A LITTLE over one year after the amnesty programme of late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua went into effect, with hundreds of ex-militants of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, MEND, surrendering their weapons to the federal authorities, the nation seems to be sliding to square one.

THE death of five children at the Jos University Teaching Hospital, JUTH, is a partial verdict on the state of our teaching hospitals, just refurbished at great cost and their supposed attainment of international standards celebrated with an embarrassment to the array of equipment that were brought into the hospitals without much attention to the relevance of the equipment and supporting facilities for them to work.

ASSURANCES from the National Assembly that 29 May reminds the handing over date resound in their emptiness.

EID-al-Adha, the Arabic for Festival of Sacrifice or Greater Eid is an important religious holiday celebrated by Muslims worldwide to commemorate the willingness of Abraham (Ibrahim) to sacrifice his son Ishmael (Isma’il) as an act of obedience to Allah, before the Almighty intervened by providing Ibrahim with a ram to sacrifice in place of Ishmael.

THE Falcons can easily hold the record for continental dominance in female football. They have won six of the seven titles contested in the African Women’s Championship — losing only one final in 2008 to Equatorial Guinea, the team they dominated in Sunday’s final in South Africa.