FOR any economist worthy of the name it must have appeared like fiction or fairy tales. Who would have thought that a President of any nation, even a Banana Republic, said to be a Ph.D holder would in one day sign off N289 million to a security outfit without authority from the National Assembly, NASS, and have the funds withdrawn illegally from a government agency? Saul Bellow has pointed to how power destroys the sanity of most people. But, power allied with stupidity amounts to a double curse on the people led by such individuals. As German philosopher Frederick Von Schiller, 1759-1805 (VBQ p 235) has advised us “Against stupidity [of the leaders] the gods themselves struggle in vain.”

THOMAS Hardy, 1840-1928, great British writer, once said that “a pessimist is the person who looks at the worst possible contingencies.” (VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, VBQ, p 186). No Federal Government official has been plagued by more pessimists in the last two years, but especially since January this year, than Mr Emefiele, the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria.

History has already recorded three facts proving conclusively that under Obasanjo from 1999, the public treasury developed a hole in the bottom for Nigeria’s oil revenue to run into private drains

Under existing arrangements, Libya and Nigeria were granted special concessions; the two nations were allowed to keep their quotas while others reduced supplies

The report, released in mid-March estimated that March exports will not be significantly different from the previous two months