Point One

Times happen when we are numbed and disoriented, groping to regain a handle on reality and wondering all over at the meaning of this life we live. That is the place I have been for some few days now, with the shock demise of a lifelong friend and soul mate, Oyewole Ande. Not that death is anything extraordinary or a scarce phenomenon. It is as commonplace as its polar end, that is birth, and it happens almost daily around us: an inevitable juncture of mortal existence that should be anticipated and, as such, readily adjusted to when it occurs – sure, with grief, but also with fatalist resignation. But death sometimes occurs by sly ambuscade to a loved one and knocks you clear of that conditioning, leaving you grappling to hold steady in your circumstance. When that happens, the momentary effect is like walking dazed in dreamy land. My friend’s demise penultimate Sunday was of that mould. On the day he passed on, there were no indications few hours beforehand that his departure was...

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo posted an epic shift in political ideology lately when he advised power actors that elections in Nigeria needn’t be a matter of life or death. But you might miss the significance of this counsel if you didn’t know just where he was coming from. The elder statesman, arguably a legacy ruler of the present republic, admonished that politicians’ pursuit of power through elections ought not be all-consuming as it typically gets, since there are multiple options for rendering service to fatherland. “If you cannot be the chief servant, you can be the assistant chief servant. This is because the chief servant cannot do it on his own, he has to work with others,” he was reported saying. Speaking in Calabar at the public presentation of a book on the paramount ruler of Obudu, Cross River State, the ex-president enjoined politicians who failed in elections to help winners succeed in office. His striking counsel: “Politics should not be about life or death. ...

With his ouster from the presidency of Zimbabwe last week, old man Robert Mugabe’s dream of dynastic reign in a republican setting came to a rude closure. His iron grip on power was broken and his hope of posthumous rule through forced spousal succession – what his former allies in the war veterans association dubbed “coup by marriage certificate” – was upended.     The 93-year-old had the record of being the world’s oldest president, and that isn’t counting his being the most enduring ruler in Africa’s peculiar club of power gnomes, having held fort for 37 years. His sole peer in the cohort is Angola’s Eduardo dos Santos, who stood down from office a few months back. Mugabe had been the only leader his country ever had since independence from Britain. The nonagenarian actually planned to hold out for much longer. He was already served up by Zimbabwe’s ruling party as its candidate in the general election due next year. The ticket positioned him as the world’s oldest cont...