SOLUTIONS and ideas sometimes come from the most unlikely of places. A couple of days ago, my wife and I were at the Ogudu GRA residence of my brother Captain Austin Anianu to commiserate with him and his wife on the death of the mother in law and somehow we got talking. The woman who allocated sixty million monthly allowance to herself was in the news. It does appear that those sent to help bring sanity to the pension office are the ones compounding the situation, beginning from Maina and his other accomplices.

I READ with interest an article with the above title written by one Nosakhare Osahon. A proper dissection of the write-up reveals many illogicalities and shallowness. For one, his attack on Ken Imasuangbon, a fellow APC stalwart who has deployed the richness of his resources and goodwill to promote the APC both at national and state levels, shows that Osahon is obviously working for some forces within the party who are uncomfortable with Imasuagbon’s rising profile.

THE recent signing of a memorandum of understanding between Nigeria’s first indigenous auto maker INNOSON and Nigeria Air Force for the fabrication and manufacture of spare parts signposts a new dawn in our quest for technological development.

RATHER than cast this discourse in the mould of a “rejoinder” to Godwin Obaseki’s interactive session with the Vanguard newspaper edition of Sunday, March 13, 2016 (Pages 38 and 39), this piece should be read from the perspective of a “reminder” that an inveterate undertaker cannot metamorphose into a giver of life or a harbinger of good tidings especially considered in the fact that Godwin Obaseki has been at the epicenter and vortex of the retrograde economic measures and woes of Edo State.

APOLOGIES to Dr. Ben Okri for stealing the title of his 1991 explosive book, the Famished Road his Booker prize winning literary work. Dr. Okri’s lush style and distinctive narration of spirit world and realism is imitable.

Many Nigerians have followed the trial of the PDP National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh closely. Interestingly, the court trial has now been subjected to media trial.

The present economic downturn occasioned by dwindling oil prices in the international market, has not only led to frantic calls for economic diversification, it has also opened our eyes to our deeply flawed laws currently inhibiting business competitiveness and obstacles on the way of investors – foreign and local – who genuinely want to invest in the country. The concomitant negative effect of these deeply flawed and obsolete laws over the years had seen the whittling of businesses in Nigeria at a geometric rate and the permanent lockdown on long term investments in our potentially huge non-oil sector. Therefore, it has become imperative to remove the anti-business obstacles if the urgent quest to navigate the economy away from hitting the rocks due largely to over dependence on revenue from crude oil exports is to be achieved.

For many reasons, most Nigerians seek for higher education outside the shores of Nigeria.

After the Supreme Court decision that the Code of Conduct Tribunal, as presently constituted, has the jurisdiction to try Senate President Bukola Saraki, the case has continued. Since then, several legal luminaries including Prof. Ben Nwabueze, SAN; a former justice of the Supreme Court, Samson Uwaifo; and Mr Olisa Agbakoba, SAN, have faulted the apex court judgment on the grounds that it established a wrong precedent as the CCT was not meant to prosecute criminal matters. However, it appears that those legal opinions have been treated as mere academic and, therefore, do not really matter. The decision of the Supreme Court is final and anyone who seeks a redress would have to turn to God.

THE mixed reactions that had trailed the statement by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr Ibe Kachikwu, to the effect that the current fuel scarcity would end in May, offer an opportunity for constructive introspection.

A statement issued recently by one Taiwo Olatunbosun, the Ekiti State Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), labeling the governor of Ekiti State, Ayo Fayose, a threat to national security because of the governor’s statements and posture to the leadership style of the Buhari-led federal government is not only ridiculous and hypocritical, it is risible and shocking. It goes a long way to further prove the well known fact that this government is not only intolerant of dissenting views, it would do all and anything to quell them even if it means applying “extreme measures” against vocal individuals and institutions of the opposition.

The PDP National Publicity Secretary, Chief Olisa Metuh has fought many political battles, but this time he it appears that he is up against powers that detest his guts. Indeed, by every available indication, the APC-led establishment appears to be in a frenetic mode to jail the garrulous opposition spokesman, who in the last nine months, has continued to give them sleepless nights with his steady criticisms on the sudden decline of the state of the nation under their watch.

Most times, Nigerians display their innate penchant to act in strange ways. What appears even more degrading to our national dignity and collective pride is the wanton advertisement of tendencies antithetical to progress and the propagation of parochial sentiments and interests even in national service.

The world does not celebrate ideas, but achievements. It does not celebrate dreams but impacts. While some impacts may be easily forgotten, others outlive generations.

MALAM El Rufai, appears to be one of the arrows aimed at making Christians very uncomfortable in Nigeria, by anti- Christian Forces of this country. In January 2013, the former FCT, Abuja Minister wanted to please his god fathers in politics,as a governor ship aspirant in Kaduna State, twitted an insult on the person of Jesus Christ, claiming Jesus had sex with Mary Magdalene.