Nothing yet speaks more volubly and very pointedly about the crisis of late capitalism than the images out of London this past week, of off-duty English policemen joining in the street protests against the proposed austerity measures by the government of the United Kingdom.

Anybody who is still in doubt about the intentions of Boko to disorganize and take possession of the federal government must observe the pattern of escalation of their insurgency.

Nigerians are obviously by now already too numbed by the reports of public corruption at the highest places. There’s very little that is new about public corruption, nor anything in any scale now shocking or surprising about corruption in Nigeria. News of public corruption which could still scandalize and shock people in other places, and even sometimes make the devil blush with embarrassment, is now considered quite routine in Nigeria.

There is no innocent literary prize just as no writing is innocent and free of value. Every piece of writing is a political act, and every prize made to a writer is an act of validation and an expression of a given value – the specific and subjective value of the awarding institution. It has very little universal meaning.

Last week I drew attention to this question of the loss of mission and the diminution of the enterprise of the Nigerian university. I pointed to the dire implications of “privatized” universities and university education, particularly in inadequate environments and limited structures, factors which lead to the production of ill-equipped, half-educated, and in fact dysfunctional university graduates.

A friend of mine sent me an e-mail last week, and his question in his mail was both amusing and troubling. He asked me to confirm that “our children in America are planning to build a university in our village.” Of course, “our children in America” are planning no such thing.

It’s been long in the making, but it does seem finally that the future has arrived for oil. Crude oil as the world’s most important source of energy is on the decline. Last Wednesday, the US president, Barack Obama, declared oil so last century that it’s future as a source of energy is now a matter of time ticking: tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

It is not compromise. Compromise is a pragmatic means of negotiation. Appeasement is giving in to conditions that equal blackmail. It is unequal exchange. Ultimately, and in the long run, it undermines the goals and the fundamental objective of the enterprise.