NIGERIA’S labour movement is surely in a state of intellectual crisis. The leadership of the leading associations of workers in the country needs both moral and intellectual revival.

A LOT has been said about the recent fuel price increase but not enough of this has taken into account the social palliatives accompanying it now that the budget has been passed and funds will be released.

ABOUT five years ago, my decision to endorse retired General Muhammadu Buhari given the constraints at the time, was based on the promise that he would make a great civilian President of Nigeria. I scripted a widely circulated glowing affirmation of his candidacy. Based on my estimations, there were appropriate inadequacies associated with the other candidates that made them unfit for the job.

TWO Nigerians from Katsina State have been Presidents of Nigeria in the past ten years. The first was Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, who assumed power on May 29th 2007. He was an academic from a Fulani elite family. The core of his government comprised mainly Northerners because unlike his late elder brother, Major General Shehu Yar’Adua, he never really had much opportunity to interact with the wider Nigerian society before he joined politics.

Lai Mohammed, Information Minister, NATION, May 17, 2016, p 6. In the report by Yusuf Alli, Yomi Odunuga and Vincent Ikuomola, all senior editorial staff of the paper, the Minister also pointed out that “Government is not about popularity. There are times in life you have to take a very hard decision and this decision is for the long term and benefit of everybody.” Fortunately or unfortunately, the three journalists were with the paper in January 1, 2012 when Jonathan’s government increased the price of fuel from N97 per litre to N141 – an increase of 45.3 per cent. Each of them should be able to recollect what he wrote in response to that announcement. Lai Mohammed, then the National Publicity Secretary for the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, also should go and find out what he said in 2012.