“Those fighting the government in the media are doing so because we have been able to frustrate their efforts in strangulating the economy through their devilish black market and questionable profiteering at the expense of the Nigerian people…What is hurting them is that we have put policies in place where they can no longer cheat the government and cause untold hardship to millions of Nigerians”, Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke, Minister of Petroleum Resources, in PUNCH, Friday, November 9, 2012, p 13.

When I saw the headline ’22m malnourished in Nigeria, others’’, my reaction was ‘Not Again!’. Throughout our civil war, and many years after it ended, whenever some foreign media houses wrote anything on Nigeria, they would publish pictures of badly malnourished people, especially children with Kwashiokor, along with the news item.

It is no longer news that Barrack Obama is back to the White House for his second term as President of the United States of America. His eventful first term no doubt paved the way for the feat. In earnest, the man’s vision, passion and general demeanour present him as a person who can win an election any day.

A front row seat,watching the best of life unfold in a time when life seemed so easy is a gift. Maybe its nostalgia that is romanticising the past and making it seem that the good old days were much better than the present. I was at a dinner a few days ago and some youngsters came to do a dance interpretation of Fela’s “Suffering and Smiling”.

Having been at Patricks since 2006, I would say it’s been very fascinating working with children with special needs, especially those with autism. I never knew anything about Autism even though I knew about children with Asperger syndrome, until I got an appointment with Patricks.