Madam Akpan Sarah is a 62 year-old widow who hails from Ibiono Ibom Local Government Area in Akwa-Ibom State. She worked as a nanny with a Lebanese couple until 2008 when she retired. She had planned to use her savings of N400,000 to set up a small-scale business in the city. Arrangements to start the business were in top gear when Madam Sarah suddenly took ill and has since then, been in and out of the hospital.

Mrs Risikat Faronbi is a petty trader who uses the festive period to sell all sorts, especially to make ends meet. With the help of her five children, she tends to make more money as the children are seen in their different locations selling one item or the other for the season.

At a time when parents whose wards in private schools across the country are paying through their noses to keep the pupils in school, a private school – Ancore Life Primary School, located at Iyagbe a remote village in an island about 25 minutes boat ride from Ojo market in Lagos, is not only educating its students without collecting school fees from them but is also giving them free lunch daily.

If it was completed on schedule in 2009, the abandoned Federal Capital Territory (FCT)- Agatu-Bagana road project- which runs through Kogi and Nassarawa states -could have reduced the heavy traffic on the ever-busy Abuja-Lokoja highway. Many of the lives that have been lost on this narrow and pot-hole filled road would also have been saved.

For the fourth time within a space of three weeks, motorcycle operators popularly called Okada riders took to the streets to protest the decision of Lagos State government to ban their operation on the high ways in Lagos State with effect from December 31.