This is a difficult topic to write about. What I am about to describe is a cautionary tale, one at the intersection of a number of issues arising from the toxicity of the Nigerian society, an environment where money, power and greed on both the public and private stage constantly result in death and unhappiness. We have not yet begun to publish statistics of the number of murders which occur in Nigeria annually (or even state by state for that matter) and how many are “crimes of passion” linked to the peculiarities of a system that objectifies women, makes them believe that outside of marriage they are worthless and moreover, emphasises marriage as an economic opportunity alone.

I HAVE always been partial towards Russia. Perhaps it’s on account of its writers who have been the passion of my youth: Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Pasternak, Akhmatova, Mandelstam.

THE introduction of Biometric identification was to stop different kinds of fraud. There were too many fictitious bank accounts; inactive bank accounts are raided by the employees. To stop this, the bank instituted a regime of dormant accounts.

I HAVE just finished reading a 280 page book titled The Debt Trap In Nigeria—Towards a Sustainable Debt Strategy. It was jointly written by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala while she was Vice President and Corporate Secretary of the World Bank Group, Charles Chukwuma Soludo while he was Executive Director, African Institute For Applied Economics, University of Nigeria, Nsukka and Mr. Mansour Muktar while he was a Senior Economist with the Africa Region of the World Bank.

THE Southern Senators Forum under the leadership of Senator Hope Uzodimma in quite a historic move stormed Calabar between 24-26 November, 2017 to  find a perfect mix for unity within the concept of restructuring.