THE Joint Military Task Force, yesterday, averted what would have turned out as a bloody Easter in Kano, following a combat operation that left 14 insurgents dead, a primed car laden with explosives for suicide attack and assorted weapons of war recovered.

There is no doubt that Chinua Achebe, who died last week in the United States after a long residence there probably because it was better for him to live there than in Nigeria, was, by many accounts, an outstanding writer. His first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), received wide critical acclaim soon after its publication, which came in the wake of the great wave of decolonization. A year before the publication of the novel, Ghana became the first independent African country, in 1957. Things Fall Apart was published at a time when non-Western but Western educated intellectuals and cultural nationalists were looking around for indigenous cultural documents that could vindicate pre-colonial African cultures, in what the British-Indian writer, Salman Rushdie once called, in memorable phrase, “writing back to the Centre” (the West).

Fresh facts emerged, at the weekend, that former President Matthew Okikiolakan Aremu Olusegun Obasanjo is intensifying his opposition to the 2015 re-election aspiration of incumbent President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan.

Mrs. Tokunbo Awolowo-Dosunmu, one of the surviving children of the matriarch of Awolowo family, Mrs. HID Awolowo, has asked those who might have been wishing their aged mother death to stop that, saying, no one could fast track her death.

Akolade Arowolo, who allegedly murdered his banker wife, Titilayo Arowolo, Thursday, told an Ikeja High Court that his late wife preferred her ex-boyfriend to him and their baby.

CHIEF Oluwole Awolowo, publisher of the Tribune titles, is dead, aged 70 years old.
A statement by the Managing Director/ Editor -in- Chief of African Newspapers of Nigeria (ANN) Plc, Mr Edward Dickson said, Thursday: “We announce the final home call of the Publisher/ Vice Chairman of the African Newspapers of Nigeria (ANN) Pls, Publishers of the Tribune titles, Chief Awolowo.

…Ndigbo to decide this week …
AS the death toll in last Monday’s bomb blasts at a bus park in Kano rises to 80, President of the Igbo Youth Movement, IYM, Evangelist Elliot Uko, has urged Igbo youths to remain calm and await the decision of Igbo leaders this week. In a chat with reporters, Uko holds northern leaders and politicians responsible for the Boko Haram insurgency, saying that sponsors of the sect have murdered sleep. Excerpts:

JOHANNESBURG – A South African court on Tuesday jailed Nigerian national, Henry Okah for 24 years after he was convicted of 13 terrorism charges over twin bombings in Abuja in 2010.

Fresh facts emerged, Monday, on the presence of more illegal aliens suspected to be terrorists in Ijora area of Lagos, as information at Vanguard’s disposal revealed that the suspects, who are Malians and Chadians, were occupying a three-storey building owned by a state government.

NOBLE laureate Professor Wole Soyinka has lashed at members of Boko Haram, saying they have limited knowledge of Islamic religion.