The House Committee Chair on the Capital Market – and I do not know if this is not a duplication of functions that should normally be under the Financial Services committee or if it’s a sub-committee under the general rule, but nonetheless – Herman Iorwase Hembe, is looking to be L’Homme fatale and nothing more, in the drama playing out at the chambers of the House this past week.

It’s been long in the making, but it does seem finally that the future has arrived for oil. Crude oil as the world’s most important source of energy is on the decline. Last Wednesday, the US president, Barack Obama, declared oil so last century that it’s future as a source of energy is now a matter of time ticking: tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

Niger State governor, Dr. Babangida Aliyu unleashed the bag of storms in his statements recently calling for a more equitable or balanced revenue formula. In his assertion, there is great injustice in the current revenue structure and sharing formula in Nigeria.

Two weeks ago, the political leaders of the South-West and the South-South geo-political zones met with the president and demanded even more emphatically for the conveying of the Sovereign National Conference. It does seem that the president allied himself with that call. And that is a good thing.

Boko Haram issued an ultimatum to all Christians and Southerners to leave the North or face attack and death. This threat came with a backdrop already dimmed with blood.

The great masquerade begins his final journey homeward towards the now open door of the rising sun. This is what it looks like from this past week, as Nigerians – particularly the Igbo commence the final funeral ceremonies across the globe, wherever they are to be found, in honour of their great war leader, General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu.

The United States of America gets it most of the time. As a federal state, it has developed a highly organized and systematic administrative federalism that permits it to function like a smooth, well-oiled machine. I have always said that Nigeria could learn and incorporate some of the finest attributes of the US system, while of course learning from its equally deep flaws, and thus not re-invent the wheel either way.

A great and impenetrable pall has fallen of Nigeria. It is the pall of violence and division. Nigerians have known for a long time that its soul is broken into many disparate fragments; as many in fact as the number of ethnicities in this country.

The president flew out to South Africa just as the streets became hot last week and not before he dropped a bombshell. In a church service at Abuja, Dr. Jonathan had declared that his cabinet, Nigeria’s National Assembly, the Nigerian Armed Forces and the Nigerian Intelligence Services have all been infiltrated by the terrorist group, the Boko Haram.

The Jonathan administration truly gave Nigerians a left-handed gift for the New Year. Still reeling from the Christmas day bombing, Nigerians were hardly prepared for the surreptitious and final withdrawal of the so-called oil subsidy.