EMIRATES is almost always in the news, and that is not a new thing. An ultra luxury brand from the very beginning, Emirates is also known to have a large heart and a liking for Africa, with operations in 15 African countries.

WHILE he shaved in the morning, the daughter of US president Barack Obama knocked on his door asking if Gulf of Mexico oil spills had ‘been plugged’. The speech-making genius that was her father jumped on that little, innocent and domestic event to drive home his point about how important the matter was.

But it is not clear at what point, exactly, that statecraft morphed into kleptocracy, to the extent that the only reason anti-graft government agencies are set up is to get rid, or keep in check, the enemies of the powers that be. The general unspoken agreement has it as somewhere within the maze of our protracted military intervention(s) when, while literally holding a gun to our heads, the soldiers promoted themselves to the highest ranks possible without fighting a single war and cleared out the evergreen treasury in the mean time.

RESOURCES are of course a big part of it. In keeping with the theory of scarce resources, the scarcity in itself is usually enough to make love to wax cold and neighbours to turn against neighbours. It is an archaic concept, really, conjuring images of the homo erectus clubbing his neighbour upon the head because the latter has been more successful than he has been in his hunt for meat, and man must wack.

I ONCE had the acquaintance of an extraordinary gentleman who had come from Jos to have a business meeting with me in Lagos. In the more cordial moments after business had been taken care of, I had remarked conversationally on how his name Malaky, knowing he was from Kaduna State, sounded rather unusual. I had heard of Mayaki, observed I, and wondered aloud if his name was but a variant of the latter.

ACTUALLY, Health Minister Professor Babatunde Oshotimehin has a lot more to worry about than the President’s health.

THE Nigerian Health Minister, Professor Babatunde Shotimehin, before he got sucked up into the whole Saudi Arabia issue, had quite enough on his plate. He always had the HIV/AIDS thing, which was always destined to become a racket
This has been the main focus of my teaching, clinical practice and research activities in the past several years.

AND the incumbent won. Ordinarily, there is no big deal about that, to use the pedestrian parlance, except you consider that the re-elected Anambra State Governor is no ordinary politician.

A COUPLE of weeks back, a London based Dubai estate agent was trying to persuade me to put money to a piece of land. There was no doubting the fact that it was cheap, relative to what obtains here at home in, let’s face it, less wholesome surroundings and living circumstances.

IT used to be politically correct to bash Obasanjo, particularly in the media. The three-time Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces was peculiar in his response to criticism, and even social/reputation battery. He did not, like others before him, court his critics with nice words and ‘invitations to chop’.

A FEW weeks ago, a presenter and documentary maker for one of the more prominent television stations drew attention to the state of primary healthcare in one of the more prosperous local governments in Lagos State.

SOMEHOW, the Nigerian collective sense of the ridiculous was aroused when former NAFDAC Director General and erstwhile new Communications Minister Dora Akunyili announced upon receiving her latest brief, her plans to rebrand Nigeria.

THERE is something seriously wrong when a government no longer cares what the people think.
In the days of the Obasanjo administration when all the most outrageous increases in petroleum products prices took place, Nigerians were involved in the process all the way.

LAST Saturday’s Action Congress meeting was successful on many accounts, not least of all in terms of correcting prevalent perceptions about the relationship between the governor of Lagos State Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) and his predecessor, the Ashiwaju.