THE history of crude oil production in Nigeria informs us that the Shell Oil Company was the first to discover oil in commercial quantity in Nigeria. The location was Oloibriri (now in Bayelsa State), and the year was 1956. Two years later, Nigeria’s first consignment of crude oil was exported from the Oloibiri oil fields. But what is not well advertised is the fact that gas flaring has been taking place in Nigeria since 1958. The ecological disaster and associated consequences of gas flaring in Nigeria have been well-documented, and do not constitute the main objective in this dispatch from America.

Central Bank’s Monetary Policy Rate (MPR), in practice, is the strategic benchmark for modulating best practice standards in the critical economic indices of inflation, cost of funds and exchange rate.

With World Sports on CNN, I have just rounded up one hell of a football crazy Saturday that started with Manchester United thumping Aston Villa 4-1, after the fans had decided that the team will be better off without David Moyes on the bench. ( I agree )

The National Conference is turning out, as usual, to be a theatre of the absurd, with the thespians being the overused, same old players noisily grandstanding and beating their ethnic and religious empty barrels over mere trifles. There was this picture on the front page of Vanguard on Wednesday, March 27, 2014, in which one elderly man of nearly 80 years old was spoiling for a physical combat with an unseen opponent, while an equally elderly female delegate representing the market women, Madam Felicia Sani, was restraining him. I wondered: if the fisticuff was allowed to proceed who could that pugnacious Baba possibly beat up? If he lands a blow his hand will surely break!

“For example, Nigeria has signed an MoU with the Democratic Republic of Congo for the importation of electricity from the Inga Dam Power Plant.” Professor Nebo, Minister of Power, PUNCH, March 25, 2014.

In 2003, Femi-Kevin’s headmaster sent me an email forecasting that he would fail his GCSE exams because he had done so badly in his mock exams. I wrote an angry response and asked him: “Are you God? How are you so sure he would fail? Is it because he is black?” After he took the exams, God did something strange. Before his results came out officially, he showed them to me in a dream; subject-by-subject and grade-by-grade. The results were excellent: Femi-Kevin got so many “A” grades.

Forgive me for breaking up the article IF I DON’T MAKE IT. The National Conference is far more important than anyone’s private life – including mine. Two weeks ago, I had written the first part of this piece with a definite bias which must again be declared up front. I want the 2014 CONFAB to succeed. As the publisher of THISDAY Newspapers, Mr Nduka Obiagbena, had pointed out, this CONFAB cannot solve all of our problems. No CONFAB can do that because previous military governments had endorsed constitutions which had led us into the dead end in which we find ourselves.

When I read that each of the mostly President Goodluck Jonathan’s handpicked delegates to the national conference going on in Abuja right now will collect N12million at the end of their three-month meeting, I was outraged. My reaction was based on the following considerations. First, as a very senior academic in one of the best universities in Nigeria, my emolument in a year after sundry deductions at source is less than N4million.

Where do you begin? They say, it does not rain but pours. In Nigeria, the misery keeps pouring down in buckets. And when you think that you have seen or heard the zenith of all the depravities meted by Nigerians to fellow Nigerians, then the mother of all depravity comes along and overshadows the last.

Life is like a revolving door, people seem to be passing through all the time. There are some who believe I have been hardened by a lot of sorrow early on in life and they could be right. What they observe is my calm acceptance and almost indifference to tragedy. I have found that I cant fight reality, so I tend to just roll with it. I do my 3 B’s checklist and I move on.