“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.