JUST before I picked my pen to write a piece about the recent blast in Abuja, I was greeted with the news that about the 100 or 200 school girls had been abducted in a village in Borno State. It is quite unfortunate that Nigeria’s situation has got to this alarming level where virtually all aspects of life are calling for urgent attention. Nonetheless, the issue of insecurity is the most important as you can seek employment, good roads, electricity and other basic amenities of life, only if you are alive and well. In this vein, my heart goes out to all the victims of the insurgency and their families and I pray that God should bring an end to these inhuman activities.

SINCE he became governor of Lagos state in 2007, Babatunde Raji Fashola has largely avoided unnecessary controversies. Rarely did he engage in those acrimonies that usually distract his colleagues, which many believe accounts for his unwavering focus on issues of governance. Even when his predecessor-turned-godfather turns the heat on him, as he regularly does, Fashola keeps a cool mien. The result, you must concede to him, is that he has performed above average. However, for some inexplicable reasons, Fashola is now turning that legacy upside down by jumping into unnecessary controversies.

DESPITE the security challenges facing the nation, Nigerian Christians have vowed to celebrate the resurrection of the proginator of the Christian faith, Jesus Christ who was crucified on Good Friday and rose again from dead on Easter Day as they join the rest of the world to mark Easter.

Many Christians worldwide celebrate Easter with special church services, music, candlelight, flowers and the ringing of church bells. Easter processions are held in some countries as they view Easter as the greatest feast of the Church year.

Politics is about development and not shouting on pages of newspapers.” This was the declaration of the highly-elated President Goodluck Jonathan during his two-day official visit to Katsina State recently. One can easily deduce two things from the statement. The first impression is that despite all the propaganda against Governor Ibrahim Shema-led administration, without reaction of any form from the state governor, the President saw many things on ground to disprove it. The adage, which says ‘seeing is believing,’ has been proved in Katsina.The second interpretation of the President’s statement is that ‘it is the empty drum that makes the loudest noise.’

Permit me to begin this contribution with some basic truisms: Firstly that God is great and that He alone forges the destiny of nations and rules in the affairs of men. Secondly that He is faithful and true and that He alone is worthy of our fear and of our praise. Lest despair and despondency set in, it is right and proper to always remember this and to continue to reiterate these truisms given the horrific things that we are witnessing on a daily basis in our country today. This is a season of brutality, sadness and fear.

IT was simply natural that angry reactions had trailed the initiation of the National conference recently, coming as to did from the Itsekiri nationals all over the country, who had felt and rightly too, that they were being willy-nilly exorcised from the Nigerian nation, an insalubrious development that assumes dilating significance and irony when the commander in Chief happens to be a fellow delta who must here been living and interacting with the Itsekiri on a daily basis in the past to the surprise of Nigerians the Ijow have over to people representing and no one ogori and itsekiri .

In Nigeria and across Africa, neglected tropical diseases, NTDs, are a daily reality for many children, families and communities. Despite efforts to control and eliminate them, trachoma, human African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness), lymphatic filariasis, leprosy, onchocerciasis (river blindness), soil-transmitted helminths and schistosomiasis continue to threaten Nigeria’s citizens. NTDs disable and disfigure more than one billion people around the world. Beyond the lives impacted, NTDs also limit economic productivity and development, helping to perpetuate a vicious cycle of poverty.

The facts are the focus as part of a trend in journalism spreading from the United States to many places around the world.

THE Russian Federation on the one hand, and the US and her NATO allies on the other hand, are presently engaged in a cold war of sorts over the Russian annexation of the Crimea part of present day Ukraine. Economic and diplomatic sanctions have been announced against Russia; the Russians, on their part, have placed sanctions on some US interests.

FIRST it was the World Bank Country Director, Marie-Francoise Marie-Nelly who claimed that 100 Million Nigerians were living in destitution. Then the Bank President, Dr. Jim Yong Kim while speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in Washington early this month, rated Nigeria among the world’s extremely poor countries. Dr. Kim’s grouping of Nigeria in the same poverty bracket with the likes of India, China, Bangladesh, DR Congo, Indonesia, Pakistan, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Kenya, was hotly disputed by Nigeria’s Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. This is in spite of the fact that the country stands to benefit from the Bank’s policy aimed at ameliorating the economic hardship in those middle-income countries — including a $100 billion increase in lending.