A recession has many attributes that can occur simultaneously and includes declines in component measures of economic activity (GDP) such as consumption, investment, government spending, and net export activity.

BUT for the last minute wade-in by President Muhammadu Buhari ahead of last Saturday re-run elections in Rivers State that elections are not “do-or-die” affairs ,we would by now be concluding that the sad quote of former President Olusegun Obasanjo has become an official state policy in Nigeria.

FOR those who have been wondering at the temerity of the armed Fulani militias ravaging the Middle Belt and Southern communities of Nigeria with impunity and without repercussion, a picture of an insidious international conspiracy is beginning to emerge.

IT was a straight eight-hour African wake in Lagos, the continent’s most populous city with a bulging seventeen million population. It was for Fidel Castro on the eve of his funeral. We knew his spirit was at the National stadium venue. It is not the Western concept of spirit which is exorcised. In Africa, the spirit of our loved ones stay with us and we honour them with dances, chants, praises, songs and tributes before they depart to the Pantheon of our ancestors from where they watch over us.

The Honourable Minister was speaking in Vienna after the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, had voted to cut supplies for six months in order to firm up the price of crude oil globally. OPEC went further to exclude Nigeria from the widespread cut because the other members had long regarded this country as the “poor cousin” whose dependence on crude revenue is almost total – unlike others. So, Nigeria was allowed to keep its 2.2 million barrels per day quota.