This, and the pursuit of charity, is what Gani Fawehinmi lived and died for. That Gani Fawehinmi was poisoned along with others in the jailyards of our military administrators past will continue to be a rumour, just as the murder of Umaru Yar’Adua will continue to be a rumour until all who hatched and executed it are brought to book.

The poverty factor, which is supposed to have pushed women into commercial sex whether formally or informally, is responsible for the ever increasing share of women in the virus prevalence share (from 58% in 2005 to 61.5% today of women). And while the number of women using female condoms has increased significantly, it has not improved the figures any.

For sure, everything became uncertain after the crash last year of the money and capital markets in the world’s financial capitals and all dependent on them such as Nigeria, except one thing: the world is going to get far smaller than it has always been.

Babangida is talking a lot more about gas flaring these days as he did as Head of State, but he paid his own lip service and Abacha, in spite of his battles with Niger Delta Environmentalists, paid lip service to ending gas flaring.
Obasanjo in his turn, set deadlines, and so has Yar’Adua, who has more or less been neutral to virtually every issue bogging the nation.

The handlers of Information Minister Professor Akunyili, it appears, have steered her away from the “Good People, Great Nation” fixation. The result is that Dora has got back her groove, recognised her constituency and finally figured there is no dressing up the reputation of a country that is not pretty.

IT is a long way away from the days when we bought and sold with cowries; in the days when a lady with uncommon whiteness of denture would be referred to as eyin fun j’owo, in tribute to the glossy whiteness of the cowrie.

It worked for some time, because of the cash factor. Its successor was a bit more thoughtful, being so quiet at the beginning and all of a sudden unleashing terror with one hand and once again offering cash with the other. It was only a matter of time before it all burst at the seams.

The threat by MEND to disrupt any plan to hold the tournament in Nigeria has largely been ignored. Perhaps the FG and the LOC have their own plans of how to deal with it if any violence breaks out on account of the tournament.

In an almost desperate bid to privatise all things privatisable and even those not privatisable, the Obasanjo administration’s advisers on privatisation and oil matters had come up with this very gullible theory of how selling licences for private refineries to be built will solve the twin problems of pricing and supply forever.

The new leadership has moved to reduce the government’s role in the economy and to promote private sector investment and competition Oddly enough but not surprisingly, improvement to the country’s economy in recent years have been attributed to this rather than their Apartheid past.