My take is that Organised Labour joined the Federal Government in its myopic approach to the entire issue. How many people, relative to the entire population, does the Federal Government employ?

As I write this, that expressway, leading to the nation’s busiest ports is choked with trucks of two types. There are fuel tankers going to any of the 35 or so fuel depots in the Apapa area to lift fuel. The others are flat-pallet, container-bearing trucks going to the ports.

The serial frustrations are what have created windows of opportunities for “third parties”. These third parties charge from N3,000 to N5,000 to “do NIN” for a willing customer. To modify records, staff at NIMC offices have been known to demand as much as N25,000, while third party operators demand as much as N40,000.

It worries me to no end that despite the repeated raids on these illegal refining sites, they somehow find ways to resume business. That means the business is so lucrative that confrontations with security operatives have become an ineffective deterrent.

THIS column had gone to bed last Thursday before the National Economic Council, NEC, a statutory organ of the Federal Government, released palliatives to cushion the effects of subsidy removal. When I saw the measures, which by now, all fellow Nigerians must have heard, a hundred and one emotions coursed through me all at once, […]

“When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – When you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favours – when you see that men get richer by graft and pull than by work, and your laws don’t […]

I was unable to write this column last week owing to an attack of conjunctivitis, which left my eyes swollen, reddened and oozing thick, mucoid discharge. It also gave me fever, and I was unable to read. It was so bad that I couldn’t even read text messages on my phones. People who saw me […]

“No politician can sit on an issue if you make it hot enough.” — Saul Alinsky(1909-1972 WELL, the subsidy removal issue is clearly a very hot one for all Nigerians, and if I may add, irrespective of status. This is because costs have not just risen, they have doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in a space […]

THERE is no gainsaying the fact that Nigerians are in for a very hard grind, occasioned by the precipitous removal of subsidy on petrol by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in his inaugural speech on May 29. The effects on life and living have been direct and instantaneous, sending prices of just about everything through the […]

THE news broke a few days ago that runway lights on domestic runway 18/36L of the Murtala Muhammad Airport, in Lagos, got stolen and it left me with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Runway 18/36L of the Lagos airport had been shut down for maintenance, and the runway lights had been […]

I do not think Akume said the right things to the Chinese delegation that visited him, and also do not think that teaching Chinese language in Nigerian schools is the way to reciprocate Chinese goodwill

I am of the bent that if the APC cohorts had not browbeaten Jonathan into continuing with subsidy in 2012, the pains then, would be lesser than what we are facing today

After the May 29 swearing-in of the President and state governors, those who won elections are now trying to form their governments. In the presidency, some special advisers and assistants have been appointed, while some governors have equally appointed advisers and assistants and secretaries to the state governments. While we await cabinet lists at the […]

We were warned that petrol subsidy would not last forever and would have to go someday. It has now gone. President Bola Tinubu chose to extinguish subsidy in his inaugural address on May 29. As we all came to see, the president had barely left the Eagle Square venue of his inauguration when the petrol […]

THE Friday May 19 issue of this column had the headline: Nigeria Air and Buhari’s ministers of magic. Essentially, that edition dwelt on avowals by the immediate past Minister of Aviation, Senator Hadi Sirika, to the effect that the planned national carrier, Nigeria Air