LAST week, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the Governor of the Central Bank, ascribed the emergence of Boko Haram to poverty…and highlighted the fact that the funds that Northern states get from the Federation Account are paltry compared to the funds received by oil-producing states.

A Muslim friend who lives in Sokoto sadly tells me that fear of Boko Haram is the beginning of wisdom nowadays…and that the organisation has gradually acquired a legendary status in the North and is widely regarded as a highly efficient terror machine that operates with deadly precision and may even possess supernatural powers and is bringing the Nigerian State to its knees.

LET’S hope that President Jonathanand his allies have learned a few humbling lessons from a totally avoidable strike that exposed a Government that has become increasingly unpopular to global embarrassment.

As 2011 draws to a close, it seems appropriate to look back in anger or approval at some of the people who have, individually or as part of groups, made the past l2 months better or worse in various ways and in various parts of the world.

As the massive row about fuel subsidy removal rages from one discussion arena to another, the thing that strikes me most forcibly is the sheer weakness of the Federal Government’s communication efforts.

NASIR and Hadiza El-Rufai have just lost Yasmin, their eldest child. She passed away in the UK at the tender age of 25 last weekend; and I’d like to briefly reminisce about the cute kid she once was and the lovely lady she became.

MARIA Cecilia Toledo de Schmillen, the glamorous opera singer wife of a former German Ambassador to Nigeria, established AMEMUSO (the Abuja Metropolitan Music Society) and AMEMUSITO (a subsidiary for youngsters) while she and her husband, Joachim, were based in the Federal Capital.

THE internet and newspapers are awash with bitter criticisms from journalists and members of the general public who strongly object to most or all of the names that made it onto the President’s National Awards list.

DR. Conrad Murray, Michael Jackson’s personal physician, has just been convicted of involuntary manslaughter after a tense, drama-filled trial during which he was often depicted as an irresponsible caregiver who administered a lethal dose of a powerful anaesthetic (Propofol) that killed his star patient.

I WAS in the United States when Moammar Gaddafi finally went to meet his Maker last week. And even though Americans have been his staunchest adversaries over the years, the Americans around me did not jubilate because they were so profoundly shocked by the savage manner in which he passed away.