TWO things may shock you about the report of the Presidential Committee on Environmental, Survey, and Clean-up of Ogoniland which the United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP, conducted — Ogoni spokes people are rejecting it as an imposition and the Nigerian government, the senior partner in all oil productions in Nigeria, says it needs help to implement it.

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.