JUST before mass ended on Sunday at an outpost of St. Edward’s Catholic Church in Eziowelle, the hometown of Francis Cardinal Arinze, the priest invited a young man to make an announcement. The fellow said he had come from the Justice Development and Peace Commission, JDPC, to propagate the corporal works of the Year of Mercy.

The issue, I understand, is the flaunting of religious markers in public educational institutions. Let me begin by confessing that I envy the French to whom those choices have only been recently thrust to the fore – they have always been with us in Nigeria.

Attempts were made recently by some groups to misinform Nigerians about the introduction of genetic engineering into the country to aid agricultural productivity.

For most people, the notion of a hero conjures up images of brave individuals risking their lives for others, or “superheroes” from comic books or films, armed with supernatural powers. But what Africa needs, each and every day, are heroes of a different sort – “action heroes” with ideas and vision, ready to respond to challenges that could determine the fate of a continent with a land mass larger than the United States, Western Europe, China and India combined. This is a lot of land, with a lot of potential.

DEFINITELY, we are at cross roads and perhaps at a cuI-de-sac. This explains why we have been vacillating over our choice of system of government, heated arguments over revenue sharing formula, creation of more states, more local government councils, resource control and so on.

IGBOS have come to that point in the national life of Nigeria, where they just have to face it. They have to face the realities of these times. No one will develop the South East for them except they face it. No one will stop crime and kidnapping for them, except they face it. No one will spare their land from Fulani herdsmen, whether they play the politics or not, they just have to face it.

THE use of mind altering substances of natural origin has been known since the prehistoric times. For centuries, man has tried to either complement some pleasant features of life or escape from the unpleasantness of life, whether real or imaginary, by using fermented liquor and different plant products.

GOVERNOR Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State recently through the reconstitution of the State Board of Internal Revenue, took a bold step towards a systematic increase in the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of the state for the delivery of more dividends of democracy to the people.

THERE are many ways in which government can make progress without necessarily spending humongous sums on consultants or other categories of contractors. Let us start with hospitals. In the typical Nigerian hospital, you can get to the Accident and Emergency,

DEVELOPMENTAL enslavement is historically the worst form of underdevelopment anywhere in the globe. From 1480 – 2016, the Ijaws, statistically the fourth largest ethnic group in Nigeria, are still in the firm grip of developmental enslavement in Nigeria. This explains why emancipation struggles by the Ijaws have put on a Marxist and revolutionary colouration in the Niger Delta. 536 years is enough for any group to appropriate and adopt confrontational philosophy in the struggle to break this suffocating enclosure.