By Jay Naidoo Having returned from speaking at a conference hosted by the World Bank President Jim Yong Kim on the issue of constituency feedback, I have re-learnt that important lesson: citizens always know better than the government or the market what works for them. The question is whether our political elites are prepared to […]

Anambra State Governor Peter Obi, gave what could pass for governorship endorsement recently when he told the congregation of Catholic faithful and others that one of the illustrious sons of the state had done much that everybody was proud of him.

WAY back in 1979, I was privileged to get close to our idol and hero, Professor Chinua Achebe. I had just gained admission to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

ONE was not too sure if the foremost literary stylist from Nigeria and Africa foresaw his passing on so soon? With his most recent slightly vituperative literary outing titled, There Was A Country, a literary-cum-historical bombshell on the Nigerian civil war in which he lampooned the persons of certain key figures of the fratricidal bloodbath such as Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the vice chairman of the Gowon regime who propounded the theory that starvation was a legitimate weapon of war and General Yakubu Gowon, whom he accused of spearheading a genocide against the Igbos.

HISTORICALLY, the United States and Nigeria have shared cozy diplomatic relations, except during the late General Sani Abacha’s military interregnum, when the relations turned sour on account of annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election by the military and Abacha’s subsequent usurpation of power. During the period, both countries severed diplomatic relations.

I REMEMBER few years back when a prominent American citizen was speaking to a graduating class of engineering students from a particular university in the United States. I remember that he told them that: “Even at the pinnacle of your career your task is not done yet because new challenges will always await you as citizen Engineers”.

Loyalty is a critical ingredient in advancing the cause of any organisation and ensuring its sustainance and survival. That is why every organisation demands absolute loyalty from its members. In party politics, for instance, loyalty is of utmost important for the success of political organisation.

TODAY, April 4, 2013 two-term globally acclaimed former President of Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, and Comrade Governor of EdoState, Adams Oshiomhole marks his 60th birthday anniversary. At its maiden Merit Award edition recently in Lagos, the Labour Writers Association of Nigeria, LAWAN, among others honoured the Comrade Governor for being a pride of modern trade unionism.

INDEED, the situation in Nigeria now is like “the carmel passing through the eye of a needle – the gate of the sanctuary”

FROM time out of the reach of memory, through the Paleo-lithic age to the present era, philosophers, occults, men of God, free thinkers, necroman-cers and metaphysicians, etc have sanctimoniously postula-ted and didactically moralized on the truth and otherwise of The Resurrection of Jesus the Christ.

THE German theologian, Prof. Motlman, rightly stated that “it is not the idealistic concept of none violence that is in consonant with the Gospel, but a responsible action of love”. It is a misunderstanding of the Christian Gospel of non-violence for a man to passively watch a rampaging lunatic break into his house and bludgeon his son to death and rape his wife.

THE recent Events in this our world should tell us many things if we will look up to the prophets of God. Prophets stand between God and man, they carry information from God to man and vice-versa. God never takes man by surprise; He is too caring, too big, too much for man to take him by surprise.

MOST times, we have good ideas and our policy makers, as always, would come up with programmes we thought would advance our causes in good directions.

AT the 2012 Physicians Week in Abuja, the President of the Nigerian Medical Association, NMA, Dr. Osahon Enabulele, lamented that foreign medical treatment was costing the nation over $500 million annually, with as many as 5,000 Nigerians (monthly) travelling outside the country for treatment!

THE news about the death of Chinua Achebe hit me in a very personal way, coming exactly a fortnight of the burial of my eldest brother, Benji; as his Owerri contemporaries called my own “head of state”, Ben C. Nwigwe.