By Godknows Boladei Igali, Ph.D

             Prologue

Unbelievable, but it's one year gone already!Remember, with the year 2022, still at cockcrow, one of Africa’s most worthy citizens, Professor Lawrence Baraebibai Ekpebu, took a bow from mortal plains on January 2nd. Leaving in his trail at the time, an emblazon of accolades and global reminiscences of an outstanding life including from Nigeria’s President, Muhammadu Buhari, former Nigerian leader, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan and home state Governor, Bayelsa Governor, Douye Diri, amongst others.

By Hassan Gimba

Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up – Mahatma Gandhi

By Bolanle Bolawole

Professor Babafemi Badejo is not a stranger to this column. Today he takes a look at the ”japa” syndrome walloping the South-west Nigeria especially as well as regaled us with his findings on a latest trip across the border to neighbouring Benin Republic. Are we making progress in this country or are we regressing? Read on: “Mr. Rufus and Mrs. Esther Sami were our treasured neighbours until the cold hands of death snatched the kind and supportive Mrs. Sami on October 9, 2022. I could not but attend her funeral at Imaka, Ijebu-Ode, Nigeria on November 25th and 26th, 2022. Imaka is next door to Imagbon, where the Ijebu people gallantly fought the British in 1892. The Ijebu tried to resist British colonisation but lost. A few months later, in the same year, the Fon people (a major ethnic group in Benin Republic), fought the French a second time at Adegon, near Cotonou, thinking they could halt the European’s incursion but they also lost in spite of the bravery of a regiment totally made up of women - a special breed known as “Mino” (our mothers) who constituted a third of the Fon fighting forces.

By Leonard Nzenwa

With streaks of high profile endorsement garnered in the last few days, those who hitherto had not given the former Anambra State Governor a chance to win the presidential election may be having a rethink now. It did start as a political tsunami that swept everything that mattered politically in sight few months back, but even at this, pessimism still sat on faces of no-hopers. Ultra-pessimistic Nigerians that long embraced gloomy outcomes as a way of life, and wear same as badge of honour to dispirit others, are now being encouraged that the cloud of disconsolateness can be made candescent, and lacking in promises and hopefulness can be upturned for good where a Will finds a Way. Olusegun Obasanjo demonstrated this Will to pave the Way by his conduct. And it was a stroke of pen through a six-page New Year Goodwill Message delivered poignantly that the two-time Nigeria Leader used to boldly announce Peter Obi Presidency endorsement. That he, further, elected to classify Buhari Administration as one that progressed the country from frying pan to fire syncs deeply with a nation of Nigerians that have gnashed their teeth and wailed in agony over past seven years. General Badamosi Babangida and Statesman Edwin Clarke and others followed through with Peter Obi Presidency endorsement almost immediately.

By Jude Ogechi Eze

It is a thing of joy to behold a couple chastely glued to one another in admirable marital love in an age characterized by frightening episodes of divorce and home dissolution. This social scandal is more rampant among our celebrities. The new millennium is barely 23 years old today, but it had already seen over 44 cases of divorce among Nigerian Celebrities with this immediate past year 2022 alone recording 14 cases. From Saint Obi to Paul of P-Square, it has been one scary case of divorce to another, with Yul Edochie and Bright Okpocha (Basket mouth) being the latest on the current discussion tray.

By Azu Ishiekwene

The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) will be shaken to its foundations, but it will survive. The most problematic question for the party of course is who carries its presidential flag in the 2023 election, when President Muhammadu Buhari will step down…If Tinubu survives the ambush of the wolves in his party, the race is over – My precipitations, December 31, 2021

By Bolanle Bolawole

Celebrated and accomplished journalists and writers, lawyers of immense stature, and professionals of all hues are stripping themselves and dancing naked on the altar of political partisanship; even those who pretend at calling them to order are no less guilty of similar offences! In writing this, may I also not fall into the same miry clay! The stakes are high; the presidency of Nigeria is touted as the most powerful in the whole world and, perhaps, the least accountable both to the people in whose name it holds power and to reason and commonsense. “L’Etat, c’est moi” (“I am the State”) the apocryphal saying of France’s King Louis XIV, said on 13 April 1655 before the Parliament of Paris, is typical of whoever is the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Hence, the competition for power here is cut-throat. Just as Lawino, the character of Prof. Okot p’Bitek, graphically painted the picture in her “Songs of Lawino” in response to her husband, Ochol’s “Songs of Ochol”, only the barrel-chested, the brave, bold and audacious dare go to the political battle field where power is contested with all sorts of weapons brought to bear. Is that not why they say politics is a dirty game and that decent men and women should steer clear? The opportunity cost of such action is, however, grievous for, like Edmund Burke posits, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”.

By Festus Adedayo

If you read God’s Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican, you would have a whiff of understanding of the battle that assails and the nature of the assailants of Godwin Emefiele, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor. God’s Bankers, written by Gerald Posner, is an expose on the Papacy and the Holy See, known to be the world’s biggest and the most impregnable religious institution ever. Posner, reputed to be a “master chronicler of legal and financial misconduct,” conducted a deep-seated investigation which lasted nine years, into how financial octopuses of the Vatican, known as God’s Bankers, waddled through the ocean of wealth, intrigues, corruption and plotted the graph of political intrigues that these bankers face in the Catholic Church.

By Hassan Gimba

For the past two weeks, the gregarious Muhammed Gudaji Kazaure, a lawmaker representing Kazaure, Roni, Gwiwa and Yankwashi Constituency of Jigawa State in the House of Representatives and one of the most vibrant members of the House, has been trending. He came out with some papers and a story that sounded like a tale by moonlight.

By Emeka Obasi

Life after tennis remains sports for Sadiq Abdullahi, the King of Nigerian courts between 1985 and 1988. With eyes on the Qatar 2022 World Cup, he feels sad that while other nations are moving up, his country continues to miss in action.

By Bola Bolawole

Every trip I make to my home town of Owo brings bitter-sweet memories. Time heals wounds but some broken hearts never mend, like Don Williams crooned. "Some broken hearts never mend/Some memories never end/Some tears will never dry..". Time may heal wounds – or temper its pains but it never completely erases them; memories may fade but they never completely go away; outward tears may cease but what of the ones that keep gushing out in the inner recesses which ordinary eyes cannot see? In the life of every man or woman, there is one love that never dies. How many married couples share this love amongst themselves? Check it out! The person you see as your best friend most likely has another person – and not you! - as his own best friend and vice versa! Life is a mystery! May it not also be a misery! Many persons’ Hell begins right here on earth as a result of the choices they make; as a result of the life partner or "help meet" they end up with.

By Jude Ogechi Eze

“When God revealed Himself to this poor world of ours, men cried in astonishment: ‘Why, it is a child?’ And so it is that the closer we get to God the more we become children, and the closer God gets to us the more He becomes a child. No one in the world ever suspected that the Ancient of Days Who presided at creation would take His throne in that creation as a babe in a crib, just as no one ever thought He would tell the old men of forty, like Nicodemus, that they must be born again. Christmas, then, is the coronation of childhood, the glorification of the young whose hearts are simple, the proclamation to aging hearts that the world need not despair and die, because the Fountain of Youth has come to it to turn time backward, make old things young again.” – Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen.