A FRIEND of mine always says“anybody who marks his own exam papers will get an A”. That was exactly what the new Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Chief Olisa Metuh, did in appraising the 13 years since the Party took charge of the affairs of the country from the military. He claimed that the party “has put the nation on the path to sustainable development and steady economic growth as the basis to stabilise and consolidate the nation’s democracy”.

ADDRESSING a conference of the (rather innocuous, pardon my ignorance) Academy for Entrepreneurial Studies in Lagos, last week, former President, Olusegun Obasanjo, for the umpteenth time, let loose a cat amongst the pigeons of Nigerian political society.

HISTORY repeats itself once in a while. It has taken almost four centuries for American history to replicate itself in Nigeria, more specifically, in the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN. We are reminded of the Biblical case of the rejected stone that later became the cornerstone.

YESTERDAY, President Goodluck Jonathan celebrated his first year in office. If the last one year has been eventful, what will the next three be like? Better for Jonathan and the nation? More trying? Can we tell?

YOUR Excellency: I have on two occasions applied for a German visa in as many years and both applications have been conference-related. If I have, as a Nigerian academic, come this far without yet visiting Germany, it is nothing short of gratuitous insult for your embassy to imagine that a visit to Germany is de rigueur for my academic career or even worse, that such a visit is for economic migrancy.

A WEEK ago, I read a story in a newspaper that I found very interesting. Nigerian traders in Ghana were appealing to the Federal Government to intervene on their behalf over Ghana’s refusal for them to sell generators in Ghana.

HE noted that of the three amalgamation of the British colonial government, India, Sudan and Nigeria, only Nigeria stands at present… “We can’t ignore these facts. We can’t take these facts for granted. We either sit down and talk on them or we will wish them away as our leaders are trying to make us believe”.

WE read so much about the many new ideas that Governor of Imo State, Owelle Anayo Rochas Okorocha, has introduced since he mounted the throne vacated by Sir Ikedi Ohakim one year ago.

Nigeria’s capital market is totally wrecked. It had been partially demolished by 2008, but there was still some hope. Now it is in ruins – thanks to the heads of the two institutions controlling it. The global community, and nations with honest capital markets, whose shares are heading for the basement, must be amused that in Nigeria those who are supposed to build the capital market – the NSE and SEC—are exactly the ones destroying what is left of it.

The FIFA website has it that this week end, over one hundred countries, translated to fifty matches, will play preliminary matches of the 2014 World Cup kick off all over the world and Nigeria definitely is involved in the fray.

The boisterous assurances by the last Governor of Central bank, Chukwuma Soludo that the Nigerian economy and banking sub-sector were firmly immune from the world’s economic meltdown still remain fresh in our memories.

It is not gainsaid that the advent of both Euro-Christian and Arab-Islamic civilisations into indigenous communities that constitute Nigeria has negatively affected the cultural heritage of these communities.

Imagine a world where everyone speaks the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? What kind of world would that be? Would we even want to live in it? It does not matter if we are Christians, atheists or agnostics; we don’t like the truth. What differentiate us from one another are relativities: the extent to which we tell lies. We all tell lies every now and then, but some of us consider ourselves to be righteous because we don’t tell “big” lies.

Commonsense is not common; otherwise the majority of voting adults in Nigeria who were announced according to the results released by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, could not have marched to the polling booths, nationwide, April last year, freely and overwhelmingly voted for Goodluck Jonathan, despite warnings on this page, only to now turn around now and wring their fingers while the “bull” they have pulled into our “China Shop” is wrecking the joint.

Mrs. Ezinne Abimbola Makinde is the National President of Methodist Women’s Fellowship, MWF. The Oyo State-born teacher and mother is also the wife of the Prelate of the Methodist Church of Nigeria, Dr. Makinde. Recently, the Methodist Women’s Fellowship celebrated its 80th anniversary in Nigeria with the launch of a book titled ‘Women as Teachers and Character Moulders’.