EVERYBODY needs fuel. Nobody needs fuel subsidy as governments have shown over the years. Fuel subsidy is a convoluted conspiracy that is at best a racket raised to a national pantheon because each government has discovered the bogey called subsidy serves its interests and myriad interests that cannot pass any scrutiny.

CHALLENGES that Libya faces after the death of Colonel Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gathafi are enormous and numerous. A country of only 6.6 million, but with a land area of 1,759,540 square kilometres, almost twice the size of Nigeria, will be prone to security issues along its borders with Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Niger, Sudan and Tunisia — areas that are perpetually under control of some armed militias.

THE Economic and Financial Crimes Commission EFCC, has perfected ways of attracting attention to its work. The arraigning of former governors, a seasonal EFCC public relations glitz, is tied to challenges it tells the public could militate against its intentions.

LOCAL government administrations have become the most constitutionally abused matter in Nigeria since the 1999 Constitution became operational. Only a handful of States hold local government elections. Others carry on as if it is legal to run local governments without the Constitution that created them.

NIGERIANS are full of expectations over what the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, NOSDRA, will do to check the prevalent cases of oil spills across the oil exploration belt. Its task seems simple — compel oil companies to consider the effect of their operations on their host communities.

IT will surprise only a few that Samson Siasia’s stay as coach of the Eagles would become a matter of obtuse national debates. We have excelled in promoting nothingness as a sterling mark of excellence.

THE recent arrest and detention of editors of The Nation Newspapers by operatives of the Nigeria Police over an alleged petition by former President Olusegun Obasanjo has, expectedly, created a great furore across the land.

From far away India came the news, on September 6, 2011 that the first Speaker of the House of Representatives under our presidential system of government, Barrister Edwin Ume-Ezeoke, had passed on. He had been sick and was flown there for treatment, but unfortunately, he could not survive.

Just as the world was getting used to the death of Africa’s first female Nobel Laureate, Professor Wangari Maathai, who fell to the scourge of cancer, another, even bigger global figure, Mr. Steve Jobs, fell to pancreatic cancer. His passing was announced by the Apple Company, which he co-founded.

Activities of the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority, LASTMA, were recently called to question, when a Federal High Court sitting in Lagos declared that the agency had no power to impose fine on traffic offenders, but rather, such offenders should be brought to the appropriate court of law, which has the power to impose such fines.

Lately, there have been reported incidents of rape in some parts of the country. The ugly development has attracted the attention of higher authorities in government. But it equally calls for collective concern.

IF what the Minister of Health, Dr. Onyebuchi Chukwu said recently is anything to go by, then we may soon see a sharp drop in the incidence of sending public officers abroad for medical treatment.

THE assumption of office by Brigadier- General Nnamdi Okorie-Affia as the new Director-General of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) coincides with the commencement of the 2011/2012 service year of the scheme and 38 years since it was established.

The Federal Government has set another two years for the eradication of the obstinate polio virus from the country. This happened when Microsoft chief and Chairman of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mr. Bill Gates, led his team to pay a courtesy visit to President Goodluck Jonathan at the Presidential Villa, Abuja on Thursday, September 29, 2011.

IN the history of Nigeria since independence, the judiciary has never been exposed to the kind of public opprobrium it experienced at the twilight of the tenure of the immediate-past Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Aloysius Katsina-Alu.