Major General Muhammadu Buhari has emerged as the APC flagbearer for the 2015 presidential election and President Goodluck Jonathan for the PDP. Now the battle for the soul and future of our nation begins. The forces of light shall surely prevail over the forces of darkness and God’s counsel alone shall stand over Nigeria. I stand with Jonathan and I say ‘’lets dance’’, ‘’lets get it on’’ and ‘’may the best man win’’. Yet whilst doing so we ought to consider the words of Miss Dora Ade Bentley. On December 11 on her Facebook wall, she wrote the following:

SINCE Boko Haram started in Nigeria around 2009, fear and blackmail have remained the main planks for their growth, and expansion. Politicians, especially those from the north, birthed and nurtured violence, in the name of Boko Haram as an instrument of blackmail in order to wrest power from the hands of the South of Nigeria. These men, as experienced and knowledgeable as they are in Nigerian politics, think that the killings would force Nigerians to give them power

IN a recent article of the above title written by an analyst from Kano, one Mohammed Abdulkadir, he related compelling and mutually beneficial reasons why the North, particularly the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) elite in the north will support the re-election bid of President Goodluck Jonathan, and urged for a rapprochement between the Northern power elite and the present and future leaders of the South-South zone.

IT is preposterous to argue that President Goodluck Jonathan has shown the world that performance is the focal point, the pivot, the driving force of politics. Performance is the strength of Jonathan’s transformation magic.

IN a feat of acerbic verbal tantrums, Nobel Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka Tuesday December 2, attacked President Goodluck Jonathan and likened the Nigerian leader to Nebuchadnezzar the biblical autocrat and king of Babylon who initially denounced the Living Supreme God. Soyinka who addressed a press conference on the state of the nation at the popular Freedom Garden in Lagos, said that Jonathan is tyrannical because the Inspector General of Police Suleiman Abba stopped the attempt by the defected speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal to enter the Green Chamber of the National Assembly with thugs.

The main political issue today is the national convention of the All Progressives Congress (APC) taking place at the Teslim Balogun Stadium in Lagos, where the Presidential candidate of the main opposition party for the 2015 elections will emerge — Muhammed Buhari, Abubakar Atiku and Sam Nda Isaiah are in the race even as an unconfirmed report claimed Rabiu Kwankwaso and Rochas Okorocha would step down.

The history of the end of militancy in the Niger Delta cannot be completely written without acknowledging the role played by the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, who at great cost to his presidency, and with the assistance of his then Vice President, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, traversed the delta region, bringing militancy to its knees on the negotiation table.

STORY-telling is an age-long tradition in Africa that has refused to died even in the face of invasive Western culture. Didacticism is the surviving strength of this age-long tradition. However, African politicians are good story-tellers:they always tell good stories to convince the electorate during the fevered electioneering campaign period.

Faced with the enormous challenge of overcoming Ebola earlier this year, Nigeria now has cause to celebrate. In October, the World Health Organization officially announced Nigeria as free from Ebola. Our nation applied the lessons and resources from our extremely effective polio program to respond to Ebola. And our successful approach to stopping Ebola is now a model for other countries. Nigeria has the chance to lead again to save lives. For every mother-to-be and her newborn child in Africa, this could be a turning point

THOSE of us who were already adults when, in 1986, Professor Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka won his Nobel Prize in Literature, knew very well that he won the laurel, not so much because of his literary prowess but for what he did as a political activist. So extreme was Soyinka’s radicalism that as far back as the 1960s he seized a radio station at gunpoint in Ibadan during the political crisis in Western region. To be honest, although Wole Soyinka is a scholar by profession, he is more known for his extreme political views. And, sadly, he has always been partisan and biased.