MORE than 29,000 children are dead. Another 640,000 are malnourished enough that their death is a matter of time. The death toll increases from people scrambling for food or through gunmen who want to hijack food that relief organisations are distributing or stop it from reaching the people.

COMPARISONS between Boko Haram and the militants in the Niger Delta, as the explanation for the proposed talks between government and the group in Maiduguri are inevitable, though many would refuse to see the connection.

PROFESSOR Ben Nwabueze at his 80th birthday re-stated his idea of the Nigeria he wanted since his return to the country in 1962. He had thought Nigeria after independence would be the great nation that many foretold.

SENATOR Ahmed Makarfi was governor of Kaduna State for eight years. Thereafter, he was in the Senate for four years, but the people denied him a space when he sought re-election, though his party, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, returned him unopposed in the primaries.

LAST February when the tiff between Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Aloysius Katsina-Alu, and President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Isa Ayo Salami, became public, Salami had predicted, “chained reactions.” In a February 4 letter, he warned Katsina-Alu not to create a “dangerous precedent which may give rise to chained reactions.”