It was an event Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State was scheduled to hand over 250 taxi cabs to taxi operators in the state as part of on-going efforts to phase out rickety cabs in the state. But the event was to be temporarily disrupted by a bomb scare which created panic beyond the confines of the State Secretariat, Alausa.

Before now, street begging was the exclusive preserve of the physically-challenged whose condition usually attracted sympathy. Majority of them were usually seen at bus-stops and other public places soliciting for alms.

Pandemonium will best describe the scene that fateful Friday of December 31, 2010. This was after an explosive device was detonated at a part of the Mammy market located inside the Mogadishu Cantonment Barracks in Abuja where people sell roasted fish.

As you read this piece, thAs yurbed and confused. Many are still struggling to beat the deadline of updating their accounts in various banks across the country, while others are jostling at different Glo or MTN centres to beat the deadline of registering their lines.

The coming of Christianity to Igboland has severally been hailed by commentators for the positive changes it brought into the communities. Christian missionaries established schools, hospitals, orphanages and other facilities that helped to improve the well being of the people.

Friday September 26, 2010 made it exactly 18 years after the death of military officers in the C-130 plane crash on September 26, 1992. That air crash at Ejigbo, Lagos shook Nigeria to its foundation as all the passengers died, with 173 bodies found later and 27 missing.

WITH memories of the forceful eviction of Maroko residents 20 years ago by the then Colonel Raji Rasaki military administration still fresh in the minds of many people, a similar episode was re-enacted last week with residents of Adekunle, Makoko, Yaba area on the receiving end.

The waste to wealth programme, it will be recalled was launched in August 1999 by the former Governor of Lagos State, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, with the core objective of harnessing a new line of economic activities and wooing interested investors through the provision of enabling environment for management of resources, protection of the environment through re-use and re-distribution of discarded materials.

That it was a bleak Christmas for residents of Jos, the Plateau State capital is hardly news any longer. No thanks to the seven explosions which sent over 30 people to their early graves, amputated limbs and other human parts and ensured that many others spent the Christmas on hospital beds with the conditions of many still uncertain.

Disability is not a sickness, I am not ashamed to sit on this wheelchair to address this great audience. Nigerians should not relegate us to the background because persons with disabilities can live a productive life. Parents should not abandon children with disabilities because there is hope for them.’‘