Christmas is at hand, the period when money is on the mind of most people and the spirit of consumerism reigns supreme. Of course, money is important. The Bible has a realistic perspective about money. Ecclesiastes 10:19 says, ‘money is the answer for everything’.

Nothing is all evil. Previous military governments gave us two decrees, which in retrospect, we might wish had been incorporated into our 1999 constitution. The second was the Failed Bank Decree of the Abacha administration. Although I was placed in detention four times during that regime, I will forever pray for Abacha for at least temporarily sanitizing the banking sector.

We lost our national guinea pig, Chief Anthony Eromosele Enahoro, to the cruel hands of death last week, at age 87. He did not die in America or England or India. He died in a hospital in Benin City, a lover of his ungrateful country unto death. In the Sunday Vanguard of June 11, 2000, I wrote a piece on The National Guinea Pig.

Going by the abysmal performance of PDP at the federal level and in most PDP-controlled states since 1999, it would really be advantageous for our democratic evolution if the party loses the presidency and majority in both chambers of the National Assembly. But that is easier said than done.

Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria, has taken quite a lot of our time these few days. If you ask me, I will say it is good he did. It was a question of money and of course, integrity. It was a popular uproar. Sanusi could not refuse to answer the summons of the sovereign parliament. He even agreed he could be sacked.

Barely a year after she was crowned ‘The Amazon Of Cross Rivers’ at the famous Tinapa Resort by the First Lady of Cross Rivers State, Mrs. Liyel Imoke, Cross Riverians just did honour again to their proud Princess of Bakassi, Senator Florence Ita-Giwa.

As the year races to an end, it is always great to look back and see what was so great and not so great about it. I can certainly count a few peeves that test patience as a virtue, but there are some that make you question life and humanity as a whole. Some occurrences are a slap in the face of our creator and the fact that they can happen in any society makes all of us culpable of breeding evil.

Dr. Kingsley Ozuomba Mbadiwe was an astute and consummate politician who brought a colourful dash to Nigerian politics. With graduate degrees in political science from the American ivy-league Columbia University, New York, earned in a very auspicious moment in 20th century America, Mbadiwe knew a thing or two about political strategy and horse-trading.

Anyone who regularly monitors our legislators would, like this column, easily see the correlation between legislation in Nigeria and dance steps. For us the experience has been overwhelming.

RICHARD Dick Cheney the immediate past Vice President of the United States (US) is an international crook who should be in jail in his country, Iraq, Netherlands, Afghanistan, Britain, Azerbaijan or in Nigeria where last week, a sixteen-count charge was filed against him. But unfortunately, the scales of justice are not balanced, so he will escape justice with his loot.

WITH the agony of ‘Wikileaks‘ still raging, it may be difficult to avoid comment on such event which should not, other things being equal, be a topic to be mentioned or debated. It should be understood, and properly so, that many developing countries, especially, those which have passed through colonialism, have nothing which could be described as secret to their colonial masters.

WE have come a long way in all things, including the attempt to checkmate that big monster called corruption. The joke is told of how a machine that catches thieves was invented outside these coasts. That machine was dispatched to us to help catch those big thieves around.

From the deeps of the quagmire that is the endangered professional boxing in Nigeria beckons the lone surviving hope, in the form of Olusegun Ajose who is compelled to sacrifice his own Christmas and New Year pleasures as he pursues what looks to be a career defining assignment early in the new year.

“(Nigeria) is a strange country – its own political, intellectual and economic leadership are paid agents of other nations” – Obi Nwakanma, in his column, The Orbit in Sunday Vanguard, December 10th 2010.
OF all the things written so far

BASTARD! That is perhaps the most insulting word you can use for a Nigerian. It is therefore not surprising that retired General Olufemi Olutoye is at war with some of his kinsmen just as former Ekiti State Governor, Ayo Fayoshe is with ex- President Olusegun Obasanjo.