We were crawling along at snail’s speed in this terrible traffic build-up when a group of hoodlums, weaving in and out between the lanes, tried to frighten motorists into pulling aside with cries of ‘flat tyre’ ‘smoke from your bonnet’ ‘your moto don catch fire’ etc.

Research has shown that women constitute about one-half of Nigeria’s total population of 158 million. However, a good number of them find it difficult to get to the top due to various challenges. Mrs. Amina Oyagbola (nee Attah, ) has discovered the growing need to assist some of these women and give them the right focus in life.

We have to do something decisively about the Boko Haram . We have decided that (have we not?). The Boko Haram group of lawless people who have decided to bring mayhem to the nation. There is nothing Islamic about them, it seems to me that they are political at best and vaguely sectarian.

TODAY is New Year Day, when people all over the world are celebrating it. I know before now, you have taken stock and resolved to obey God, appreciate and praise Him with your whole heart all year long. I wish you a prosperous New Year!

I watched the punctured imageries of the so-called government induced debate at the Muson Centre in Lagos penultimate week, and I could see how difficult it was for the protagonists of subsidy removal to sell their unpopular motive.

I always knew that I was set for international acclaim; I just always assumed that it would come via my prowess as an actor. That’s not far from the truth today; I just didn’t realise that it would take this long and that so many other things would happen along the way.

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.

As 2011 draws to a close, it seems appropriate to look back in anger or approval at some of the people who have, individually or as part of groups, made the past l2 months better or worse in various ways and in various parts of the world.

HAPPILY, “Unemployment” was a major theme in President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan’s Budget address, which he recently delivered to a Joint Session of both houses of the National Assembly.

I HAVE reflected very much on diversity and the essential unity of our humanity in the past 24 four hours. Television images from home have been very disturbing. The tragic and unacceptable killings of people worshipping during this season of goodwill have triggered my stroll on the shores of hindsight.

ANNUAL budgets are important policy instruments which do more than just inform citizens of the priorities and plans of an administration, and the resources which it plans to mobilise towards achieving them. They reveal an administration’s basic philosophy, challenges and opportunities.

FOR the very first time since his political career assumed national dimension, Goodluck Jonathan is showing he could be a determined person if the need arose. For quite a long while, the President has shown himself as someone ready to capitulate before any determined opposition.

THIS is why the Democratic Project in Nigeria must begin with the political formation of the project. And the primary institution whose raison d’etre is service on behalf of the mass operating on enough and less than enough household budgets is supposed to be the Organised Labour.

Christmas is many things to many people. It’s the season to be jolly and I guess it would be if the true meaning of it was the reason behind all of the frantic activities that grip the world around the period. The season was not so jolly the past few years and I had to make a conscious effort to pray and ask God to break the cycle of drama that seemed to be all the present I got annually.

Christmas used to mean so much to me, as a child – so much of nothingness. It was a feeling which accompanied me to adulthood. It meant a time to splurge on good food for a day or two, after numerous activities that meant very little but dragged the time away.