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.