IN June 2016, Britain went for a referendum to stay in the European Union after being a member for 46 years or to exit. Becoming a member of the Union was itself a problem because General De Gaulle and other members of the then small European Economic Community, EEC, of seven or so members regarded Britain as a non-European country. EEC eventually evolved into the European Union – a strong economic community but with political overtones.

THOSE who were in Lagos around 1991-2 would remember Forum Finance located on Allen Avenue in Ikeja,a company that employed a number of young men and women in flashy cars going about town duping the gullible of their hard earned money .Its famous advert was “Forum go double your money!”. It paid outrageous returns to its earlier investors and this made many fools to part with their money . By the time the bubble burst,it was sorrow and tears for thousands of unwary who lost their fortunes to the Ponzi scheme .

BY HENRY BOYO The market price of crude oil steadily increased beyond $50/barrel after OPEC agreed to cut output by about 1.2million barrels/day recently. Nigeria’s export revenue prospects will consequently be boosted if the price trend is sustained, particularly if restiveness is minimized in the Niger Delta. However, much against popular expectation, the more bountiful […]

Ordinarily, it would have required up to the second half of the year for those in the minority to start saying “I told you so!” But, fortune and research had combined to provide optimists an early advantage in the competition for the minds of Nigerians. For this writer, this turn of events was expected and the reasons had been pointed out in the December article. But, the pessimists might have ignored it as hearsay and unreliable information, while the optimists might have missed its significance altogether.

THE good news is that Nigeria has decided to scale up security at its airports; the not so welcome news is that this translates to Aviation security personnel carrying guns. I would have preferred scaling up security to mean greater use of intelligence services, more sophisticated security machines and more vigilance. As it is, we are already saturated with arms which have not translated into better security; rather, it seems the more arms we introduce, the less security in the country.