Blood flowed freely last Sunday in the Dogon Nahawa villages in Jos South and Barkin Ladi Local Government Areas of Plateau State. This was the latest version of the tradition of bloodshed the zone has adopted. At this latest orgy, over 500 persons were brutally murdered and many wounded by persons suspected to be Fulani herdsmen. The invaders came like thieves in the wee hours on the fateful day and massacred the victims, mainly women and children while asleep.
The recent Jos crisis has punctured the legal fiction called 'One North'. The idea that the North is one big happy family with a common identity and single collective future is not only patently fallacious; it is based on dangerous hypocrisy and make-believe. If it ever existed at all, it is now a divided house; a broken calabash.
Is it the failed Societe Generale Bank, where thousands of depositors lost their money, and the owners of the bank, the Sarakis, absolute owners of Kwara State, were never brought to book and never showed any remorse or apologies? Who can point to any single worthy thing that Baba L’Oje did in Ibadan, his hometown, since he was in politics from the late 1950’s until he died a few years ago?
The Managing Editor of The NEWS magazine, Mr Babafemi Ojudu, at the weekend formally declared his intention to run for the Senate from Ekiti State in the 2011 general election on the platform of the Action Congress (AC).
As a politician, the object of my daily vocational pursuit is politics. But the forum on which I speak this afternoon is that of an Institution of Higher Learning, sponsored by one of the famous Christian organisations in the world. I thought, therefore, that it might be appropriate, from the points of view of myself and yourselves, for me to address you on `Politics and Religion'.
As a student of society- its norms and values, I have watched with interest how views in respect of our own identities change depending on external factors. Our sense of identity is greatly influenced by the present- the part of our colour that sets us apart, our perception of who we think we are and the legal definition (by virtue of nationalisation) of who we are.
A: First, the influence has been in his works, his books. I first read his autobiography in my first year in the university and a few things sat in me from reading that book. The odds he had to fight in his childhood, people who bullied him, how he responded and his challenges going to school and of course, what he did with his life after school and qualification and his commitment to develop and serve his people, to give as much of his talent and ability in order to promote what he famously...
