THE Naira, Nigeria’s national currency, has been very much in the news in the last couple of weeks. The naira is seriously ill and the prognosis from the ‘experts’, many of them full of bile and ill-will, is indeed dire. They have written the naira’s obituary and are already summoning the burial party of undertakers that would complete the final task of their death wish- ensure the untimely death of the currency.

WHEN President Muhammadu Buhari presented the 2016 Appropriation Bill to a joint session of the National Assembly on 22 December 2015, he couldn’t have envisaged the type of controversy that has since trailed it. No, Buhari couldn’t have anticipated that what was initially praised as a budget of great promise would turn out to be the non starter that it is fast turning out to be- except somebody takes the bold step necessary to salvage it from imminent asphyxiation.

THERE was always something odd about the victory of Ayodele Fayose over Kayode Fayemi in the June 2014 governorship election in Ekiti State. This, not simply because Fayemi was an incumbent whose incumbency status should stand him in good stead, but because of the comprehensiveness of the defeat by a man whose departure as governor from the government house, eight years earlier, took place in a cloud of shame and ignominy.

NIGERIANS are becoming ever more creative in the way they employ social media as tools of mass communication. In terms of their engagement of everyday reality and narration of contemporary events, the virtual world is fast becoming not just a familiar but indeed comfortable terrain for many Nigerians. A lot of what goes on social media platforms should, in terms of their mobilisation of popular consciousness, truly be of concern to many of those who abuse positions of leadership in this country. Social media are becoming a veritable means of mass mobilisation and tool of political education in a way never before seen in these parts and that should necessarily get those with soiled political image to worry.

THE Minister of the Interior, Abdulrahman Danbazau is not new to public office. A three star general at the point of retirement, he was for some years the Chief of Army Staff in the Goodluck Jonathan administration. Even though his tenure as the CoAS was not particularly distinguished nor was he noted for any major achievement while in the military, he nevertheless carried himself in a rather dignifying way.