THE demise of Chief Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu may have signalled the beginning of an era, given that the question of who succeeds him as Igbo leader would probably not be answered in a short while.

THE late Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu was my maternal uncle. My father’s mother who hails from Nnewi is from his kindred. She was married to Chief Hyacinth Ezennia Ojukwu from Awka Etiti. Dim Emeka Ojukwu, an icon was a dogged fighter of inestimable value.

EXACTLY 430 days after he was flown out in coma to a London Hospital for intensive medication and 91 days after his demise, the remains of late elder statesman and defunct Biafra Republic Leader, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, was flown back to Nigeria, yesterday, to a rousing reception and ocean of tributes.

GARDEN-City Boy: Strangely, Modibbo Kawu sees poverty as a kind of virtue to be rewarded by the Federal Government. This Islamic Hausa/Fulani Robin Hood might as well ask for compensations for leprosy, river blindness, polio, sleeping sickness, tuberculosis and such other diseases and, most of all, for indolence and almajiri. Already he is asking for the President to reward murderers and criminals.

IN this world, most people are not famous at all. Some people’s fame is ephemeral, some are famous for 5 minutes and are hardly remembered again. Most persons are not remembered at all a year after their corpse is interred. Remembrance becomes enduring only when one’s life’s work has relevance for many future generations.

The 2011 general elections that claimed many of the corps members that participated as adhoc staff, put government on its toes as people intensified the call for the scrapping of the scheme.

It is an irony that Nigeria, the sixth largest exporter of oil, the largest oil producing country in Africa, is also host to over 100 million people living in poverty, according to statistics released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) recently.

Poverty has become a household name in Nigeria. Majority of the country’s population, according to the statistics released by the National Bureau of Statistics are poor.

THE tragedy of poverty in Nigeria hinges on three points. Some Nigerians because they have billions they stashed away in whatever currency believe they are not poor. Those appointed to fight poverty are occupied with spending public resources liberating themselves from the scourge. Religious organisations are teaching that poverty is a disease, a curse from above, a punishment for the misdeed of the ancestors, thereby stigmatising the poor.

THREE weeks ago I was at a meeting in Accra, Ghana, in preparation for the biennial African Feminist Forum, which is convened by the African Women’s Development Fund, AWDF, an Africa-wide grant-making foundation for African women which I co-founded twelve years ago.