“Despite her potential for prosperity, Nigeria has been listed as one of the five countries where half of the world’s malnourished live.”

Once upon a time, the rising tide of people living in poverty was called a “time bomb”. Not anymore, both time and bombs are here with us. Read on.

Allocations for SURE in the 2012 budget has again been slashed to less than N450 billion. Increasingly, it looks as if the clarifications made by Dr Reuben Abati, last week, might be unnecessary after all. With only N450 billion in the kitty to be distributed among the three tiers of government, it would appear that the Christopher Kolade Committee, a high-powered group, will have only about N240 billion to work with.

“At no time did President Goodluck Jonathan said that the Federal Government had abandoned the SURE programme. What he said in his opening remarks at the meeting last week was that the full implementation of government’s palliatives …was no longer feasible”.

As I came in, I saw the SURE book being distributed; we are withdrawing it. This is the old one. We developed this with the expectation that we are going to completely deregulate the downstream sector of the oil industry, the 100 per cent removal of the subsidy….. I don’t want this thing to be distributed; it will give a wrong impression”.

“There is a long running dispute between NNPC and PSC operators as to the calculation of the cost of oil, tax oil, and royalty oil under the PSCs. This meant that the parties cannot agree on the entitlements to amounts being lifted by NNPC and the contractors. Amounts reported for reconciliation revealed different interpretations for the same lifting transactions.”

The NNPC is disturbed by the findings of the NEITI report for many reasons. The first is when an audit is carried out on any organisation, the organisation is engaged with a view to reconciling the figures; smooth areas of disagreements and agreements.

Last week, the focus was on the micro-economic impact of subsidy removal, in other words, its effect on individuals and the new choices the policy has thrown up for people whose lives have now become unsettled in many ways. This week, the attention turns to groups; specifically it addresses the low income group and the middle class.

Years ago, while still in the university reading economics, I came across a pamphlet warning economists to always go beyond abstractions when discussing the effect of economic policies. He pointed out that the 10 per cent annual GDP growth claimed by the Communist USSR was purchased at the cost of over two million deaths a year.

The prospects and the problems associated with the Sovereign Wealth Fund, SWF, are often inextricably intertwined because the funds to be managed are still subject to the judgments of “doubts and certainty” exercised by the people selected to manage the funds.