NIGERIA certainly now carries a terrible boil of anguish in the form of Islamic insurgency. Red and swollen with pus from long neglect and impunity, the boil must at this point either burst and bring relief or it becomes gangrenous and grows into something more terrible.

At Nigeria’s independence in 1960, government corporations such as the Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA, Electricity Corporation of Nigeria, ECN, that were established by specific laws set aside funds each month for the pension benefits of their employees.

IN the late 1980s, I was appointed Special Adviser to Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, then Nigeria’s Minister of External Affairs. At the time, I was a Research Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA). The Director-General of the Institute, Professor Gabriel Olusanya, advised me not to take the job.

LAST week Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, was engaged in an interesting exchange with the Chairman of the Northern Governors Forum, Dr. Muazu Babangida Aliyu, the self-styled Chief Servant of Niger State. Maku accused the Arewa governors of “not doing enough” in the effort to bring the Islamic insurgency being championed by Boko Haram to an end.

In an article earlier this month, we explained why further naira devaluation would constrain demand and economic growth, and also add millions more to the population of impoverished Nigerians, who are currently unemployed or live on less than $2 per day

Mark Anthony: Let but the commons hear the testament which pardon me, I do not want to read…..For they would go and kiss dead Caeasr’s wounds and dip their napkins in his sacred blood

A farmer was living in a remote village. Every day, he had to walk several miles to the market in another village, carrying his goods on his head. He would start out early before sunup and come back home very late after sunset. The strain was already telling on his health. His feet had grown big calluses and blisters. After some time, he developed hernia.

Indisputably one of the greatest historians ever, Plutarch brought us the story of the Athenian general – Phocion – who led his people to several victories – often acting against popular advice. Phocion later received the blessing of Mandela, who had this to say about leaders.

For the third consecutive time in one month, this column has had to premise its thoughts on one issue – insecurity. It is not that it is hard to find something else to talk about; the rationale has been to underscore the overriding importance of the subject by using the mass communication theory of ‘force multiplication ’.

Amongst the theories doing the rounds; the whole BH is a North Islamic plan to grapple power from the present administration. Those other major tribes is discrediting the Jonathan- led government, that it is the APC’s plan to destabilise his administration, that North brought it on themselves because they wanted Sharia law and BH sprang from that assertion.