Many optimists who are just chewing before digesting the beautiful economic blueprint (adorned in its elegant presentation with unassailable statistical figures) by the Finance Manager and Minister for Economic Co-ordination (what a romantic name!), Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in her answer to the 50 Questions raised by members of the House of Representatives might be a bit confused on another story about the danger facing the economy.

IT was Shehu Usman Dan Fodiyo who once warned that a political society can endure with unbelief, but it will sooner, rather than later, crumble with injustice. Of course, Shehu Fodiyo was a religious and political leader, who led one of the most extensive and remarkable state building projects in pre-colonial Africa. Rooted in a deep religious consciousness, he nevertheless understood that the right religious bona fide alone, cannot be the basis for state survival, where the state itself is built upon an enduring project of injustice.

ADMITTEDLY, our relationship with the West has been defined by undue duplicity. Close to 54 years of our so-called independence, we are still largely in chains. Nigeria’s annual Balance Sheet is perhaps still prepared in Washington, DC. Even in the area of our much touted oil wealth, when the multi-nationals sneeze, Nigeria catches cold because they hold the key to the industry.

BEYOND the media image I know pretty little about the late Ghanaian-born BBC presenter, Komla Dumor.

THE theme of the 1993 United Nations world conference on human rights in Vienna was Women’s Rights Are Human Rights. I was with the Civil Liberties Organisation then and attended the conference.

OVER the past few years, Bola Tinubu has made himself something of a colossus of South-Western politics in Nigeria. Against the onslaught of vociferous PDP electoral manipulations in 2003, Tinubu drew the line in the sand and held on to the biggest prize: Lagos. He became, in effect, the lone survivor of his party in the South-West. By 2007, using just Lagos State as his stronghold, he fought back to wrest ACN control back in all but one of the South-western states. By 2011, he had consolidated his hold in the region. With 2015 looming, it would appear to be high time for Tinubu to unfold a national, as opposed to a merely regional, agenda.

‘PING-PONG’ diplomacy paved the way to a political rapprochement between the USA and China in the 1970s. Those were the days of China’s Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, US President Richard Nixon and his diplomatic soldier and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Now, Dennis Rodman is trying to use ‘basketball diplomacy’as an instrument to defrost the ice-cold US-North Korean relations.

AS we begin our historic journey into the new, pre-election year with its promised political tumult, I wish to congratulate the All Progressives Congress (APC) for its great success story so far. When Senator Bola Tinubu of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), his partner, Major General Muhammadu Buhari of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and the National Chairman of the defunct All Nigerian People’s Party (ANPP), Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, started the merger moves that spawned the APC, few who were conversant with Nigeria’s history of failed mergers expected the venture to come to this juncture where APC is almost co-equal rival of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

On Saturday, three goals down, I had promised my friends that I was not going to write about the match. “ Win some, lose some,” I surrendered.

The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), at its meeting last week, retained Central Bank’s benchmark interest rate at the industrially destabilising level of 12%, to avert the threat of inflation.