Economist, newspaper columnist and public affairs commentator, Dr. Dele Sobowale, was 70 years old last Thursday. Sometimes pugnacious, Sobowale is, however, almost always persuasive in his writings on politics, the economy and current affairs. Ahead of his 70th birthday, he sat down to talk on the lessons of life in a session with Sunday Vanguard.

Now that the operational leadership and visible face of Boko Haram, in the person of the filth called Mr. Abubakar Shekau (aka Darul Tawheed), has finally admitted that they were responsible for the abduction of hundreds of our school girls and that they intend to ‘’sell them in the market like slaves’’, it is pertinent and necessary for us to consider some of the emerging, though uncomfortable, facts.

He is the face of terror. A ruthless leader with a twisted ideology. And the sadistic architect of a campaign of mayhem and misery

He ventures into the forest looking for his daughters, armed with bow and arrow in case the terrorists surprise him. The odds are stacked against him. No one has found the 276 girls abducted from their school last month by the terror group Boko Haram.

Take a very close look, if you have the heart, at the gory pictures of the wreckage at Nyanya Mass Transit Park, Abuja rocked by bomb blast in the early morning of Monday, April 14, 2014. About 100 people were killed, over 200 others sustained injuries, many maimed, burnt beyond recognition while nearly 18 high capacity buses, several smaller commercial vehicles and cars filled with passengers ready to leave, all destroyed in the explosion planned and mindlessly executed by Boko Haram Islamist insurgents.

As the search for the over 235 school girls who were abducted by Boko Haram terrorists continues with no hope for the past three weeks, students in Borno state led by Comrade Yusuf Tom and Miss Fatima Zanna Maliki had given government 40 days, which is expected to lapse on May 24, 2014, stating that, if by then the girls were not released, they are going to mobilise students nationwide and gather at the Ramat Square in Maiduguri, where they hope to go on hunger strike until government does everything within it’s power to release the abducted students.

The 15th of April, 2014 will ever remain fresh in the minds of parents/ guardians and by extension the people of Chibok and Borno state as a result of Boko Haram terrorists invasion of Government Girls Secondary School Chibok and abducting over 200 school girls undergoing/writing their Senior Secondary Certificate Examinations, (SSCE).

My worst fears have been confirmed and sadly the Haramites of Boko have struck again. Another terrible bomb blast has taken place in Abuja and many innocent people have been butchered, slaughtered and maimed.

For Augustina Chigozie, the journey to single parenthood is painful and regrettable. Narrating her experience to Saturday Vanguard, she said, “I did my traditional and white wedding. That was a few months after the man proposed to me. We did not go into a long courting before I got married to him. This was due to the fact that I met him in my church yearly camp meeting.

Marriage is the union of a man and a woman in mutual consent to live together, become “one flesh”, be fruitful (have children), multiply and replenish the earth. From time of creation, God found it was not good that the man should be alone and He formed a woman out of him as help mate.