The Federal Government recently approved the establishment of eight more universities in the country. Since former President Olusegun Obasanjo approved the pioneer three private universities – Babcock, Igbinedion and Madonna – every successive president has done the same.

In recent years, 75 per cent of emerging infectious diseases have originated in animals or animal products. These disease outbreaks and public health crises have taken thousands of lives, harmed livelihoods, and severely impacted national, regional and global industries and economies.

A week ago, the Academic Union of Nigerian Universities (ASUU) served notice of its intention to embark on a one-week warning strike with effect from Wednesday, 16th November, 2016. Its President, Professor Biodun Ogunyemi, claimed that ASUU took the action after nationwide consultations with the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Union, though the Minister of Labour, Dr Chris Ngige, insisted the Federal Government (ASUU members’ main employer) was not notified.

The report, a few weeks ago, that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) seized a building worth two billion naira from a former Comptroller-General of the Nigerian Customs Service, has raised questions on what the Federal Government intends to do with such confiscated structures. It is only one of several hundred houses, hotels, commercial buildings and parcels of land now reportedly in the custody of the EFCC, though most of them are still under litigation.

WHEN the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme was introduced by the General Yakubu Gowon administration in 1973, it was designed to promote national integration of Nigeria’s over 300 ethnic groups. With about ten universities at the time and the annual graduate turnout of less than 20,000 per annum, the Scheme was affordable. Every graduate received call-up and placement.

President Buhari has continued to insist that he inherited “no roads”, “no railway”, “no infrastructure”,although, it is probably better to say that the infrastructure he inherited are in great disrepair. The road to this state of decayed infrastructure, started with the military government.

The recently concluded American presidential election has continued to produce shockers hitherto unknown in the modern history of a country reputed as a foremost model of democracy in the world.

George Santayana, American poet and philosopher it was who said that “those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Africans in general did not start to write their own history until the bottom half of the last century.

The Professor Mahmood Yakubu-led Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) finally moved, last week, to fix new dates for the myriads of pending re-run elections earlier declared inconclusive by it in two states of the Federation – Lagos and Rivers States and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). Nothing, however, was said about the pending re-run for Anambra Central Senatorial District.

THE increasing clashes between the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN or the Shi’ites) and other Muslim groups in the North is threatening to replace the Boko Haram terrorism which is gradually winding down, raising the possibility that the nation might simply slide from one religious conflict to another with no respite in-between.

IT is a well-documented fact that the Nigerian state does not truly care for the most vulnerable among its citizens.

From the President to paupers, every Nigerian now utters with conviction that a major road out of recession into future prosperity lies in the promotion of agriculture. Experts have repeated it so often that it has become shopworn.

We view with grave concern, the emerging scenario which suggests that some African countries are increasingly tempted to pull out of the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague over allegations that the Court appears to target African and Third World leaders for sanctions while playing blind, deaf and dumb to their colleagues from the developed world who have allegedly committed similar or worse offences.

The Senate arm of the National Assembly took an important step towards checking the long-standing menace of sexual harassment, especially in higher institutions recently, when it passed the Sexual Harassment in Tertiary Institutions Bill into law.

LAST week, President Muhammadu Buhari shocked a lot of economic and financial experts by asking the National Assembly (NASS) to approve $29.96bn worth of loans to cover budgetary deficits for the years 2016 to 2018.