Mbonu Ojike’s book, I have two countries (1946), is a classic text of transnationalism and transnational identity. It registers the dual conundrum – the doubleness, or betterstill, the “Janus-faced” condition of existing in two places at the same time. One place claims your body, the other, your soul. It manifests the situation of the “double-gaze” and the “double-tongued” all clearly symptomatic of the ambiguity, and perhaps in fact, the ambivalence of double self-referentiality.

On Thursday, a friend of mine called to verify that I was in Enugu for the South-East Economic Summit. I had been billed on a panel with Dr. Okey Ndibe on the “Diaspora.” He saw this on the website of the planning committee for the summit. He wanted to be certain that I was there. First, it was news to me. I was neither aware, nor had I been contacted about the summit.

If there is still any lingering unbelief that Nigeria has been very unlucky to be saddled with third-rate minds as leaders, the verbal scud missiles (some call it mutual pinging) which former military dictator, Ibrahim Babangida, and military dictator-turned civilian President, Olusegun Obasanjo, launched at each other must dispel such doubt.

History compels us to bear this witness: that the NATO-led overthrow of the government of Colonel Moumar Gadhafi is an international coup d’état. It is the longest coup in human history, lasting all of six months and backed by the arsenal of a coalition of the most powerful nations on earth.

Wall Street took a shellacking last week. Shares fell and rose like the yo-yo. It was the uncertainty that could nearly kill the faint-hearted. But of course, the bold trader, the true gamblers – for all that betting on stocks and currency and futures is gambling – staked his lot. Much loss happened last week. The pit of the trading floors be it at the commodity exchange or the stock exchange was bloody.

Hamza Al-Mustapha, former Chief Security Officer to General Sani Abacha, Nigeria’s erstwhile Military Dictator, opened his defence this week on the murder trial for the death of Kudirat Abiola in 1996.

Three matters deserve our urgent attention this week. I will address them in an omnibus way, and hopefully amplify the cautionary tale and circumstance for readers of the orbit who may have read of the appointments made by Imo State governor Rochas Okorocha of his coterie of advisers and special assistants.

Writing is an intensely political act. From immemorial time, the foundation of all civilisation has always rested all the memory of the land preserved by those who constitute the moral imagination of the world. It is the power of the script over the ephemeral. Why do we write? This is the question that many of us have struggled to answer over the years. The questions come in moments of despair, when we feel that gnawing futility of our words, and the limits of our writerly convictions.

Sometimes, Nigeria, and things Nigerian seem made for farce. I put the emergence of Boko Haram as one of the aspects of Nigeria’s political theatre that is growing into farce while it of course retains its more tragic dimensions. What exactly am I driving at? Well, folks, this call by some Nigerians, mostly from the north – and I think it is about time we in the press find newer terms to describe this and stop the north-South cleavage in our national narrative – who are calling, in fact insisting on the Federal Government going into “negotiation” with the Boko Haram terrorists.

Rochas Okorocha, recently elected governor of Imo State, still has his head in some cloud where he lives as some military-imperator. This is apparent from some of his key actions and declarations since his election in May.

In the aftermath of the Boko Haram bombing of the Louis Edet House, special agents from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation,FBI, promptly arrived Abuja to begin to collect data on the incident. Some newspaper reports also claimed the arrival of the Central Intelligence Agency,CIA of the US. I suppose in this climate of global terror, there is increasing transnational cooperation between and among the various spy agencies of the world and the gumshoes who pit-patter around each other to stem the rise of militant terrorism.

By Obi Nwakanma On Thursday, the militant Islamist group, Boko Haram took their challenge to the Nigerian state one notch up. They bombed the Louis Edet House, the headquarters of the Nigeria Police Force in Abuja. As a statement of defiance, nothing could be bolder.  It is a simple statement of challenge: catch me if […]

By the last count, Mr. Aminu Waziri Tambuwal had garnered more than enough votes to emerge the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Tambuwal had polled 252 of the 360 votes to beat the party’s favourite, Mulikat Akande-Adeola. Ms. Akande-Adeola had gone into the chambers of the House that morning with the firm backing of the PDP leadership which had zoned the Speaker’s job to the South-West in line with the party’s zoning policy.

France and Great Britain, leading a NATO alliance are effectively at war in Libya on the pretext of a United Nations’ mandate. The United States, led the early charge against Libya’s Ghadaffi from the air, but has taken something of a back seat, and allowed Britain and France to continue what can now be considered a war of aggression against a sovereign African state, far beyond the mandate of the UN.

Parliament is the powerful engine room of the grand edifice of democracy. There, is where we make or mar the sovereign. A powerful parliament is an agenda-setting institution. Whatever happens in the hallowed chamber of the people sets the pace for public governance. When we examine it thoroughly, the fight for democracy, all that battle we, my generation, fought on the streets for a return to democracy was in truth for the reconstitution of the parliament and, of parliamentary oversight over the executive.