Nigerian GSM network owners are swindling Nigerians and smiling all the way to the banks – whose ATM machines also rob depositors mercilessly. If the government of Olusegun Obasanjo had planned to take Nigerians to the financial slaughter house, it could not have done it better than by introducing the GSM and licensing companies based in Nigeria, Asia and South Africa as the major carriers. High ethical standards are in short supply in those countries; that is certain.

TO be or not to be?” Shakespeare, 1564-1616 asked. That, again, is still the question. Whether or not we shall allow officials and their crazy convoys to continue to run us off the roads and kill us with impunity, this year will tell. I have no sympathy for any governor who gets maimed or killed because his crazy convoy had an accident.

NOTE: The Commissioner of Information was sending his assault, written on behalf of the Government of Akwa Ibom, while Attah and Akpabio were in church on Christmas Day. The seven patriotic leaders, who started the peace process, as well as other Nigerians, must ask themselves: “what is the purpose of going to church if fighting continues during the service”?

NOTE: This was not the original article scheduled for this day. But some issues intrude on the best made plans demanding urgent response. This is one of them; especially because i am involved as you will find out. Pardon me for this. Thanks.

When Reagan was contesting against Jimmy Carter, US President, 1976-1980, he asked Americans the same question over and over again, “Are you better off this year than four years ago?” Much as I hardly supported Reagan’s approach to governance because it represented “government of the rich by the rich for the rich” – a bastardisation of democracy, he left us with a metric for judging whether or not we had been well-served by governments, at Federal, States and Local government levels in 2012.

What a coincidence it has turned out to be. Just last week under the new addendum to my columns “CHIP SHOTS”, I made reference to the fact that the President of Nigeria had ten aircraft in his fleet; more than any other President in the world. Bearing in mind that our country is ranked 39th in the world in terms of GDP, and one of the poorest on earth, when we take into account that 70 per cent of our people live below the global poverty line, Nigeria’s Presidential Airlines should enter into the Guinness Book of Records for presidential impunity.

“We salute the men and women who kept our nation together, especially those who paid the supreme price…The only way we can honour their memory is not to re-open old wounds but to resolve that never again will our people’s blood be shed by their own people. We must harness our diversity to make our union perfect”. Governor Babatunde Fashola, at Colloquium Fair, held at Brown University, Rhode Island, USA by Professor Chinua Achebe.

NLNG is one of the big success stories in our country. From what I am told, the company has invested $13 billion since inception, and has become a pace-setter in terms of revenue generation for the government”. Minister of Trade and Investments, Dr Olusegun Aganga

If you reduce poverty and the person is still poor, you have achieved nothing. I don’t believe in poverty reduction concept. It is more positive to talk about wealth creation”, Jonathan..

Perhaps, some columnists would need to be re-educated to understand the harm in over-generalisation. Being a columnist does not give any individual the magna charta to write about fellow individuals as if playing god.

“Those fighting the government in the media are doing so because we have been able to frustrate their efforts in strangulating the economy through their devilish black market and questionable profiteering at the expense of the Nigerian people…What is hurting them is that we have put policies in place where they can no longer cheat the government and cause untold hardship to millions of Nigerians”, Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke, Minister of Petroleum Resources, in PUNCH, Friday, November 9, 2012, p 13.

“Economists are like theologians. Every religion other than their own is the invention of man, whereas their own particular brand of religion is an emanation from God”.

With so many other issues begging for attention, I still strongly believe that putting an end to this needlessly divisive controversy is in our collective interest. Still, below are the responses to last week’s second attempt.

“I must practice moderation and say that peace is better than the finest war in the world”, Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, 1762-1796. (VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS p 183).

I wept for Nigeria when the excerpts of Chinua Achebe’s MEMOIRS, were published in Nigeria. I instinctively knew that the season of media and social lynch-mobs had started. It is one of the inevitable, but unintended consequences of that book. Wounds which were gradually healing might once again be re-opened depending on how we handle the intellectual bomb handed to us. It is my strong belief that we should defuse it; for, if we fail, the results will be disastrous beyond our wildest nightmares.