A gigantic billboard bearing a smiling woman smartly dressed in a gown, cuddling her son who was also grinning from ear-to-ear stood firmly on top of the ruins of the three high rise apartment and store which had just collapsed and trapped unknown number of people that Thursday afternoon.

The advertisement was an annoying contradiction to the desperate reality beneath it – a grim day light tragic drama that had attracted thousands of persons, including the Governor of Kaduna State, Alhaji Mukhtar Ramalan Yero to No. 012 Hadieja Street, by the Kaduna Central Market last week.

These are not the best of times for Catholic priests in Imo State, especially those in the Archdiocese of Owerri. Investigations have since revealed that dare-devil armed hoodlums have carefully descended on Catholic rectories and mercilessly beat up the hapless and helpless priests. Most of the physically assaulted and wounded priests have been battling for survival in varying hospitals.

”My wife travelled to Ghana to meet one of her concubines. She did family planning without my consent and goes out at will”, a pastor, Sunday Owonikoko, has told a Lagos Customary Court in Orile-Agege.

”My husband is a pathological liar, it was ten years after our marriage that I knew the woman he called his cousin and her children were his wife and children. My husband lied that he was going to Abuja for a training programme. I was surprised when I was told that he now lives in Mushin in a police woman’s house,” embattled housewife, Rashidat Adeniyi, told an Agege-Orile, Lagos customary court.

Not long ago the Lagos State Government was more or less forced to declare that it is alive to its responsibility to the people of the state following an alarm raised by residents and motorists on the precarious state of the Igando-Ayobo wooden bridge.