President Muhammed Buhari’s is proposing to spend over N6trillion in the 2016 Appropriation bill, even though government ‘reasonably’ expects to earn about N3.8trillion as revenue. Indeed, according to the budget proposals, N984bn will be borrowed in Naira from personal and corporate holders of surplus cash to fund the shortfall, while $4.5b (N900bn) will also be borrowed from the international market at the current exchange rate of about N200= $1 and prevailing commercial interest rates will apply.

BEKO Ransome-Kuti was the unarmed general of the people who led them in countless campaigns against the perpetuation of military rule and for the enthronement of democracy. In the course of those struggles, he was dragged from his office or the streets and detained, several times. Imprisoned in the Kirikiri Maximum Prison, charged to court countless times, and when he remained unbowed, the Abacha regime decided on a final solution; his elimination. So he was charged with coup plotting; he did not get the death penalty but was awarded life imprisonment. He survived the harshness of the Kaduna Prison.

Professor Chukwumah Soludo, former Governor of the Central Bank, CBN, was in his elements a few weeks ago, when he declared that the current CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, turned the bank into an ATM machine for the Jonathan administration. The imports of that statement are numerous; but, two would have struck most readers who are no knowledgeable about the role of the central bank in any nation.

WHEN I first saw the figure on newspaper headlines, I thought the proverbial “printer’s devil” had made a media round as the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr. Ibrahim Magu recently did. But, of course, though the “printer’s devil” can do and undo, it does not have the power to visit more than one newspaper house and cause them to portray wrong figures on the same issue same day. It has since turned out that media houses quoted the man correctly, from a speech he authored, signed and read by himself.

Not many people know my uncle, Sir Ajayi Edobor that I often refer to in this column because of his impact on me as a young man. It was from him I learnt the technique of the communication of the deaf which I later found to be popular in government which behaves as if it does not hear what the people say. He has in earnest always served as my ever-ready barometer for measuring how the ordinary man sees every government policy.