Senator Felix Ibru, who died, yesterday, at the age of 80, was a pioneer of sorts in several areas of human endeavour. He excelled not only in his studies and professional calling, but also in the public space where he used his office to push through some of the country’s enduring legislations on public probity. Before the recent rush for the Senate by former governors, Ibru had shown how one could harness experience garnered from executive office with legislative duties to project public policy.

The operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS) have been very busy in recent times. They have been “fingered” in many “developments” all over the country. One can say the agency is fighting for relevance as the operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) are daily taking the shine away from other security agencies. In this new political dispensation though, the DSS has “reformatted” and has found far wider roles than it had ever did before.

Top on the agenda of Governor Badaru Abubakar is to create a sustainable economy for Jigawa State. To achieve this, he needs resources. That is one of the reasons he is collaborating with fellow governors from across the North to negotiate a loan facility from the Islamic Bank. Abubakar speaks on the loan issue in this interview and what he has been doing in the last 10 months of his administration to turn the economy of what he called “a civil service state” around.

The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Mr. Ibe Kachikwu , yesterday, assured Nigerians that the fuel crisis that appears to be crippling the nation’;s economy would end within the next two days, while he promised to work with the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, in addressing the foreign exchange challenges confronting major oil marketers.

Barely 10 months into the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, a former President of the Nigerian Bar Association (2006–2008), Dr. Olisa Agbakoba, takes a critical look at the state of the nation. Agbakoba, who argues that Nigeria was already sliding into recession, given its equal negative growths in two quarters, however, advises Buhari on how to save the nation. Excerpts:

Mr Godwin Obaseki is the Chairman of the Edo State Economic Team and one of the people aspiring to occupy the Osadebey Avenue after Governor Adams Oshiomhole’s tenure in November 2016. In this interview, he bares his mind on why he wants to govern Edo, saying that with the foundation laid by his boss, Oshiomhole, he will take the state to the next level with his expertise in the financial sector.

With the worsening fuel scarcity facing Nigeria’s economy amid forex crisis, it appears effort by government to revive the economy is not yielding positive results. In some areas of Lagos, fuel scarcity is biting very hard as transportation fare has increased by 50 percent.

REVEREND Felix Omobude is the National President of Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, PFN and General Superintendent of New Covenant Gospel Church, Benin City. In this interview with journalists recently in Benin, he insisted that the Church has a vital role to play in the anti-corruption war of the present government. He also spoke on the abduction of 14-year Miss Ese Oruru and other national issues. GABRIEL ENOGHOLASE was there. Excerpts:

Armed men, suspected to be renegade militants, in the early hours of, yesterday, launched a daring attack on a bank (names withheld) at the university town of Amassoma in Southern Ijaw Local Government Area of Bayelsa State, and carted away some Automated Teller Machines.

Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, South East Zone has called on the National Assembly to reject any bill intended to allow the creation of grazing fields for herdsmen in all parts of the country, saying, “Federal Government should not create more problems with the idea of grazing fields. ”

I confess: the title of my essay today is not original. It was first penned by the now late Agwu Okpanku, Classicist and journalist trained at Ibadan and Cambridge, in his column, “The Third Eye,” published in the now defunct, Enugu-based newspaper of the 1970s, Renaissance. Agwu Okpanku was a fierce critic of the post war attempts by the Federal Military Government of Nigeria, under the leadership of Yakubu Gowon, to erase all evidence of Biafra from national memory.

As I was saying last week, given the large amount of money set aside in the budget for the comfort of President Buhari, his family members and the top echelons of the presidency, he is not on a moral high ground to put pressure on members of the National Assembly to drop their silly plan. Hence, another headache for Buhari is his gradual but steady loss of the much-needed moral authority that can compel positive attitudinal change among high-ranking public officials, including legislators.

The economy was plunged deeper into crisis last week due to a strike action embarked upon by workers of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, over the planned restructuring of the NNPC.

Apparently believing that he had heard and seen the worst of how corrupt practices have brought Nigeria to her knees, President Muhammadu Buhari, last week, almost lost his cool when it was brought to his attention that a whopping $16 billion – at the official exchange rate of N196, this comes to N3.136 trillion; while, with the parallel market rate of N315, it comes to a whopping N5.04trillion) of the nation’s crude oil revenue loss could be traced to some sharp practices by some individuals in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector.

It is one of the axioms of management carved on stone by the management guru Peter Drucker, that nothing is more wasteful than doing diligently what should not be done at all – especially when the step to be taken is based on anger – which might not even be justified. Reading that statement credited to Buhari again, one is immediately struck with the irony involved in the historical precedents the President cited. Budgets by military governments at Federal and State levels were never debated nor were they passed to another body to approve. So, if there was padding, nobody would ever know.