NCC must put in place a continuous policy to make it difficult and unprofitable for phones to be stolen and sold in Nigeria

NIGERIANS generally like Whitemen. They see Whitemen as rich, coming from an orderly civilised society who are here to help Nigeria. The smile of welcome starts from the airport, “welcome oga, wetin you bring for me?” Nigerians expects the Whiteman to dole out money any and every time, afterall he has dollars and pounds and euros.

THE PEF (M) B is funded by the Bridging Allowance and the National Transportation Average – which is jargon for saying that all petroleum marketers pay N6.80 per litre to the Fund for every litre imported into the country.

WHAT people call magic is in fact, an illusion. When a magician puts a woman in a box and saws the middle of the box; one expects her to be cut in two except that this does not happen. The magician shouts some incantation and behold the lady is standing untouched by the mechanical sawing blade. In many respects, the operation of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, NNPC, Petroleum Equalisation Fund, PEF, the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, and its Forex policies, the Pension wahala are all magic – abracadabras, total illusions. What is not illusion is the heavy cost to the economy and the people.

THE gaze of the old, it is said, is focused on the past, the young on the future. It is because of these perspectives that the old is sometimes unable to appreciate the future. Moreover, the older one gets, the easier it is for the memory to play games with one. I remember when I was young, there was a greater variety of fruits and foodstuff than now.

FOR several weeks now the Senate and the Comptroller General of Customs have been embroiled in an argument about the proper mode of dressing the Comptroller should wear to appear before the House.

WHAT really is the problem between Russia, the US and the West? It would seem that geopolitically they need each other as enemies to keep their respective people quiescent! In Ukraine, the Russians had a pro-Russian President who was removed by a coup to be replaced by a pro-Western President. Russia responded by encouraging a Separatist Russian speaking Eastern Ukraine to secede.

By Patrick Dele Cole THE role of the US in Iraq is rather unedifying. President Bush encouraged Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to attack Iran in a bitter war. He invited hundreds of Iraqi scientists to the US to train and research in nuclear technology. When Secretary of State, John Kerry said: “We can’t let politics and mythology […]

PRESIDENT Dwight Eisenhower called the Middle East “the most strategically important area in the world,” “a stupendous source strategic power and probably the richest economic prize in the world in the field of foreign investment.” State Department declared the Middle East “a prize that US intended to keep for itself and its allies in the unfolding new world order of the day.” Delano Roosevelt’s adviser, Adolf Berle, declared: “control of the incomparable energy reserves of the Middle East would yield substantial control of the world.

DONALD Trump ran a brilliant campaign in the last US elections. Apart from the issues around Hillary’s private email, he attacked the Clinton Foundation, accusing it of selling access to Mrs. Clinton, US Secretary of State for money. He hinted that Mrs. Clinton lacked stamina for the job of President.