“THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH”. Fundamental law of Economics.
This series ended last week with the observation that whereas in Awolowo’s days as Premier of Western Region, virtually all kids enjoyed government sponsored primary education, today only a tiny minority of kids attend state schools. It was the same, even at the secondary school level.

The Spanish author of that hilarious piece, whose name escapes my memory at the moment, was commenting on the Falklands/Malvilands war involving Britain and Argentina in I982. The remote and virtually useless cluster of islands, captured by Britain from Spain, in an earlier era of colonial expansion, became the reason for carnage in that year.

“Revolutions end up in the hands of madmen. Besides, if the power is great enough, it will make its own mad men by its own pressure” – Saul Bellow. (VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS ….

In a press release by his Special Adviser on Monitoring, Mr. Bernard Mikko, the former General Manager of the Nigeria Ports Authority, NPA, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, sought to distance himself from his son’s present predicaments. Unfortunately for Tukur and Mikko, they missed the point entirely.

“If your children are not better than you; then you must have fathered them in vain”. Leo Tolstoy, 1828-1910.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has finally opened the cases on the fuel subsidy fraud. Let me hasten to state that none of the accused persons is presumed guilty on this page.

Mrs. Patience Jonathan, PSPJ, has certainly made history; even if atrocious history. And Bayelsa State has also entered into the Guinness Book of Records – in a way that now indisputably demonstrates to the world that the Dark Age is not over in Nigeria.

Any public official wanting to have trouble with me should make a careless statement about job creation; be it the President, a Governor, Minster or whatever. Unemployment, affecting over 40% of our people; and involving every home in Nigeria, is such a personal and social tragedy that it should be completely taken out of the salad bowl of lies which public officials peddle all over Nigeria.

THE ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy”.

“No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in jail, with the chance of being drowned” – Dr Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784.

“Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed”. I.F Stone. US Journalist, 1929. (VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS p 80).

“What sort of people do they think we are?” Sir Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister during World War II, in reply to Hitler’s demand for the British to surrender while under German bombardment.

Two friends, Professors, intelligent but not wise, were among several millions who proclaimed that they voted for GEJ but not PDP last year. One, a top ASUU executive, repented early when Jonathan failed to redeem the pledge he made to them before the election.

For a nation so heavily dependent on export of crude oil, our greatest fear should have been a global recession substantially reducing the price of crude because that would take us back to 1983-86 when the price of crude went below $15 per barrel. Today, we will be in dire straits if it fell below $90. The revolution so glibly invited by some leaders of thought will occur sooner than they think.

President Nixon succeeded Lyndon Johnson, who voluntarily rejected the second term bid once he found his country sharply divided, and, he, the President was the centre of all the raging and violent controversies. Nixon was later consumed by a crime called the Watergate Affair.

Commonsense is not common; otherwise the majority of voting adults in Nigeria who were announced according to the results released by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, could not have marched to the polling booths, nationwide, April last year, freely and overwhelmingly voted for Goodluck Jonathan, despite warnings on this page, only to now turn around now and wring their fingers while the “bull” they have pulled into our “China Shop” is wrecking the joint.