The media, including me, made a terrible mistake a few weeks ago. It all started from a story in the PUNCH newspaper of April 5, 2013, by one Friday Olokor, titled “Only 27.2% of Nigerians’ll be poor by 2015 –NBS.” The title was totally misleading and other commentators, apart from me, reacted to what, we knew, was a fallacious statement. As it turned out, the Chief Executive of the National Bureau of Statistics, Dr. Yemi Kale, had already sent a correction to media houses in Abuja. Our copy at Vanguard had not reached Lagos by the time I wrote. That was the source of the error on my part.

The floods, which devastated many parts of Nigeria in 2012, should not have caught us by surprise – but they did. For more than a generation, scientists have been warning a deaf world and its leaders about the imminent catastrophe which would follow relentless global warming as mankind heats up his own “home” – the earth. Furthermore, we knew for centuries that the year starts in January and moves inexorably to December.

Many Nigerians over the age of 60 would recollect that statement. Right from our homes to our primary schools and, if we were lucky, our secondary schools, that moral admonition was drummed into our heads. Tell the truth.

The first part of this series ended last week with the observation that the singular leadership provided by former Governor Victor Attah gave the oil producing states the economic power they now enjoy. If they want to extent that triumph or even consolidate the gains made on account of the fight for Resource Control, they need another leader to fight for PIB 2 – not Jonathan who is too involved in 2015 to fight for anything else. Read on.

The oil is produced in the Niger Delta, yet, it is the people of the Northeast and the Northwest and a little of North-Central , almost nothing for the South-West and South-East, that own and control these oil blocks. Almost nothing for the South-South, Niger Delta oil producing areas”.