Media reports last week confirmed that the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) shared over N1.3 trillion to the three tiers of government for the month of June 2011. The reports rightly recognized the amount disbursed as the highest in recent times.

LAST week, I showed you the importance of the Spirit of Wisdom, in enjoying a world of no limits. This week, I will show you how to receive the impartation of the Spirit of wisdom.

Dear young men,” said this pastor who was ministering at an interactive session at a young men’s convention in a Pentecostal church, “God created man for leadership. As Christ is the head of the church, so is man the spiritual head of his own home. So, for the married amongst you here this afternoon, if you’ve never thought yourself the spiritual head of your family, it’s time to think of yourself as being one, and also equip yourself to assume that role. For the bachelor, start preparing yourself for that role. A man is responsible for the sustained spiritual growth of members of his family, and God will hold him accountable.”

Not a few Muslims have been railroaded into ‘accepting’ what most of our Christian brothers are only too happy to ‘believe’, namely that Nigeria is a ‘secular state’. ‘Secular’ as in Webster’s Dictionary’s definition means: ‘concerned with temporal, worldly matters’ to the exclusion of ‘religion’; or ‘the profane’ in disregard of ‘the sacred’. And especially in circumstances such as we have now, with Islamic banking needlessly on the Bunsen burner, many are wont to assert that ‘secularity’ even with contemporaneous denial of the country’s ‘multi-religious’ status.

The billionaire of the recently- rested News of the World, Rupert Murdoch, has been known for years, but not as much as he is now known. In recent time, his fame or notoriety has gone round the world. Murdoch’s overweening political influence has long been recognised, from well before when the former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, flew to Australia in 1995 to pay homage at his corporate court. It is said that those who knew him have the fear that those who crossed him would be given the full tabloid treatment over their personal misdemeanors, real or imagined.

Two months ago, writing about another media tsunami, it was predicted that, with the elections over, government officials would soon invade media houses to raid them for “Media Advisers” and Commissioners. The raid is not over yet. But it has captured two of the best.

Dawkins discussed an experiment led by Dr. Herbert Benson and funded by the Templeton Foundation, to test whether praying for sick people actually improves their health (p. 86-88). The results showed that there was no measurable difference between the recovery rate of those that received intercessory prayers and those that didn’t. But there was a difference between patients who knew that they had been prayed for and those who did not know one way or the other: the former group suffered significantly more complications than the latter.

Not too long ago, I had been on my way home from a land so very far away. My journey each way included two long haul flights, two three-hour stop- overs and then a four-hour drive before I would eventually be at my destination.

Writing is an intensely political act. From immemorial time, the foundation of all civilisation has always rested all the memory of the land preserved by those who constitute the moral imagination of the world. It is the power of the script over the ephemeral. Why do we write? This is the question that many of us have struggled to answer over the years. The questions come in moments of despair, when we feel that gnawing futility of our words, and the limits of our writerly convictions.

Me, I am frightened. It was reported, at first, that the vehicle which carried a live bomb into the National Headquarters of the Nigeria Police, was driven by a man who was programmed, and content, to die in the explosion. Then the statement was retracted.

MANY Nigerians, perhaps still suffering from a bout of post elections hay fever, are still confused about their present and worried about their future. Apart from the shocking deadly disturbances in some parts of the North after the elections, bombs continue to rock Abuja, the capital city with disturbing frequencies. And yet, Nigerians are hopeful.

LAST week, I praisedEsther Salami, a beautician who displayed remarkable integrity by telling me that I had accidentally overpaid her by N1000.

IT was National Mirror newspaper of Tuesday, July 12, 2011, which first reported that the presidency had “concluded plans to send a bill to the National Assembly for a single term of seven years for governors and presidents.

verywhere you look there is mounting evidence that the system that currently drives Nigeria as a nation is not working. Nigerians are not benefiting from the normal objectives for which people belong to countries.

QUITE often, we lampoon judges, particularly when they deliver judgements that are distasteful to us. These judges come in various forms – good, bad; corrupt and incorruptible.