A synopsis of how the PDP overheats the polity whenever it wants to elect a national chairman or presidential candidate:

They were helpless, looking dejected like a people waiting to be crucified for a sin they did not commit. Waiting hopelessly under the scorching sun for the pension payments, they groaned silently just as they muted few curses on those who are responsible for their plight. As old as they are, they cannot be too sure of a better tomorrow.

Olusa Ayodele, who slumped and died while waiting to be screened in Akure, Ondo State, recently would probably have been alive if the process and system of pension administration had been better.

Anthony Pius had worked in a federal establishment for 25 years and was looking forward to his retirement. He was expecting his pension benefits to enable him begin a new life as a retiree by investing in poultry farming .

“I retired from the Federal Ministry of Finance some years ago, but it was very difficult getting my entitlements. I am now staying in Lagos, and frequently had to shuttle between Lagos and Abuja to sign one paper or another concerning my pension pay.

Before now, the Ekitis were revered for producing one professor in every family. But nowadays, indigenes, government, parents, academicians and other stakeholders bemoan the falling standard of education in the state known as the fountain of knowledge. In this report, BOSE ADELAJA examines the problem of education in Ekiti and efforts made by past and present administrations in returning the state to its past glory.

I always remind people that in every bad thing, there is some elements of good in it, and in every good thing, there is some elements of bad too. What Abacha did was what Napoleon Bonaparte could not do, because he really felt it and he was in total sympathy with the people of the Niger-Delta.

Well, they are at liberty to call for the review but they should leave whatever that has been agreed upon concerning the Niger- Delta and the oil producing states. The portion that is being given to us as 13 per cent was not something that came by accident.

The 13 per cent that we succeeded in getting couldn’t have come if not for the approval of the late military titan, Gen. Sani Abacha and it was fought for by the oil-bearing communities. We started by taking into cognizance that the oil-bearing communities have been shortchanged because when the country’s economic life was agriculture, the principles of derivation then was 50:50.

ABA, the commercial capital of Abia State, popularly known as Enyimba City, was in the past not only the pride of Ndigbo but the former Eastern Region because of its strategic commercial and industrial position in the nation.

How will Nigerian politics be in a cash light or cash less economy where carrying of raw cash in ‘Ghana-must-go’ bags is the order of the day?

FOR the oil communities in the Niger-Delta, there is a misconception by both the Northern governors and Niger-Delta on what the 13 per cent derivation is all about. While the northern governors see it as booty for their southern counterparts and want it reduced, some South-south governors, indeed, think it is booty for them and have hijacked the fund from the oil communities, which it is meant for.

AS the London 2012 Olympics approaches swiftly, President of Taekwondo Federation of Nigeria, Dr Jonathan Nnaji is optimistic that the country’s two representatives in the sport, Chika Chukwumerije and Isa Mohammed would mine gold at the Games.

MOTORISTS and commuters plying the Lagos – Badagry and Oshodi/Apapa expressways, have on several occasions, been subjected to untold hardship occasioned by perennial traffic gridlock that has become a recurring decimal along the ever-busy road.

THE Lagos State commissioner for Transportation, Mr. KayodeOpeifa, said he had nothing more to say about the menace of tanker drivers along the Apapa -Oshodi expressway.