Abdulrazaq Magaji

The war appears almost won and almost lost. For months on end, advocates and opponents of amnesty for members of the Boko Haram sect have made strong submissions to press their case.

It will be 34 years, come September, since the death of Dr. Agostinho Neto, Angola’s first president. Dr. Neto was the man who changed the face of Angola’s armed struggle against Portuguese occupation after joining the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA).

The terror group Boko Haram would have been history by now had its bandits been operating in Niger or Chad. This is for the simple reason that security agents in those countries are abreast with terror groups and their antics and could have easily routed them.

As it happened four years ago, the Israelis are again in Gaza, cutting down anything and everyone in their way.

It is almost predictable. Soon, angry, red-eyed Arab youths will be on the move again. Not that the great trek for them has ended anyway, but this time they will fill squares in the Arab world to commemorate the second anniversary of the Arab Spring.

As a Basic Eight or Junior Secondary School 11 student, my last child, a ten-year-old girl studies fourteen subjects at school. This is about the same number of subjects she studied in primary school. Only last week, she told me that a fifteenth subject, music, has been added to the list.

The Joint Task Force security outfit in Maiduguri has become what respected Nigerian author, Professor Chinua Achebe, likened to lizards (Biko, a nefer say soja na lizard, o!) that visit your home the moment you bring in an ant-infested tree.

Kenyan parliamentarians caused a continental uproar recently when, with all the myriad of problems facing Kenyans, they approved new, huge take home pay packages at the end of their current term in January.

It is becoming increasingly worrisome that Professor Chinua Achebe will end his long, glorious career just as it began - mired in controversy.

One of the best told narratives by Nigerians about their country revolves round the possibility of break-up of their country along ethnic and/or religious lines.