I was just under fifteen when I resumed in St Paul’s Secondary School, Zaria, in January 1954. There was a class ahead of us of less than twenty five pupils. In our class we were less than thirty. The Principal was a CMS missionary called Reverend Freeman who promptly issued …
`Don’t kill me! Please, please don’t kill me. I’ll do anything you want. Please. My wife! My children!’ I sat up suddenly, breathing heavily. It was the most horrible nightmare I ever had. I was covered in sweat. My wife, Blessing, was holding me, looking frightened. She said, `Ugoo, what …
Not long ago independence was easy to earn. The mighty Soviet Union disintegrated into many countries, some with populations of less than ten million. Later some countries earned it from suffering, persecution and by actually fighting for it. Kosovo is a recent example. East Timor, of a population of about …
I arrived in Zaria during the harmattan season and at first lived with my father in Mala Mala. It was dusty and cold and each year, since I had no shoes and walked barefooted, the soles of my feet were so dry and the skin split during that terrible season. …
The bus had taken twelve and half hours to get to Awka, his home town. It had had to manoeuvre through failed portions of the road, an accident causing a long delay, police check points narrowing the `expressway’ with logs of wood into a single lane and finally the usual …
The Pope comes first because he is bigger than Italy or any country in the world, except China and perhaps India, as the leader of about one and a quarter billion Roman Catholics and indeed the leader of all the about two and a quarter billion Christians. He is the …
A few days ago a young man named Ali Sonboly took a gun into a shopping mall and shot nine Germans and wounded many others. The whole nation was in uproar, in turmoil. Another terror attack was in progress! For over seven hours a great part of the historic town …
The first shots were fired in 1948 when Israel was created and the Arabs took up arms. They lost but refused to recognise the existence of Israel. Many subsequent wars have been fought but the result has each time been a stronger Israel. But the Arabs refuse to get the …
This is an injunction from many Christian groups that met in Port Harcourt to all peace loving peoples of the world! It is as protest against blood-thirsty jihadist and expansionist slaughter by `Fulani Herdsmen’ of innocent Nigerian communities across Nigeria. Good idea! I began avoiding beef years ago not for …
This word has been in the dictionary all the while but recently has been given a new meaning, a new emphasis to denote something nearly as dangerous as the bomb! But the atomic bomb was used only once by the Americans on Hiroshima and killed about 140,000 people. Can you …
