Did anybody recognize Hon. Binta Garba last week? She was unmistakable. You couldn’t have missed her in the recording which revealed her wrestling and hard-hitting abilities. Ask Hon.Hafiz Adenowo from Oyo State: He not only got his cloths torn by Binta, a few slaps were added.

Earlier this year, I was approached to do some media consultancy in Nigeria. I’d just left the BBC after 18 years, to set up my own business, so this seemed a great opportunity. I spoke to a number of friends and former colleagues. I’d heard many stories about Nigeria, seen the reports on Boko Haram and had my own impressions of sub Saharan Africa.

THE Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) is approaching its third reading, but its secure passage out of the legislative mire and into law is not yet guaranteed. The chance of failure, though, is now getting slimmer.

In realisation of negative perceptions about Nigeria, a group concerned about the situation launched a campaign to promote the country. Ada Stella Apiafi is the National Coordinator of I-Nigerian Campaign under an initiative called The Nigerian Renaissance Project. She speaks, in this interview, on the need for Nigerians to project the nation in good light.

Senate President David Mark’s quest for a vast land where he is said to be planning a university in his native Otukpo, Benue State, has pitted him against peasant farmers in Asa III, who claim that the retired military officer-turned- politician wants to deprive them of their farm land, their only means of livelihood.

Once again, Senator Yerima is in the news, claiming Islam as the basis for his argument that a girl automatically transforms into an adult of ‘full age’ once she is married, with the attendant responsibilities that relate to the renunciation of citizenship, irrespective of her age or mental capacity. Because the Senator from Zamfara State has gone public with his personal comprehension of the Shari’a, it has become necessary to respond publicly to his utterances.

Senator and former Governor Ahmed Sani, the Yerima Bakura, has finally had his way. The Nigerian Senate has bowed to his will and agreed to be silent about the age that young girls can get married in Nigeria. What this means once it is followed through and enshrined in our laws and Constitution is that girls that are as young as nine years old, provided they are deemed as having been ‘’physically developed enough’’ by their suitors, could be lawfully bedded and married in our country. That is the sordid level that we have now, as a people and as a nation, degenerated to. I weep for Nigeria and, perhaps more appropiately, I weep for the Nigerian girl-child. Yet we have no choice but to live with this new reality and to accept it as it is. After all, our representatives in the sacred halls of the Senate were not sensitive enough or ‘’man enough’’ to shoot down the whole thing, to stand firmly against the unholy agenda and to say boldly and firmly that, ‘’come what may’’, our children must be protected from sexual deviants and reprobates.

Bad news has its way of arriving not in soothing drips but as a brutal, in-your-face truth that leaves the rest of your day effectively over. A telephone call; a voice: “Have you heard …?”

NZE Akachukwu Nwankpo is the Special Adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan on Technical Matters and secretary of Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme, SURE –P. Last weekend, at his home town, Okija, Anambra State, Nwankpo narrated how he missed being ordained a reverend father in the Catholic Church at a time people in his community were almost counting him as one of their indigenous priests.

Just like the winds, time has passed but it is still like a dream, the passing away of Prof. Celestine Onyemobi Onwuliri, who died in the ill- fated Dana Airline crash of June 3, 2012.