DR. Reuben Abati’s articles in The Guardian published especially on Fridays and Sundays are always a delight to read, digest, assimilate and kept as a veritable reference material because of their sound editorial quality, lucid packaging, presentation, objectivity and factual content.

It is said that a book is known by the company it keeps. Great books keep great company. Governor Ikedi Ohakim’s “Challenging New Frontiers: Vision, Power, Courage and the Struggle to Transform Imo State, Nigeria” and “Pushing the Limits: Daring to Lead Change in Imo State” are great books because they keep great company. There is no better company for each of these books than one another. The books inhabit symmetrical universes of beauty of forms and words, of rhyme and reason; of syntax and semantics; and of sentiments and sensibilities.

The headline for this piece in honour of the true, the good and the beauty exemplified in two great mortals of our time-Most Rev Valerian Maduka Okeke, the Archbishop of Onitsha and the Metropolitan of the Onitsha Eccl. Province, and Professor Patrick Okey Utomi – has to do with grace and gravity, hence the choice.

We have been treated to tons of analysis since February 6, 2010, when Anambra’s electorate returned Governor Peter Obi for a second term of office. Everyone seems to know in great detail the factors that produced the result that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared. Finding nothing wrong in joining the Joneses, I should have my take on the topical issue

IN Nigeria, genuine patriotism is as difficult to come by as sustained political loyalty. If anything, Nigerians are loyal only to their own interests, especially in political circles.

By Lanre Aminu “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” – Edmund Burke THE functions of law, according to Robert Carp and Roland Stidham, are  to protect individual liberties, provide for the general welfare of the people, protect individuals and property, provide order and predictability and […]

The invited guests were really shaken to see Ahmadu Bello so visibly shaken and in tears. After he was able to collect himself he profusely apologized and explained that Alhaji Ribadu was an upright gentleman who would always give him and the Prime Minister of the Federation honest advice no matter how bitter. He said that most people would normally tend to please him either because of some fear, veneration or expectation of some reward. But what he badly needed was honest advice. He was now much more poorer without Muhammed Ribadu.

The party cannot claim to have integrity when it is still holding on to the money it collected from aspirants. Good conduct and governance are best defined by equity and justice. What informed the choice of Soludo’s over the unarguably better qualified aspirants some of whom have laboured to establish the party in Anambra State over the past 10 years? Soludo may be very tall in learning but what of character?

ONE does not need to be an indigene of Anambra State to be deeply interested in the governorship election coming up there on February 6, 2010. It is not just because the outcome of the Anambra election would serve as a foretaste of what Nigerians should expect in the 2011 general elections.

THE debate was widely publicised, with some heavy names, including international and donor agencies, mentioned as sponsors. The array of partners that organised the debate would at first prove to even cynics that it was a serious exercise. The three-man panel comprising Dr Reuben Abati, Labran Maku and Okey Ikechukwu added its own fillip to the entire exercise.

The draft speech was a master piece but when the time came for its delivery on the lawn of the State House in Marina, His Eminence just put it in his pocket and very much improved upon it with his blunt language.

The good people of Jos are once again been terrorized by a handful of their idle, disenfranchised and obviously ignorant brothers and sisters. They conveniently tag the mayhem and anarchy ‘religious’, there is absolutely nothing religious about killing and maiming your own people.

The civil war had come and gone by the mid-seventies when our generation got introduced to Chinua Achebe’s ‘Things Fall Apart’ in secondary school. It was (and still is) such an epic creative narrative that first brought the rich Igbo culture into our world-view – the names, the language, the food, the proverbs and the heroism.

A PROPHET is not respected in his own community.” That popular saying is drawn from the Bible, and is often used to demonstrate the disdain a community sometimes develops for a successful or famous ‘home boy’. A perfect case was Jesus Christ. Although famed for his miracles, wisdom and deep insight, the people of Nazareth, his hometown, did not consider him extraordinary. “Is he not the son of Joseph, the carpenter?” they asked.

THERE has been a noticeable decline in the quality of education and a deteriorating educational sector in the country.