INTRODUCTION: In convening the 2014 National Conference, the President, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, is following on the footsteps of his predecessor in office, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo whose earlier exercise was called National Political Reforms Conference, 2005.

Every country in the world knows quite well that children are the future and does everything possible to safeguard that future by giving the children adequate care and respect their rights.

Nigeria is a good country with good people. I have never seen anything that unites the country apart from football and our children. Protests and rallies from every part of the country over the kidnapped Chibok girls attest to this.

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