IN one of your moves to check my naughty escapades you spanked me really hard and out of anger I grabbed a kitchen knife nearby, charged at you and you took to your heels.

I ARRIVED Yola on Monday this week, for my first visit since 2013. But the prelude to this trip came four days before the gubernatorial election last year. As is my wont, I had written my column in the early hours of the Wednesday before the election, during which I endorsed a couple of candidates: Kashim Shettima in Borno; Nasir El-Rufai in Kaduna; Aminu Tambuwal in Sokoto; Umar Al-Makura in Nasarawa; Aminu Bello Masari in Katsina and Umar Jibrilla Bindow in Adamawa.

THE recent spate of summary but affirmative decisions of the Supreme Court in hotly contested governorship election petitions gives dire warning of the urgent need for comprehensive electoral reform. Obviously, the Supreme Court relishes its image as a fearsome exponent of legal realism. Oliver Wendell Holmes, American jurist and avatar of this school, laid down its doctrine as “The prophecies of what the courts will do in fact, and nothing more pretentious” (emphasis original). Despite its capacity for judicial retardation and political cynicism, the Court has been gleefully torturing our civic sensibility with this doctrine for 35 years. One might say, “The votes of judges of the Nigerian Supreme Court, and no ballots more pretentious, determine elections.”

THESE are certainly not the best of times for Nigeria’s former ruling party, the People Dempcratic Party, PDP. The juggernaut’s transition from power has been so painful, almost like a junkie forcibly weaned off an addiction, that recovery is becoming a frustrating experience. The ruthless vote-rigging contraption that used to arrogantly describe itself as Africa’s largest political party, has dissembled so rapidly, soon after it was thrown out of power last year

I knew right from childhood that I wanted to become a businesswoman. My dream was to be like my mother in business. Freight forwarding however came by accident. Right from my childhood, I have always loved challenging jobs. My father believed that a woman should get married and stay in the kitchen rather than get education. We lived in Kano and I grew up there. After secondary school, I worked in several offices in Kano just to garner working experience. As I said earlier, I got into the clearing job by accident.