was a great prop for privilege too. He trained as a lawyer in Cambridge. Even made a decent second. But his greatest accomplishment was not alas in law; it was in politics and the vice that accompanies it.

The party in government – the PDP – has splintered into two factions: one still “dey kampe” as the “main PDP,” and caucuses around the president, Goodluck Jonathan and the Party chair, Bamanga Turkur; the new PDP has former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar as its moving spirit, with a coterie of rebel governors and affiliates opening new offices for the “New PDP” in a move at establishing dual authority within the party.

What does it mean to be a Nigerian? This question may seem clearly resolved in the Nigerian constitution: anyone born, whose forebears as at October 1 1960, had roots in any portion of the land which as at January 1914 became amalgamated as the Union of the old protectorates of Southern and Northern Nigeria. Such a person is a Nigerian by birth and has every right pertaining thereto that affiliation guaranteed under the bill of rights. But there are cleavages in the national imagination that make this question increasingly unresolved and academic.

The place of the third-tier government, that is local government administration in Nigeria, has remained the thorniest and contentious issue in Nigerian federalism. It has to be, principally because it actually has led to general distortions in public service delivery at the most crucial levels of government.

Next June, it would be exactly a quarter of a century since my graduating class left the University of Jos. We had been admitted into the University of Jos in the middle of the 1980s, just at the cusp of the end of the term of Professor Emmanuel U. Emovon as Vice-Chancellor.

I read with a lot of amusement the piece of clap-trap circulated through the Nigerian blogosphere last week titled ‘The Bitter truth about the Igbo” authored by Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode.

Last week, I drew the attention of readers of the “Orbit” to theunconstitutional action of the Lagos state government in deporting sixty-seven Nigerians to Onitsha. That action in my view marks the lowest point, since the end of the Nigerian civil war, in the effort at nation-building. The Lagos state government under the ACN Governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola, seems to be highly charged and fueled by a strange form of paranoid xenophobia; a need to cleanse the streets of Lagos of “strangers.”

Once again, the Lagos state government deported Nigerians from a Nigerian state; an action that is as lawless as it is vexatious. Newspaper reports last week indicated that the Lagos authorities out of possibly excessive enthusiasm, and certainly out of pitiable ignorance and overreach, rounded up all manners of the city poor from the streets, sixty-seven of them, put them in a vehicle, and transported them across the bridge to Onitsha, Anambra state.