OUR paths crossed per chance, one coldwindy morning of December 1963 when we were barely nine years old and we remained intimate, until that fateful Tuesday the 26th of April, 2011 when Alhaji Abdullahi Yusufu Jega breathed his last in a Cairo hospital, leaving me to face the horrifying vacuum his departure has created. When we first met, young Abdullahi was living with an uncle in Gusau (the present capital of Zamfara State) but his family was based in Sokoto.

NIGERIA as a nation is blessed with both human and natural resources, yet women die everyday from the scourge of maternal mortality.

The open admission by theformer FCT Minister, Malam Nasir El-Rufa’i that he had no concrete proof that former Vice President Atiku Abubakar was involved in corruption at the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) is a very interesting revelation of how private vengeance became the official policy of the former President Olusegun Obasanjo administration.

AN issue that is generating so much interest now in Edo State is the Oba of Benin’s purported endorsement of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole for a second term as the Governor of Edo State. While the ACN machinery and the Governor himself are going the whole length to drive the point home by articulating it in as many print and electronic media as they possibly could, the opposition, it seems, is waking up to check them in their strides.

EACH time political campaigns and elections visit Nigeria, the nation’s media are thrown into hyperactivity. The same is true of other democracies. What might be different is this country’s apparent inability or unwillingness to use the opportunity of extraordinary exposure to gauge the worth of its news organs.