The Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) concluded its 15th Annual Summit last week in Abuja. As is the custom, the heavy weights of industry and commerce and other representatives of the major stakeholders in the Nigerian economy and public sector were well represented.

I WAS not at the Chinua Achebe colloquium which took place last week in Rhode Island. But while it was going on in Providence, I was myself at a party in the St. Louis home of the economist, Dr. Remi Onwumere with Dr. Sylvester Ugoh, Harvard-trained economist and Nigerian politician.

In the case of sudden death, which can go either way, it could be you or him, everything depends on God. Whatever I have as my personal savings is what I plan to fall back on in case of any accidental eventualities. You need to see what widows go through in some cultures to know just a little of what I am talking about. Once a man dies, it is assumed that the wife must have something to do with it because she has something to gain from his death.

In this essay, I argue that Christmas has become a useless social fad which should be allowed to die out because it has progressively degenerated into a period for indulging and celebrating the grossest attributes of the human species – greed, avarice, licentious living, debauchery and spiritual self-abnegation.

The structures we have would win for us a gold medal if having them was all that was needed to judge them. America does not even have them – huge cars and convoys for public officers and their dependants; full time pay for all cadres of public officers for no jobs done; billions sunk into buying aircraft for use of heads of the organs of government.