NIGERIA was again in the news last week for the wrong reasons following the murder of two hostages, Chris McManus and Franco Lamolinara who had been held by Boko Haram for nearly a year.

THERE might have been other reasons but one important if not the VERY reason for the British amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates of Nigeria, was the need to make the South support the North which the colonialists thought was not economically viable.

IN the last two years or thereabout during which the Action Congress of Nigeria succeeded in chasing the Peoples Democratic Party out of most parts of the South-West, talks of integrating the economy and politics of the region have assumed an upward swing.

THE head of Nigeria’s Central Bank, the equivalent of the US’s Federal Reserve or the UK’s Bank of England is designated, governor. Despite his immense powers over the country’s financial sector, the Governor of the Central Bank is perhaps the only Nigerian official called governor but whose responsibilities are limited to the financial sector.

SENEGALESE President, Abdoulaye Wade, is an old man by any standard. You only need to look at him to know. While according to official records he was born in 1926, street lore has it that he might be much older given poor record keeping in those days. Which means the president might be entirely blameless in the mix-up in his age.