When in October 2014, Sunday Vanguard interviewed Mr Ndubuisi Nicodemus on the alleged forceful conversion of his daughter, Ifeoma, to a Muslim, he was not sure if he did the right thing. As Sunday Vanguard was about to publish the interview, he called to beg that his family was under the threat of being killed, hence we should not go to press with it. Meanwhile, the successful removal of Ese Oruru from his abductors has given him the courage to cry out.

The impropriety of the love story or rather infatuation between Yunusa Dahiru, 25-year-old Muslim tricycle operator from Kano, and Ese Oruru, 14-year-old Christian student in Bayelsa has brought to the fore the role of parents in building society. Why would a youngster elope with (or abduct) a minor lover from Bayelsa to faraway Kano to be married? Why would the minor agree to elope (or be abducted)? What role did the parents of these lovebirds play in their behaviour? The young girl is a minor and could have been lured especially going by the unfolding circumstances which are questioning proper parenting on both sides. Could Yunusa have abducted a 14-year-old girl if he went through proper parenting? And why did Ese’s mother ask of Yunusa immediately her daughter went missing? Did she know of any illicit move and still failed to talk sense into her daughter and rebuke Yunusa?

ECONOMISTS have long found Nigeria to be something of a conundrum. The macro picture has always appeared compelling – large population, oil reserves, mineral reserves, endless tracts of arable land, land and sea borders for regional domination. Indeed the absurdity of our underperformance is only surpassed by our ability to accurately quantify our losses and missed opportunities.

I GET all aswoon in our perennial gridlock, which of course, may have become a phobia for me. As I got cut up in it one good evening and couldn’t deal with its nettlesome taunt, I alighted from our car and loathly walked into a shop to get a cold drink, but the snag was, it took the shop owner, a man of about fifty close to a minute to realise that someone was actually in the shop. He was so engrossed with what he was ogling at that it took a sharp clap of my hands to drag him back to reality.

James Enojo Ocholi, Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN),was born on 26th November 1960. He hails from Dekina Local Government Area of Kogi state. James Ocholi studied law at the University of Jos and was called to the Bar in 1986.