IN 2003, the political terrain in Nigeria marked the end of an era and the beginning of another. I recall the excitement when some “new hands” came on board as helmsmen in various states of the federation, including my dear state.

SCARELY a month after the deadly clash between soldiers and policemen which led to the death of some policemen at 242 Bereko, Badagry, Lagos, another bloody clash between them was recently avoided in Lagos.

THOSE who know former President Olusegun Obasanjo very well should not be surprised reading a recent statement credited to him to the effect that “the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan and that of the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua have failed in their efforts to fight corruption.”

THAT President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan‘s dreams came to pass to continue from May 29, 2011, as president of Federal Republic of Nigeria raised the hope of Nigerians that change is inevitable considering the President’s zeal, commitment and readiness to effect a change in the Africa’s most populous country – a heady mix of about 150 million people, and 250 ethnic groups.

AT least four deaths were recorded with several buildings razed in the Command. Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, SAN, renovated the destroyed buildings in 2009 and handed them over to the Police.

BEFORE the infamous military incursion into governance in Nigeria in 1966, life was good and expectation for a better and greater nation was high.

WHEN on July 12, 2009, the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta, MEND, bombed Atlas Cove, a sprawling Federal Government owned oil facility in the heart of Lagos, it was a shocked nation that suddenly woke up to the realisation that the country as a whole was no longer safe from attack by the Niger Delta militants who, up till then, had restricted their attacks to the oil facilities in that region.

HAVE they forgotten that Akume and Uzamere could best be described as accidental or circumstantial members of the party and Obende was a greenhorn in the political arena who rode on the back of Governor Adams Oshiomhole to emerge victorious in the election.

LAST week’s bombing of Nigeria Police Headquarters, Abuja, was cataclysmic in every material classification. By the time the dust settled, at least eight ill-fated persons amongst us were sent to untimely re-union with their forefathers, while over 73 vehicles were either reduced to smithereens or irretrievably mangled. In the days that followed much of the picture captured by newspapers from the scene was grisly, portraying as it were seeming features of a country at war with itself.

There is one strand of convergence between Mallam El Rufai, politician turned columnist, and I in the last piece from his intriguing ink pot.