•February1999: Presidential primaries in Jos, Plateau State: Olusegun Obasanjo’s victory as the presidential candidate shakes the party.

Diplomats are expected to defend their home countries both in word and deed. But Lulu Mnguni, the South African High Commissioner to Nigeria, needed more than the finesse of diplomacy to talk his country out of xenophobic attacks on Nigerians in his home country. Personal conviction was required.”Mob attacks defile South African values for respect for human life, human dignity”, Mnguni said last Wednesday. “We condemn the violence in the strongest possible terms. Our struggle against apartheid was a struggle against dehumanization of people; it was a struggle for human rights. And given the basis of our Constitution, our foreign policies revolve around human rights,” he added.

In the last 23 years, no fewer than 200 foreign nationals have been killed or maimed in xenophobic attacks in South Africa, an investigation by Sunday Vanguard revealed.The attacks, which mostly resulted in the death of immigrants, first occurred in 1994, the year South Africa had its first multi-racial election, which ended apartheid rule.

Speaker, House of Representatives, Mr Yakubu Dogara, has congratulated Nigeria’s former president and elder statesman, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, as he marks his 92nd birthday.

The Borno chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) led by Alhaji Shettima Shehu on Saturday held a solitary meeting in support of the Ali Modu-Sheriff faction of the party.