LAST week, former President, Olusegun Obasanjo was keynote speaker at the fourth annual Ibadan Sustainable Development Summit, organised by the University of Ibadan. Against the backdrop of heightening political tension in the country, he surveyed the landscape and delivered what the French call a coup-de-poing, against the “younger” generation of political leaders, especially those who emerged as the crop of leaders from 1999.

NGOZI Okonjo-Iweala has two designations. She is Nigeria’s Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy. Without intending to be perverse, I wonder what the differences are between both titles. What would a Finance Minister of a country such as ours be doing if she is not responsible (call it coordinating, managing, overseeing or whatever) for the entire economy?

I HAVE taken extreme liberties with the anguished cry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s narrator in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” for good reason.

THE most flagrant display of the conqueror’s attitude to the wealth of the people is the case of the Police Pension Funds.

THE Lagos deportation saga exposed our collective poor attitude to issues of citizenship rights. It is a collective, national guilt because what happened in Lagos occurs in all parts of the country in one form or the other, such as employment, educational and sundry opportunities, from which non-indigenes are excluded.