I will start the New Year with a couple of narratives. My favourite haunt is the place I play squash twice, three times a week. It is also a place I savour indulgences far beyond the exertions of squash. A few years back, two young women with similar, yet distinct circumstances frequented the club. They both at the time, had two children. Both were married but in name only as they carried the financial burdens of their homes. The husband of one had lost his job and was finding a ‘befitting job’ hard to get. The husband of the other had relocated abroad but ‘forgot’ to send back some dollars to feed his family.

She sat. Then I sat. She looked around. I could guess her thoughts. We were in church. My church. She was once of the Roman Catholic. Then marriage took her to the Anglican church. The Pentecostal churches dwell on money a little too much she says.

A re-edited “Dandalin Siyasa” platform exchange reproduced here reveals certain expectations on GMB shortly after the 2015 elections. Though he’d been ill half the time since then, the facts suggest that the PDP way of doing things seems to have prevailed thus far. Will it prevail all through?

Nigeria desperately needs restructuring; and restructuring will happen eventually – and in the not-too-distant future, for that matter – whether Buhari and other staunch traditionalists like it or not!

WHEN I was in the Governing Body of the United Nations International Labour Organisation, ILO, representing African workers, I made a checklist of countries and their ratification of International Labour Conventions. I discovered that Zimbabwe, Nigeria and South Africa have some of the best Labour laws in the world. In contrast, that the United States, US, the supposed citadel of freedom and democracy, has disdain for basic Labour rights and conventions.