One striking feature of a capital city in any developed country is cleanliness. Most of the capital cities are very clean and this announces to visitors that they are in a capital city. No heap of refuse, no abandoned broken down vehicles, no abandoned bloated dead bodies on the road and no suicide beggars competing with moving vehicles and almost threatening to harm a motorist who fails to give out alms.

I was invited to deliver the keynote address at this year’s special event on “Human Rights, Sexuality and the Law”, an annual symposium organized to promote awareness on issues relating to the plight of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and/or Intersex (LGBTQI) Community in Nigeria. When this was announced on social media by the organizers, The Initiative For Equal Rights (TIERS) and @YNaija, hell practically broke loose within the LGBTQI community.

BUCCANEERING in governance of Nigeria at different times has constituted a major draw back to the economic development of the country. Painfully organised slaughter by raiders of the National treasury against the nation and her people has pushed the national economy crashing to the ground, with the Nigerian degraded on daily.

On the political implications of President Muhammadu Buhari extending his medical/holiday period abroad, it keeps the nation on ethno-religious tenterhooks,dangerous precipice, uncomfortable tension, anxiety and a dark pall on government and governance.

The story of Onyebuchi Emecheta whom the world knew as Buchi, is at the same time that of a personal and communal triumph; the triumph of the personal will and communal efforts over the vicissitudes of life.