There can be no denial of the threat of the Boko Haram insurgency to security, the economy of the north-eastern states, particularly, has become seriously dislocated while thousands of people in several communities have been viciously traumatized by the indiscriminate killings of kith and kin and the continuous decimation of their homes and livelihood.

The exceptional performance in Pension administration in the last 10 years encouraged the first ever World Pension Summit – Africa in Abuja last week. The event coincided with the 10th anniversary of the commencement of the contributory pension scheme in Nigeria.

In apparent response to the opposition’s admonition that the nation’s economy was “gradually grinding to a halt” last year, the Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, conversely painted a brighter economic picture, and sought to clarify popular misconceptions on the issue of our external reserves balance of about $45bn and the alleged discrepancies between the reported Excess Crude Account balances of the Finance Ministry and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) reserves.

A Trade Group under the umbrella of Concerned Bureau de change operators recently published a full page advert titled “Appeal against Ploy to decimate BDCs and Destabilise the Forex Market”; the advert claimed that the Central Bank was planning to reduce the number of BDCs in Nigeria, despite their contribution to the economy.

The “Safe Schools Initiative” (SSI) is a brain-child of Gordon Brown, former UK Prime Minister who now serves as United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education. The SSI was earlier launched at the World Economic Forum Africa in April/May this year in Abuja, in response to the abducted 200 school girls from Chibok, Borno State