Saturday, I came across this newspiece that said a Nigerian player had offered 50,000 dollars to his colleagues if they won a match.

AS we prepare for the final rites of my deceased senior friend, colleague and associate, Chief Pini Jason Onyegbadue, the Onu Na-ekwuru Oha, (the people’s spokesman), I offer my humble tribute in form of insights into the way he lived his professional life, some of which we shared together.

In the light of government’s reticence to our persistent recommendation for the adoption of dollar certificates for the payment of distributable dollar-derived revenue, a regular reader of this column has suggested reasons why certain stakeholders would oppose the proposition to fundamentally alter the payment system and thereby lift the irrepressible perennial burden of surplus cash and its attendant adverse collaterals such as inflation, high cost of funds, rising national debt, weaker exchange rate, rising unemployment, N2000bn annual fuel subsidy and deepening poverty nationwide!

David says: “The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.” (Psalm 24:1). How then can we insist only a tithe of our income belongs to God? God does not only own ten percent of our possessions, he owns everything we have. As a matter of fact, we belong to the Lord, even as he also belongs to us. Thus, Jeremiah declares: “The LORD is (our) portion.” (Lamentation 3:24).

The scalp of another top government official has landed on my trophy shelve: that of Dr Shamsudeen Usman, the Minister for National Planning. He joins the likes of the technocrats, led by Chief Shonekan, who championed the cause of the Structural Adjustment Programme, SAP in the 1980s to early 1990s,which ruined us till this day.