THE late Guyanese scholar and political activist, Walter Rodney, years ago wrote a masterpiece titled “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.” Today, he might have done some re-thinking and come up with another title that could read “How African leaders further underdeveloped Africa.”

I WAS fifteen years old when the civil war broke out in Nigeria. Although we were living in Ibadan in the South-west at the time, my sympathies were totally and unequivocally with the Igbos. When a people have been so brutally butchered by their countrymen as happened to the Igbos, I felt they had no choice but to insist on leaving the country.

“Looking from the fact that the funds from the Federation Account are not judiciously utilised by the states and they are not accountable to the people and the state legislature, our concern is that even if they get money from bonds and it is not invested, the state will be left with a huge debt burden which will hurt in the long term.” Dr Usman Muttaka, Head of Department of Economics, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.

In last week’s article, we identified the advantages of a stronger naira exchange rate to include much lower inflation and interest rates, increasing industrial expansion, with rapidly rising employment opportunities. We also explained how a stronger naira will eliminate fuel subsidy and also reduce the size and cost of our national debt

So much has been written on the Nigeria-Scotland match that I rather move on.
The plans to write on Coach Keshi’s final list of 23 was not helped by the fact that by the time this column was sent in, the list had not left the coach’s head.