Recently there was an altercation between the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu and his successor in office at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC,Dr. Maikanti Baru. 

Last week the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu had a furious diatribe against the Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Dr. Maikanti Baru. Kachikwu’s letter to President Muhammadu Buhari on alleged matters of insubordination and lack of adherence to due process perpetuated by Baru was confidential information released unofficially.  Like a hurricane it  made a landfall in the media in the mold of what may be named Kachileaks. 

Nigeria turned 57 last Sunday. Nigeria’s journey is worth congratulating irrespective of the sociopolitical and economic vicissitudes. The appointment of Transport Minister and Deputy leader of the Northern People’s Congress, NPC, Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, as Prime Minister on   September 2, 1957 by the second and last British Governor General that ruled Nigeria from June 15, 1955 to November 16, 1960, Sir James Wilson Robertson set the stage for independence in 1960.

By Sonny Atumah The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC last week in Abuja said it was considering a joint venture partnership with a Danish firm, Unibio for the production of natural gas derived feed protein for animals. The NNPC Group Managing Director represented by the Chief Operating Officer, Ventures, Dr. Babatunde Adeniran disclosed this in […]

A momentous change in political leadership would be heralded next Thursday September 21, 2017 in Angola when the former Defence Minister, retired general João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço would be sworn in as its third President. Lourenço takes over from Africa’s second longest serving President, José Eduardo dos Santos who grabbed power on September 10, 1979. Dos Santos, a Soviet-trained petroleum engineer had a firm grip of Angola with iron fist for 38 years after the death of the first President Antonio Agostinho Neto.

For over one week from August 25, residents of two Gulf of Mexico states of Texas and Louisiana were greeted with another hurricane named Harvey. Although the Gulf States are not strange to tropical storms, Harvey turned out to be one of the worst natural disasters in the United States. One’s heart goes to the victims as well as the people of America in the disaster that claimed 30 lives with millions displaced in sorrows and tears.

The Soviet Union was formed as a federal union of communist state of Russia and the neighbouring areas that the Soviet government had brought under its control in December 1922. It was the largest country in the world with 15 Republics extending from Eastern Europe to northern and central Asia.

Necessity they say is the mother of invention. Nations that catapulted themselves into the developed club had visions and dreams with embedded options of practical realities. Nigeria is walking a very long, tortuous road to the top. In the 20th century twilight we had several vision statements with clichés like: Housing for all by the Year 2000; Health for all by the year 2000; Education for all by year 2000; and so forth.

Many Third World nations joined political bloc alignments of post-world war II to survive; a syndrome that conveyed paternalistic relationships rather than equality of nations. The phenomenon was prompted by the 45-year cold war rivalry between the American capitalist west and the Soviet communist east.

Chinese writer and poet, Han Yu (768-824) writing on the truth about one’s underlying character identified that: “The three grades of character are superior, medium and inferior: the superior is just good, the medium is capable of development either in an upward or a downward direction, and the inferior is just evil.”