SOME of these damages are long term, and would require years of uninterrupted improvement in quality to put right. Secondly, at ASUU congress meetings, lecturers scathingly excoriate top government officials. We are fond of name-calling the president, minister of education members of the legislature and all the sybaritic occupiers of high official positions.

I WAS home to Imo State this past May to bury my father who died on May 3 at the Federal Medical Centre in Umuahia and was buried on June 6, 2009 in his home at Mbaise. Just as an aside, I wish to thank all those who through their messages, gifts, prayers and presence supported and stood by my family throughout the period of the funeral rites.

WHATEVER our situation, rich or poor, high or lowly, the first thing on most prayer lists is ‘long life’. We spend all our life working towards a peaceful, happy and prosperous old age. For a handful across the globe, God makes this possible. But for many, especially the masses, this is elusive.

IF you needed proof of how powerful the media is, it was right there for you to see for yourself when last week Thursday, August 20, the media came out in full force to make a statement, a statement of fact that without the media, what they show those who read them in print and listen to them on radio and watch them on television, no democracy anywhere in the world can work. Oh yes, it was a great and memorable outing.

You wonder how professionally run banks could have so severely hamstrung themselves to a degree that turned around to make them, the creditors, eventually insolvent. An expert characterized most of the loans as being mismatched – that is, they were long-term propositions in a situation of short-term investments.

HILARY Rodham Clinton the 67th American Secretary of State swung through seven African countries in 11 days ending August 14. She was like an old conservative headmistress scoring her pupils in examinations she had not conducted, and making remarks on their moral conduct and fitness.

IN the 1930s many developed nations of the Western World faced what was described as the worst economic crisis. Prices of commodities fell, abysmally and the New York Stock Exchange collapsed. That was followed by a severe loss of confidence in the economy, leading to failure of businesses.

The British under Lugard perceived the north as the location of the superior race. Islamic religion of the so called finer race was a better regarded form of paganism than the fetish practices of the savage south.

For sure, everything became uncertain after the crash last year of the money and capital markets in the world’s financial capitals and all dependent on them such as Nigeria, except one thing: the world is going to get far smaller than it has always been.

MALAM Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the new Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is quite a dresser. You have seen him in snappy suits with flamboyant frills on his shirt and elegant bow ties. Last Saturday, August 15, 2009, he dressed to shock his guests, top media practitioners, whom he had invited to Eko Hotel Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos, to explain what his shake-up in the banking sector was all about.