Hoha! (Pointblank): The Talking Heads Speak Their Minds

“what we want in the post-Yar’Adua presidency is a Northerner, who will keep to the zoning arrangement of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and in 2015, the people of the South-South will produce the president. We don’t want somebody who will come and before you know it, uses the power of incumbency to destroy the arrangement and plunge this country into a political crisis of an unimaginable magnitude.”

-------Former military junta Ibrahim Babangida's camp on the former dictator's consultation of ex-military junta Olusegun Obasanjo and the schedule to meet Southern leaders in Babangida's quest for the 2011 Presidential election


"Some close friends and associates of President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua reportedly sighted him on Tuesday. On Thursday, four Muslim clerics also saw him in the presence of his wife and security aide and they had a prayer session with him. I don't have a problem with this, I grant a benefit of the doubt, assuming the clerics are willing and ready to lay their hands on the Holy Quoran and swear that indeed the man they saw and who sat down and could not utter a word, but was strong enough to raise his hands in prayer was President Umaru Yar'Adua. However, there are questions to be asked. Are these persons who have been given the special privilege of selective sighting of the President more important than other Nigerians? If the President is strong enough and can shake hands, the more dignified approach would have been to put him on national television and have him smile and wave at us. Given the amount of emotion that Nigerians have expended on the matter of his ill-health and invisibility, we would be satisfied to know that he is still alive, first, before other posers are raised. Besides, he is receiving medical treatment and has been on a protracted leave at the taxpayer's expense. Are the privileged ones who have been allowed to see the President more important than his mother who was reportedly prevented from seeing him? Surely, if he is strong enough to receive visitors as they claim, his mother should be more than happy to see him recuperating. Are the privileged visitors who are now advertising their access to the unseen President Yar'Adua as if it were a status symbol, also more important than Acting President Jonathan who now calls the shots in the Presidency but who has not been allowed to exercise control over the Presidential Villa by President Yar'Adua's very powerful handlers?"

-------Reuben Abati of President Umaru Yar'Adua marginalizing the country and the recent sensationalism on claims of muslim clerics paying homage to Yar'Adua in his Sunday column of the Guardian Newspapers.


"The present confusion in Jos and the Niger Delta are manifestations of the border game; because there are places where indigenes are the poorest in the country, in lands which are amongst the most fertile or resourceful, and therefore attract the poor from everywhere else. It sets up the poor indigene against the poor non-indigene, each side patronised by the rich indigene and the rich non-indigene. Neither side is wrong because one side says, we want our customary rights, the right of the citizens; the other side says, we want our citizens’ democratic rights, we are Nigerians, we have the right to stay anywhere in Nigeria. Both sides are right. The problem is, we have decided to play the game by two sets of rules which contradict one another, one which is the right of the indigenes and the other the rights of the Nigerian citizen. You can’t have both. I always tell those who say the problem is leadership that the problem is bigger. Any leadership you put in charge will not be able to play the game by both rules. You have to change the rules. It’s a larger problem. Societies usually get an opportunity to change the rules after a big crisis. The Americans changed the rules after the civil war."

-------Columbia University Professor, Mahmood Mamdani in an interview with The News on Odia Ofeimun's 60th birthday ceremomy


"For now, I’m not thinking about going into coaching now, but I can still do some other things that are related to football. It’s not like I don’t have interest in coaching, I think it’s too early for me to go into coaching now because I might not be able to handle the pressure coaches go through all the time. I was always under pressure during my football career and to add more pressure by becoming a coach now could be suicidal. I think my family still needs me alive...We learn everyday, and the truth in life is that nothing is impossible. I can’t rule out coaching entirely, but I’m not looking forward to it now? So now, I can give no for an answer, but I might change my mind tomorrow..."

-------International soccer superstar Austen "Jay Jay" Okocha on being a coach in an interview with Sun News Online