Point One

 When a virulent hurricane slams into an unyielding rock like the Gibraltar, the turf of encounter gets severely weather beaten though neither the rock nor the wild storm become overawed, but neither could as well claim to emerge better off from the tangle. That is what has happened in Kaduna State following last week’s showdown between the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) led by Ayuba Wabba and the administration of Governor Nasir el-Rufai. Many sane hours now after that face-off, both sides must be wondering whether what’s been gained was worth the economic and human loss to the bullish rage, more so that they’ve only gone as far as where they should have started out if common sense had prevailed. Later in the week, the state government and labour congress were herded back to the negotiation table where they had postured on not stooping to – thanks to mediation by Labour Minister Chris Ngige. The pie seems more humble on the part of the el-Rufai administration that had carried on in...

 Some blokes get stunningly foolhardy and irreverent in adventure. And they rub it into an entire nation’s face. They broke into the presidential complex known as Aso Rock, Nigeria’s seat of power and presumably its most secured geographical space, in repeated burglary attempts and even got within a daring distance of the villa where the President – the symbol of our sovereignty – and his family are quartered. What impudence! What impious temerity!  One suspect made the first assault penultimate Thursday on the residence of Administration Officer Maikano Abdullahi, on a street next to the presidential villa. He apparently wasn’t caught, as we have the privilege of presidential communication to know that the police are hunting the daredevil. And as if to reinforce the impunity, burglars returned some four days later for another assault on the same street near the villa, this time at the residence of Chief of Staff to the President, Professor Ibrahim Gambari. They came in the we...

If he were to suddenly pull off his cassock and take to stomping on the soap box, Catholic priest and Spiritual Director of Adoration Ministry, Enugu Nigeria (AMEN), Reverend Father Ejike Mbaka, has enough cult following to make a successful career switch. He went momentarily out of circulation last week and his ‘disappearance’ triggered a mob reaction that dislocated the calm in Enugu where he is based and reverberated across the country. He is only a parish priest in the Catholic church, but he has a big profile on national canvass. Mbaka fights battles on many fronts. Call him a political priest and you’re bang on point. Against the run of stiff reservedness and shyness from murky politics that characterises the clergy, he swims in the murk and openly pitches camp with political actors as negates conventional priestly neutrality. He usually makes his alignment known through prophetic projections that he has been quite lucky with fulfilment rate. But his fiery political activism tips...

 When microblogging and social networking giant, Twitter, announced mid-April that it would site its African base in Ghana, Nigerian media players came under the cudgel for making their country lose out. Information and Culture Minister Lai Mohammed said they were to blame for de-marketing Nigeria.  The minister rightly observed that the natural expectation was for Nigeria with 25.4million Twitter users to be the hub of the big-tech’s African operations, especially in this part of the continent as opposed to Ghana with 8million Twitter users. He held that the decision was not commercial or business-informed, granting however that the company reserved the right to choose where to site it head office. Then, he called out journalists for censure, saying that was what you get when you de-market your own country and lessons should be learnt on how to better manage the nation’s image. “The media is more to blame for this, which most times exaggerate the challenges in the country. At...