Well, what I can say as the National Coordinator of the CNDE, is that we are both surprised and not too surprised over the recent spike in oil facility attacks. We are not surprised because there are certain things that the government needed to provide in the Niger Delta but it has not done so up till this moment. These are the issues that gave birth to the Presidential Amnesty Programme. We are surprised that instead of addressing those germane issues the government merely tried to appease some people and allow the issues to fester.

With the oil sector contributing 20 percent to the Nigeria’s economy in recent times, the current economic challenges confronting the country can be exploited to facilitate the goal of being one of the 20 biggest economies by 2020. This however depends on how the citizens respond to the challenges and continued focus on developing the non oil sector especially agriculture. These views were expressed by the Director General of the Debt Management Office (DMO), Dr. Abraham Nwankwo in a recent interaction with finance correspondents where he also explained the rationale for external borrowing to fund the 2016 budget.

BORN in Kaduna on August 25, 1946, Archbishop (Professor) Adebayo Dada Akinde spent his formative years there even though his parents were of Egba (father) and Sierra Leonean (mother) extractions. Akinde, an electronics engineer and computer scientist, earned a B.Sc. degree in electronics from the then University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University).

Though it is not known to many Nigerians, the Office of he Vice President is actually saddled with the task of providing the economic roadmaps in conjunction with relevant bodies for the president’s approval. And so, the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo wouldn’t stop at nothing to help his principal, President Muhammadu Buhari succeed in putting the country on a sound pedestal. For one year now, both men have come to appreciate their passion for the country and Osinbajo’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr. Laolu Akande who follows and greatly understands the passion of these two leaders shares with select few Newspapers a vivid insider’s account of what the Economic Team located in the Vice President’s office has been doing, the gains of the Social Welfare Scheme of the government amongst other things. Vanguard was there.

To begin with, I never lost the election. Everyone who followed the 2015 Delta Central Senatorial District election in Delta State expected me to win in a landslide, which I did. But the electoral thieves, who believe they can rig their way into office every four years brazenly invaded polling units and ward collation centres to change the results. Like every criminal, they left credible evidence at the crime scene. At the senatorial collation centre, we found out that parties that did not participate in the election were awarded votes. On this criteria alone, we annulled so many unlawful votes and I was ahead by over 16,000 votes. Ordinarily, I should have been declared winner that day but when you have the entire machinery of the state government deployed against you, things don’t come easy. As a consequence, we had to go for a supplementary election which they rigged again. That was how Chief Ighoyota Amori was unlawfully declared winner.