AT the two-day meeting of the fifth ministerial conference of the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation, FOCAC, held in Beijing last month, the issue of infrastructure as the key link in enabling functional integration in Africa received attention at the highest echelon of Chinese leadership.

WHEN my friends from the South point accusing fingers at me for being a Northerner and for the way the region has ruled the country and brought it to its present deplorable state, I shake my head in sadness.

DURING the Vietnam War – a cold war era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from November 1, 1955 to the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975 – many Americans appeared thorn between the patriotic impulse of supporting their country’s involvement in the war and the horrors of deaths, mostly of Vietnamese, during the war.

IN the matter of revenue allocation, especially as it relates to the re-institution of “onshore/offshore dichotomy,” it really begs belief that Northern political leaders won’t let sleeping dogs lie. The current attempt to re-visit the issue is ill-advised and insensitive to current national realities.

AS Justice Abdul Kafarati of the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja prepares to deliver judgement on the suit filed by Jibrin Isah (Echocho) seeking to validate the January 2011 Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship primary election in Kogi State today, there are anxieties as to whether the judgement will not toe the path of the suit filed by the former governor of Bayelsa State, Timpriye Sylva against the PDP for excluding him from the second primary election of the party.

RECENT publications in the press about administrative lapses in the independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has called to question, the public expectations ascribed to the Commission Chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega.

PUBLIC relations, PR, is a term that is widely misunderstood and misused to describe anything from selling to hosting, when in fact it is a very specific communications process.

NIGERIA, with its peculiarities and challenges never ceases to have in stock some amusing developments from time to time.

THE Commissioner for Information and Communication, Mrs. Ibim Semenitari claimed that the residents in the waterfront communities live demeaning life and that the government had decided to take the people away from such miserable condition of living. In fact, what the government is doing is to render those who live in slums completely homeless.

CALL him a man of destiny and circumstance or a man of honour, commitment, courage and a date with history at 60, it is never an exaggeration, because he had always been so right from his childhood.

ESTHER Ekene Jarikre (nee Ugboko) hailed from Ogwashiukwu in Delta State. But she was born and bred in Lagos and attended St Gregory Primary School, Falomo and Orile-Iganmu Secondary school.

Our political journey is strewn with thorns and thistles leaving little hope that the vehicle of state would get us to the Promised Land anytime soon, according to Prince of Nigeria, Rev. Chris Okotie, in reaction to the present state of the nation.

They” in this piece refers to all the cynics, the pestle-wielding critics, the unrelenting, self-appointed activists, the idle and idling, twittering, collective children of anger, the distracted crowd of Facebook addicts, the BBM-pinging soap opera gossips of Nigeria, who seem to be in competition among themselves to pull down President Goodluck Jonathan.

For many teenagers, the need to be appreciated tends to increase from the age of 13. That is the average age when puberty begins and the teenager starts showing physical signs of bodily development around his sensuous areas; while the emotional needs of being appreciated by someone outside mummy and daddy subsequently reaches an all-time high by the age 15.

The recent calls by a few people in the northern part of our country for the re-introduction of onshore/offshore oil dichotomy in revenue sharing should be worrisome to most Nigerians.