…How billions are spent without being accounted for
Last week would not be the first time that the Public Accounts Committee, PAC, of the Senate would unearth massive reckless spending on the part of the executive arm of government. Since 2001, that committee of the Senate had always investigated and reported that huge sums of money were being frittered away.

Obviously shaken and scared, the presidency, with an incumbent who already seemed to have burnt his fingers too early in the governing of Africa’ most populous, diverse nation, midway to the end of first tenure in 2015, he is at daggers drawn with perceived political opponents in the same party.

THE issue of fare disparity by foreign airline operating in Nigeria has once again come to the front burner as Nigerians who travelled recently on these foreign airlines complained bitterly about paying higher fares than their fellow passengers from Ghana, for instance, on the same flight.

OUR attention has been drawn to the Vanguard story of Thursday, April 25, 2012 entitled ‘Vision 20: 2020 target, not realisable – Minister’, which we view as a deliberate misrepresentation of the statement made earlier that day by the Minister of National Planning, Dr Shamsuddeen Usman, CON, while briefing the leadership of the Peoples’ Democratic Party on the 2012 achievements of his ministry.

Borno State is Nigeria’s self- acclaimed ‘Home of Peace’. That is the appellation. But you may not be wrong if you now describe it as ‘The Home of Ruins and Pieces’. The truth about the state is that it has become a theatre of a war unleashed by the Islamist group called Boko Haram. Insurgency has been the order of the day in the state, leaving in its trail bombings, shootings and deaths. When the residents are lucky, the death toll is low, but sometimes it can be high. Some analysts blame the problem on the international borders with Chad, Niger and Cameroun which they believe is porous as to allow Islamic extremists from the countries to enter the state at will.

What could have made the British government send a war ship,HMS Argyle, to the Gulf of Guinea and its Ministry of Defence backed the mission by sponsoring a conference on West African Maritime Security and Development?

Before the ‘Baga killings’, of penultimate week, there was My Lai, some 45 years ago.

The My Lai event happened on March 16, 1968, when a company of U.S. soldiers went into the village of My Lai 4, in Vietnam, and committed atrocities never before seen in combat. According to the testimony of one of the soldiers who later testified, “The order we were given was to kill and destroy everything that was in the village. It was clearly explained that there were to be no prisoners.”

Sequel to the kidnap of the Ejigbo Local Government boss, Mr. Kehinde Bamigbetan, Nigerians from different walks of life have reacted to the saga.

Hitherto confined to the Niger Delta areas with immense petroleum resources accounting for over 90 per cent of the country’s wealth, later spreading to South-East zone known for having many wealthy business and industrial entrepreneurs, kidnap, the crime of abducting or taking someone away illegally by force and thereafter to demand money in exchange for releasing the victim, is gradually making inroad to the South-West and Lagos.

Reacting to the development, the Police Public Relations Officer, PPRO in Lagos, Ngozi Braide said kidnapping is a new development in Lagos and the Lagos Police Command is doing everything to nip it in the bud.

Mrs Theresa Onuoha, travelled to her village from Lagos for the annual August meeting in her brand new SUV.

The security situation is becoming something else, although it is a national problem. The federal government needs to do something drastic to curb it. Until the government provide jobs and makes it easy for people to feed, then crime in Lagos and Nigeria will reduce.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013 started like any other day for Alero Collins, a single career woman of 28 years old. She woke up in the morning around 6am and headed to her place of work in Victoria Island from her humble abode in Oworonshoki.

The challenge of security of lives and property has become so precarious that everyone walking on the streets suspects the next person. The decoy of the kidnappers is not easily known and they look very unsuspecting until they get hold of their target and bolt away with their victims. To them their victims means money to them

Like our people use to say that: “When a tree falls on a fence, you have to remove the tree before you can rebuild the fence.” Boko Haram is like a fence and Al-Qaeda is like the tree that has fallen on Boko-Haram, which means Boko-Haram to us, is just a small thing, but it has truly gone international and there is nothing wrong in collaborating with all international forces that is against Al-Qaeda and the rest terrorist group, to really brace and exterminate these international terrorist organization.