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	Theo I Ogune, Esq. International Lawyer and Public Policy Analyst  Chevy Chase Maryland, USA
Theo I Ogune	Theo I Ogune's Special Column
My Welcome Address to the Honorable Chief Justice of Nigeria by Theo Ikes Ogune, Esquire July 24, 2012 They say that the world would be a better place if women ruled it.  Let me not bore you with the science of it all or even focus on whether women use a different part of the brain from the part that men use.  Either way, today, I am going to wish it were true -- that women made better managers than men.  If I were to go by the likes of Farida Waziri, however, I would be in for a long haul!  I also was going to be bothered by your answer to the question of corruption in the judiciary, whereupon you were quoted as simply responding that “there is corruption at every level,” but I am brushing that aside as quoted out of context.  I am also brushing aside the recent report of you saying in a BBC interview that the reinstatement of Justice Salami, a clear victim of corrupt politics, “is not [your] matter.”  Today, I am remaining hopeful. NigerianNews Special   The Sorrows of the Nigerian Supreme Court by Theo Ikes Ogune, Esquire June 04, 2012 Today, while everyone is jumping on the bandwagon of discussing the change of Unilag’s name, I prefer to revisit an old and now very familiar friend: the Nigerian judiciary.  For one thing, the Unilag name change is only a superficial expression of the larger issue of executive power, which is more substantively linked to judicial malfeasance.  I really understand the beef with the change, believe me, but people should care more about the poor state of the education at the university than its name. So I prefer to talk about the Nigerian judiciary.  Just this April, James Ibori went to prison in Britain because he stole money from Delta State.  We all hewed and hawed for about a minute and then went about our business.  What got lost in translation was the opportunity to address a very nagging problem in Nigeria, which is the absolute failure of the country’s judiciary. NigerianNews Special   UNSHACKLING NIGERIA: WHAT A DIFFERENCE THE MIND MAKES by Theo Ikes Ogune, Esquire March 30, 2012 By now, everyone knows, or should know, the legacy of slavery.  Obviously, the thing that made slavery slavery was the system-wide technique used to control the slaves.  Without it, slaves would not have been submissive to their so-called masters.  Slaves did not just stand there and take it. Apart from the very successful Haitian revolt and the revolt on the Spanish Amistad, there were sporadic slave revolts particularly in the Americas.  Of course, slaves did not want to be slaves and individually could have easily killed their masters.  They were not spineless.  They were pragmatic.  So some ran away, and others did other things.  NigerianNews Special   PRESIDENT GOODLUCK JONATHAN: THE TWO SIDES TO THE STORY AND THEN THE TRUTH by Theo Ikes Ogune, Esquire January 03, 2012 Before you read the two sides to the story, you should recall the background.  There was a time when former President Obasanjo was hailed as the hero in Nigeria for showing the so-called “Maradona” that he was “Pele” and “Dunga” combined -- that was when we hailed him for taking the ball from Babangida and dribbling around him to score Goodluck Jonathan for us.  Even despite the mud on Jonathan from wrestling with Atiku or being tossed around at a time when he was trying to fill the shoes of a dead president whose shoes contained plenty pebbles when he died, the hope in him led some of us to lay down our arms against Jega’s pretense that the elections after Iwu were free and fair. NigerianNews Special