ON Thursday last week, our nation lost a little bit more of its humanity, after over one hundred people perished in a fire while scooping spilt petroleum from a crashed tanker. Exactly how many people died in those circumstances, in a State literally sitting on oil resources may never be known.

HISTORY was made Thursday last week when Justice Aloma Mukhtar assumed duty as Nigeria’s Chief Justice of the Federation. She is the first woman to reach that height. An earlier contender to that position and wife of Chief Bola Ige, the slain Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Justice Atinuke Ige, suddenly died in the course of fighting to bring the killers of her husband to justice.

LAST week, while receiving the report of the Alfa Belgore-led Presidential Committee on the Review of Outstanding Issues, President Goodluck Jonathan said: “Our enduring sense of brotherhood, unwavering desire for freedom, unique resilience and abiding faith in Nigeria, have seen us through sundry challenges over the past 52 years of nationhood.

THE Guardian, Tuesday, June 19, 2012 carried the following story headlined: “Police unveil new strategy against terror”.

The probes by various committees of the National Assembly revealed the depth of the depravity and the reckless lack of accountability in the management of the proceeds from crude oil, which contributes over 80% of our national revenue.

I repeat here verbatim a column that I wrote last year concerning the denial of visa to Nigerians on official sports assignment. Specifically the beach soccer team to Italy.

IT pays to keep an eye on Egypt – a wary eye at that, especially for those of us in this part of the world. Many so-called democracy lovers have been hailing the “Arab Spring”, the revolutionary explosion that detonated late in 2010, even though few can guess at the possibility that it might lead to a change in the world order, a change majority of us might find unpalatable.

The first part of this series on cassava bread appeared on Monday last week; it could not have come at a better time. On Wednesday, June 11, 2012, after the Federal Executive Council, FEC, meeting, the Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, announced that President Goodluck Jonathan had approved two major incentives aimed at encouraging the production of cassava in the country.

Every Christian expects to go to heaven. But surprisingly, Jesus’ kingdom dynamics predicts different. Jesus says: “The last will be first, and the first last.” (Matthew 20:16). Christians are today’s first who will be tomorrow’s last. Jesus says furthermore: “The sons of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 8:12). Christians are today’s sons of the kingdom.

Times are never the same, it seems the universe is in a constant state of perpetual motion. The result is an evolution of man and humanity and different worlds emerge as time passes. I have always doubted my place in this generation; I don’t always fit in with the ideas of my contemporaries and my sense of not belonging is re enforced by my choices that are not always the expected or approved.

Adeola Hollway Oduyemi is the founder and Executive Director of IHH Educational Consultant, a Training Company based in Ontario Canada. She is an educationist and instructor who specialises in early childhood development. She is also a therapist and member of a Multi-disciplinary team of Applied Behavior Analysts (ABA).

THE ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy”.

Money issues are always serious issues, anywhere, anytime. There’s precious little that you can do without money. We may well talk of the great divide between the rich and the poor, which in the past has led to revolutions in some nations, and is still causing great distress in countries around the world, but a lack of good management of funds is what is pulling down the economy of several Eurozone countries right now and making them fall like a pack of cards, e.g. Greece, while Spain, Italy and a few others are on the brink, we’re told.

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life, you will have been all of these. -George Washington Carver

The president recently made changes at the top echelon of his national Security advisory staff, and this has, not unexpectedly, attracted all kinds of reactions, most of it, frankly dilatory and ignorant. On return from his Brazilian jamboree, the president summarily removed former National Security Adviser, General Owoeye Azazi, whom he replaced with Mr. Sambo Dasuki, a retired Colonel of the Nigerian Army.