Naira has been on a continuous downward pressure for the past three decades such that our currency depreciated from about 50 kobo/$1 in 1980 to its current suicidal rate of over N 150/$1.

Whenever I tell my friends that I am not a politician, they laugh and quote the trite which says “ Every man is a political animal”

THE recently concluded Northern Economic Summit in Kaduna provided another opportunity for soul-searching over failed dreams in the northern part of Nigeria. For me, it was an opportunity to ponder the failed dreams of Nigeria as a nation.

Ever since homo sapiens emerged on this planet after more than three and a half billion years of zigzag evolutionary progression of life from what some scientists call the primitive soup, members of the species have been making concerted effort to control nature. In an important sense, civilisation is the synthesis of both the intended and unintended consequences of human activities meant to domesticate nature for the benefit of human beings.

Experts in human behaviour tell us that to make good progress in life, we use yesterday’s experience to improve our today and the future.

Prince Bolasodun Abdul-Jabar Ajibola, lawyer and jurist, will be 77 early in the week. His has been a life dedicated to law and scholarship. In the last three weeks, he has given us insight into how he had done it. We continue Bolasodun’s Golden Nights.

That message was at the tail end of the text sent to me by my friend, Tolu, on March 13, 2011. As it turned out, some other folks anxious for me to visit Akwa Ibom State, had not only sent me a leaflet entitled, bondages of Akpabioism, which they claim is now being widely distributed in the state. Going under the name of Free Akwa Ibom Committee, FAIC, the group, in the leaflet under reference, drew everybody’s attention to the fact that Governor Akpabio had in the first three years in office collected from the Federation account and other sources N700 billion.

The transmission of partisan information through the electronic media which is generally referred to as political broadcast involves several materials. These range from political party manifestos, slogans, jingles, emblems and election promises. The significance of political broadcasts is that they offer opportunities to all political parties to publicise their manifestos and other party activities.

The term ‘democracy’ was originally ‘demos’ and ‘krasi’; Greek for ‘people’ and ‘rule’ -or ‘rule of the people’. But over time, it has etymologically evolved to mean different things to different people. In our own part of the world, the transformation is breathtaking.

The sight of houses being swept away into the sea kept playing over and over on the television over the weekend. The biggest earthquake in recent memory had just occurred in Japan and the disaster I was watching on television was the Tsunami that followed shortly after. The year 2011 is barely three months old and this is the second, if not third major earthquake but unlike the one in New Zealand; this one packed a knockout punch of a raging Tsunami.