APPARENTLY looking for a more practicable way of giving succor to the disabled, MTN Nigeria, last week, at the 2009 International Day for persons with disability commemoration put about 470 disabled persons on wheels.

Surprisingly, the case in Nigeria was a bit different because aside of having the conventional landmines, which were made by the English, we also had the problem of the locally manufactured landmines, which are more harmful, more deadly than the conventional land mines.

The civil war ended close to 40 years ago and it is sad to realize that we still have landmines, explosives, and all manner of bombs still littering the landscapes in the whole of the South East. The matter is made worse now, not just for the fact that these explosives are there but the fact that even the ones that have been recovered have not been moved out and destroyed

Poverty is hitting harder and people are having more children than they can cater adequately for. Some people take advantage of this, and children are therefore being trafficked for prostitution, etc. You find nine, eight year old children in brothels. You have many trafficked and used as maids in houses and shops.

What we have seen so far is that if gas supply improves, and we expect more to be available before the end of the year with the Niger Delta issue then, most of the gas supply pipeline was badly affected and one of the major plants, that is the one operated by Chevron was out for a long time but they are fixing that now and that alone accounts for about 2000 mmscf per day or 800 MW of electricity generation per day.

Anybody who thinks ECOMOG forces failed in Liberia is not being realistic. The ECOMOG forces went to stabilise Liberia and not to save Samuel Doe specifically but to make sure that some level of sanity came back to Liberia. If the ECOMOG forces did not go there at all, the level of anarchy that would have befallen Liberia would have been unimaginable. So, anybody who sits down to say ECOMOG forces did not succeed in Liberia is not being fair to the Nigerian Armed Forces. And remember that ECOMOG was on peace re-enforcement.

Perhaps, it may appear far-fetched to suggest that the Queen of England, Queen Elizabeth II had anything to do with the face off between members of Nigeria’s Senate and their House of Representative counterparts.

I worked locally and with international news agencies and I rode the first Mercedes Benz as an editor in this country. I was in Lagos one day when somebody came from Accra and offered me these things

THE lingering succession crisis at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Kaduna State, took a fresh dimension last week when the chairman of the institution’s Governing Council and former minister of finance, Malam Adamu Ciroma, resigned his position.

The venue of the meeting was packed full on that day with ex-militants and you could see them in various shapes and sizes and character. Saturday Vanguard overheard a policeman telling his colleague, “So, it’s this small boys that are causing fear for everybody in this country, look at that small one there, you won’t even know that he can carry gun, see how innocent he looks like, but, when you see him in the creek, he is a war lord as you are seeing him”.

We started this struggle not because we are trouble makers but because we want the right thing to be done

According to Aristotle, the great philosopher,“ Excellence is not an act, it is a habit.” So when you form a habit from your youth to do whatever you do well; from your academic work and pursuit to the relationship you keep, you are conscious.

First of all, I think the judgement is a judicial scandal, because, how can anybody justify the punishment of two yeas to someone who has been found guilty of having stolen N85 billion, even if the money was shared with five others.

At its meeting of Tuesday, October 27, the leadership of the Action Congress, AC, was treated to what could be described as the home truth. At least, this was the first time in a very long while that former Vice President Atiku Abubakar would be attending such a meeting.

Former Head of Department at the University of Benin (UNIBEN) and Professor of English and Literature, Professor Tony Afejuku is a household name in the Niger Delta struggle. In this interview, the blunt defender of the rights of his Itsekiri people, critic of the President Umaru Yar’Adua policies in the Niger Delta and controversial commentator on contemporary issues, says the amnesty programme of the Federal Government will fail.