IF I were to ask you to name one or two countries that can be said to be friends of Nigeria, my guess is you would be hard-pressed to answer. The truth is that Nigeria is a lone-ranger in international relations. We have no friends. There is virtually no country we can run to or rely on in a time of need. If anything speaks eloquently of the failure of Nigeria’s diplomacy, it is our failure to cultivate friends and allies in international relations in 55 years of independent nationhood.

UNTIL I came across this verse of scripture,Dr. Amos Akingba had been my reference point on the danger of knowing more than most of your community.The elder statesman is fond of expressing regrets that he knows too much. “Sometimes I wish I don’t know as much as I do.If I were in some village chewing kola nut and drinking palm wine all over the place,I would not be in this agony as I would be swimming in ignorance.”

Hereafter, we will discuss the related ADVERSE consequences of the Current Payments Model (CPM) against the positive attributes of the Advocated Payments Model (APM) for the allocation, for example, of $1bn export revenue in the following explanatory steps. Thus, in CPM: -1 The CBN unilaterally determines the naira exchange rate and thereafter unconstitutionally captures the distributable $1bn revenue and prints/creates in replacement (read as monetizes) N200bn as statutory allocations, which are then domiciled in the bank accounts of beneficiaries.

I AM not a fan of Kaduna State Executive Governor, Nasir El-Rufai. I find him rather brash. Even with some of my friends serving in his government, I did not think highly of administration. Then last week, I got a call from a close friend. He said his extended family in Kaduna who run a private school is thinking of phasing out conventional education and taking a different course. The reason is that most of its students have moved en-mass to public schools. But he says his family school is not the only private one limping; a number of others are tottering at the point of collapse for the same reason.

Godwin Emefiele, the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, is one official who has my total sympathy. He is the victim of economic circumstances absolutely beyond his control, yet, he is looked upon to provide solutions to problems well outside the mandate of the CBN. Unjustifiably, he had become the target of attack from all sides – manufacturers, importers, exporters, BDCs, domiciliary account holders, banks, oil companies,