The Jonathan administration truly gave Nigerians a left-handed gift for the New Year. Still reeling from the Christmas day bombing, Nigerians were hardly prepared for the surreptitious and final withdrawal of the so-called oil subsidy.

In his famous book “How we think”, renowned American philosopher, John Dewey, proposed what looks like a simple template on how to make a decision. According to the scholar, every decision maker should take 3 simple steps: (a) identify the problem (b) assemble all the solutions for it and (c) pick the best solution.

Err… happy (?) New Year? I’m not trying to be tongue in cheek but how do you say those words with good cheer given the recent backdrop of events. I’ve said it before… sometimes writing this column is a burden. I often tell my kids that it’s okay to be quiet if you don’t have something nice to say…

A new year dawned on us with the announcement of increase in pump prices of petrol (PMS) from sixty five Naira(N65) to between N140 and N200! Wow! I was not the only one who wondered and said “wait a minute, were we not told April?”

The Boko Haram sect has become bolder than ever. They can now confidently announce a locality that they have marked down for an attack, and proceed to launch the assault almost at will. They warned about the mayhem they were going to visit on several areas of Christmas Day, and almost made good their word. And now they have announced their intention of repeating that performance tomorrow.

A piece appeared the other day on the Aviation pages of a national daily about how extortion, harassment, stealing, etc., are still being carried on openly on passengers at the Murtala Mohammed Airport in Lagos. It was well-written and it must have been an eye witness account because it aptly described all the shenanigans that go on at our nation’s busiest airport.

IMPLICITLY, the policy initiatives enunciated in the President’s 2012 Budget address reflect similar reasoning. Instead of simply funding pre-existing programmes, the Jonathan administration appears to be formulating its own distinctive approach to the unemployment problem.

I CLEARLY recall President Goodluck Jonathan standing up at an Independence Day service a couple of months ago and informing his audience that he was not a lion, tiger, army general, Egyptian Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar (the neo-Babylonian king who conquered Jerusalem and sent the Jews into exile).

AS Nigerians celebrated the New Year with joy and gratitude, even in the midst of security threats, they still think seriously about the unresolved economic and political problems of the past year…

THE wind of change is blowing everywhere. In Edo State, one major industry, the obituary, is currently undergoing some transformation. It is growing both in form and in content. At the beginning of each dance session, the Master of Ceremony (MC) is now required to announce that people should not place money on the celebrant’s head. Instead, people are now required to do their spraying into improvised offering bags.

IT is difficult to recall that this time last year, our nation was at major crossroads, and had a chance to sink deeper into decay and hopelessness, or rise above its limitations and challenges. So much has happened in the last one year to change the nature of our political system, that a visitor will hardly recognise the nation’s political terrain today.

I was trapped in the interface between hope and despair on New Year’s eve. I am in London, after spending the Christmas period in Dubai and watching on television outlets the horrific reportage of the tragic bombings on Christmas Day.

LIKE an evil odour, the fever of death caused by Boko haram is still grimly spreading across the country with death toll from its cowardly Christmas attack still rising…

President Goodluck Jonathan presented year 2012 budget proposals to the National Assembly barely a week before the Christmas recess! Incidentally, the 2012 budget is the first budget crafted on the foundation of the transformation agenda “which spells out the strategic direction of Jonathan’s Administration”.

The prospects and the problems associated with the Sovereign Wealth Fund, SWF, are often inextricably intertwined because the funds to be managed are still subject to the judgments of “doubts and certainty” exercised by the people selected to manage the funds.