It was a sober reminder to a country that so easily forgets that it has an unfinished business to secure her freedom like the rest of the 105 victims who were on March 21, 2018 returned by Boko Haram fighters to Dapchi in a dramatic fashion after holding them for 30 days. Boko Haram held on to Miss Sharibu because she refused to renounce her Christian faith.

Apart from the usual floods caused by poor management of the environment such as the blockage of drainage channels, erection of buildings along the paths of running surface water, as well as flooding along major river banks due to the release of water from dams, the World Meteorological Organisation, WMO, had declared 2017 as the hottest non-El-nino year in the recorded history of the globe.

EARLIER in June, the Brookings Institution, an American think-tank research group, published data from the World Poverty Clock which showed that Nigeria, with the latest estimated population of 200 million, had overtaken India (1.32 billion population) as the “poverty capital” of the world. Specifically, it reported that with 87 million people already living below the poverty line, six new people fall into extreme poverty every minute.

THE hope of a revived power sector heralded by the privatisation of power assets is fading fast.

Yet, the Federal and Lagos State governments have made repeated efforts to solve this seemingly intractable threat to the nation’s economy. Vice- President Yemi Osinbajo had met with private sector stakeholders and also given the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing, MPWH, and the Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA, clear directives towards clearing the traffic quagmire.