Just last Friday, on my way back to the United States, I had called the Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku, to congratulate him on certain aspects of this government’s programme to which he is associated. I had, in fact, assured him of my willingness to help further the cause of this particular project if in the future he needed volunteers.

Dr. Kingsley Ozuomba Mbadiwe was an astute and consummate politician who brought a colourful dash to Nigerian politics. With graduate degrees in political science from the American ivy-league Columbia University, New York, earned in a very auspicious moment in 20th century America, Mbadiwe knew a thing or two about political strategy and horse-trading.

I confess to a frequent feeling of ennui and a sense of futility about Nigeria and Nigerian affairs arising, I daresay, from the large and gnarled picture of its undertaking.

MR. Dimeji Bankole, the young speaker of the Nigerian House of Representatives is built like boxer. He’s also been known to have had at least one good brawl in office. Once, in fact, with my good friend and brother, the Honorable Independence Ogunewe, and this in the Chambers of the Federal House – and he did not pull his punches.

In the last two months, there has been a spike in brutal killings of individuals in Imo state. These deaths have been unmistakable contract killings. The manner of execution seems clearly clinical, unambiguous, calculated to create fear and exact maximum symbolic threat.