IMPLICITLY, the policy initiatives enunciated in the President’s 2012 Budget address reflect similar reasoning. Instead of simply funding pre-existing programmes, the Jonathan administration appears to be formulating its own distinctive approach to the unemployment problem.

I CLEARLY recall President Goodluck Jonathan standing up at an Independence Day service a couple of months ago and informing his audience that he was not a lion, tiger, army general, Egyptian Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar (the neo-Babylonian king who conquered Jerusalem and sent the Jews into exile).

AS Nigerians celebrated the New Year with joy and gratitude, even in the midst of security threats, they still think seriously about the unresolved economic and political problems of the past year…

THE wind of change is blowing everywhere. In Edo State, one major industry, the obituary, is currently undergoing some transformation. It is growing both in form and in content. At the beginning of each dance session, the Master of Ceremony (MC) is now required to announce that people should not place money on the celebrant’s head. Instead, people are now required to do their spraying into improvised offering bags.

IT is difficult to recall that this time last year, our nation was at major crossroads, and had a chance to sink deeper into decay and hopelessness, or rise above its limitations and challenges. So much has happened in the last one year to change the nature of our political system, that a visitor will hardly recognise the nation’s political terrain today.

I was trapped in the interface between hope and despair on New Year’s eve. I am in London, after spending the Christmas period in Dubai and watching on television outlets the horrific reportage of the tragic bombings on Christmas Day.

LIKE an evil odour, the fever of death caused by Boko haram is still grimly spreading across the country with death toll from its cowardly Christmas attack still rising…

President Goodluck Jonathan presented year 2012 budget proposals to the National Assembly barely a week before the Christmas recess! Incidentally, the 2012 budget is the first budget crafted on the foundation of the transformation agenda “which spells out the strategic direction of Jonathan’s Administration”.

The prospects and the problems associated with the Sovereign Wealth Fund, SWF, are often inextricably intertwined because the funds to be managed are still subject to the judgments of “doubts and certainty” exercised by the people selected to manage the funds.

Hi Readers! I know this may sound a bit silly, but the hospital is a pretty dreary place to spend the night in. All I’ve done so far in my life with regards to the hospital, is go pay a patient a visit. I breeze in with chocolates, fruits, magazine/newspapers, provision, etc., flash dazzling smiles which hopefully are expected to liven up the atmosphere and make the patient feel a lot better, sit around a bit, bid him/her ‘goodbye’ and then leg it back home; satisfied that I had accomplished my mission of doing a good deed.