Rivers State Governor, Mr. Chibuike Amaechi, has sworn in six new female Permanent Secretaries.

TRADE Union Congress of Nigeria, TUC, has described year 2012 as a very terrible year for the nation’s pensioners, even as he commended the feat of the Contributory Pension Scheme, CPS. Speaking with Pension and You, President-General of TUC, Comrade Peter Esele, faulted those expressing reservations about the Pension Reform Act, PRA 2004 and CPS, saying “I will say it categorically that the contributing pension scheme is 100 per cent intact. Nobody can illegally access the money in the scheme and the way the act is, makes me very confident and happy that my own pension is protected.”

NIGERIA Labour Congress, NLC, has described 2012 as most challenging to workers declaring that it was characterized by incessant job losses and unemployment among others.

HOPES of 2013 being a better year than 2012 are built mostly on fragments of antiquated promises, worsened by public officers holding the public responsible for their lethargic performances.

All over the world,building institutions is not easy, and that is even more difficult in a country like Nigeria with weak institutions.

THE question therefore is why has it become very easy for government officials to embezzle pension fund in such magnitude. The truth is that the pre 2004 pension reform pension administration in the public service lacked transparency and accountability. Transparency is the quality of being clear, honest and open.

This report highlights some of the positive and negative development in the Trade and Investment sector of the economy over the last 12 months, and stakeholders’ expectations for 2013.

IN 1993, Jigawa’s Government undertook an assessment of the old, non-contributory defined benefits scheme and discovered it to be inefficient, ineffective, and a burden to government finances.

AS 2012 came to a blissful end on Monday, it was imperative to take stock of issues and events that shaped various campuses of Nigeria’s higher institutions, while projecting on the way forward.

President of the Oodua Peoples Congress, OPC, Dr Frederick Fasehun, Wednesday reviewed activities in the country in the outgoing year and conclude that Nigerians were not yet willing to challenge the political leaders to make them accountable for their actions.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said he would have been dead now if the fire which burnt part of his mansion in Abeokuta last week occurred in the night.

Obasanjo stated this while thanking the executive members of Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Lagos State, who paid him a solidarity visit in his Abeokuta home.

Honourable Justice Kayode Eso has come and gone and fittingly, much ink has flowed in the acknowledgement of his service to the legal profession and to mankind. His gargantuan contribution to our jurisprudence has been appropriately chronicled and will bear no repetition.

Amongst four African countries that represented the continent in the 2012 World Robot Olympiad, Team Nigeria emerged first.

Former Super Eagles defender Ben Iroha has sensationally ask for the recall of erring West Brom forward Osaze Odemwingie to the Super Eagles camp ahead of the Africa Cup of Nations in South Africa.

Crawford University, Igbesa, Ogun State, recently graduated 253 students with the institutions Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Governing Council, Prof. Peter Okebukola, calling on stakeholders in education sectors to embrace social media as one of the means of teaching students.