PROMPTED by increased investor confidence in the Nigerian economy, especially in the stock market, positive economic growth outlook, fourteen companies quoted on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, NSE raised N340.6 billion via Rights Issues in 2017, in preparation for boom in economic activities in the post recession era.

THE direction of interest rate and liquidity level in the interbank money market this week is clouded in uncertainty following the N422 billion liquidity mop up  by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in the first trading  of the year.

The price of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, also known as petrol, or fuel is ever on the increase in our oil-soaked country. But it has its own logic which is usually wrapped in layers of deceit. It has become an endless  political game. General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida who ruled for eight years, has been the most gifted of the players while Chief Ernest Adegunle Oladeinde Shonekan who has had the shortest reign (82 days) has been the most inept.

For some reasons unknown to me, Nigerians are no longer paying attention to things that matter about the way they are being ruled. They no longer pay attention to some of the things their rulers say. Otherwise, a strange item in President Muhammadu Buhari’s New Year Day speech should have brought millions of Nigerians to the streets in angry protests.

When the felicitous presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina, gave hint of a New Year presidential broadcast billed for Monday 1 January, majority of Nigerians hissed and heaved in utter despondency. Even the robustly complacent claque in the nation’s corridors of power must have yawned and looked at one another in pampered aloofness knowing that the presidential broadcast would cut no ice. A few days earlier, presidential sidekicks had aired an absurd documentary unimaginatively woven around what they called the human side of President Muhammadu Buhari. The video ran on major television channels to the indignation of Nigerians. The promoters of the documentary must have set out to pull a public relations stunt for a regime whose popularity has plummeted.