British journalist Charles Bremner's recent report represents neo-colonial wishful thinking, concocted from probably the bar at George The Fifth Hotel in Paris. The Times, once a paper that published great foreign reporting, must not become a rag full of stories of the type that used to emanate from the Nairobi Hilton Hotel bar.

As Frantz Fanon had prophesied, President Mugabe was impelled by his associates to become chairman of the business entity known as Zimbabwe. There were super-shareholders in that enterprise. In-fighting between the various groups with bank notes hidden in their revolutionary berets led to disillusionment and even rebellion.

China is totally committed to environmental protection through its policy of ecological civilization. But how come Chinese authorities seem not to care about their own citizens involved in illegal artisanal mining that is causing environmental devastation in Ghana?

On 1 September 2017, the Supreme Court of Kenya delivered a historic ruling: it nullified the re-election of Uhuru Kenyatta as president citing irregularities in the 8 August poll. The ruling has important lessons for election management in Africa and the world.

Does the ANC leadership, many of whose members lived in exile in other African countries for many years, bother to tell their stories to the new generation that is growing up in South Africa and who know almost nothing about the role played in the struggle against apartheid by the poor African countries whose people constitute the “immigrants” they now despise and harass?

Now that the Gambian story has been put back on the shelf, with everyone waiting to see whether President Adama Barrow will run an administration that will prove worthy of the amount of words expended on its emergence, I feel I can tell my story of The Gambia.

The West African regional bloc’s no-nonsense stand against former Gambian despot Yahya Jammeh is admirable. But there are a few other places where ECOWAS has not performed well. For one, the bloc needs to devise ways by which citizens of a misruled nation can get back their money from a fleeing tyrant – and justice.

It looks increasingly likely that the West African regional bloc will have to send troops into The Gambia to remove Yahya Jammeh and install President-elect Adama Barrow. But ECOWAS should keep in mind that military intervention is fraught with risk. It is essential that thorough and efficient planning is done beforehand to avoid civilian deaths.

Vivid accounts of Castro’s brave encounters with the forces of oppression enabled people of diverse cultures and backgrounds to envisage waging similar struggles in their own terrain. Suddenly, revolution was seen as a possible and viable alternative to corrupt dictatorship in many developing countries.

Mild-mannered and almost self-effacing, the son of the renowned Nigerian environmentalist was yet the owner of a sharp intellect that was not afraid to adopt and keep positions that seemed right to him. What the rest of the world thought was not that relevant to him.