OVER the years, lack of basic skills among Nigerian youths and indeed most job seekers has been a great challenge to addressing the unemployment problems in the country. In most cases, the preference for the elusive white collar jobs by job seekers has tended to exacerbate, rather than ameliorate the problem.

Umuahia main market has been there for as long as one could remember. For more than seven decades, the market was at the centre of the state capital, Umuahia.

THE tragic snatching of the Chibok school girls appears to be the tipping point in Nigeria’s battle with Boko Haram. What started as a river of national rage has grown into one massive ocean of international outrage, escalating Boko Haram overnight from a band of local insurgents terrorising Nigeria to a truly global menace.

AS Nigeria continues to unravel and explode into new cycles of verbal and bloody violence with a threat of permanent and general insecurity across the nation, the need to advance, contemporanise and spread Africa’s equity spirit becomes necessary and urgent.

WE kneel and pray for the safe return of the over 230 schoolgirls recently abducted from Chibok, Borno State by the terrorist group, Boko Haram. We applaud the pledge by foreign nations to help find the girls and perhaps stop the Boko Haram menace. Our civil societies hold press conferences to pressure the government to rescue the girls. Our politicians hurl empty broadsides at each other over the incident for political capital.

AS our politicians continue to bicker, heating up the polity and dancing to the drum beats of the Boko Haram and other insurgents, it is right for the reasonable ones amongst us to have a critical review of the whole situation. No matter how far we have gone the whole wrong route, it is never too late to make a direct three-sixty degree turn, to the right course.

NIGERIA is in distress. What assail the nation are consequences of the conspiracy of the ruling class against the Nigerian people. That multi layered conspiracy manifests in the socio-economic injustice perpetuated against the Nigerian masses all over the country. The rich and the powerful have been waging a socio-economic war against the Nigerian people since 1960 through exploitation, oppression, poverty and alienation.

A CURSORY look into why the interim National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Chief Bisi Akande, addressed his world press conference recently gave an impression that he was a truly concerned elder who wanted to speak to the issue of the insurgency that has escalated in the last few weeks. At a point, he said that it was time for all to rally to save the country, as if some have stood idly by while the insurgency raged.

The most daunting challenge confronting Nigeria and threatening it’s very existence is the emergent national insecurity. It is imperative that every well-meaning Nigerian should be genuinely worried about this rather unfortunate development, especially after a successful celebration of Nigeria’s centenary. We hear on daily basis reports killings of innocent Nigerians, school children, nursing mothers in the north-east by insurgents; Fulani herdsmen fighting with farmers and leaving dozens of dead, villages razed, thousands of villagers displaced in Benue, Plateau and Nasarawa States.

It was a matter of time before the cookies crumbled. The political tsunami threatening the fledging assemblage of men and women of disparate and indeterminate character under the umbrella of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in Edo State is not strange to watchful political observers and actors.

AS the British are preparing to have a general election anytime soon, Labour Party leader, Ed Miliband, has just published a simple but comprehensive contract with his people.

OLIVER IFEDI, wrote Manchester, England.

THE ship of state of Nigeria is adrift for some key reasons. The Northern elders, elites and political leaders seem to be determined to either intimidate, harass or force GEJ not to run in the 2015 presidential election.

ALMOST six years on, close watchers of the Comrade Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole persona, in relation to his politics and two-term governorship of Edo State, point to his radical but result-oriented administrative style that is predicated on his almost fanatical and unwavering commitment to the best ethical practices of accountability, efficiency, due process, good quality and utility value and standards, prudent use of available human, financial and material resources, etc.

Boko Haram! The evil sect purportedly released a video footage of some of the missing school girls, which was broadcast to the whole world on the 12th of May 2014. The leader of the Sect Ababakar Shekau appeared and claimed to have converted the non Muslim school girls to Muslims. The Girls all dressed in full Muslim dresses, were seen reciting some Islamic verses. Abubakar Shekau asked the federal government to release Boko Haram prisoners before they release our girls. Put differently, he was proposing a deal of swapping our girls for dangerous criminals.

Much have been written and said about the abduction of over 200 Secondary School girls in Chibok by Boko Haram. It would have no doubt been traumatic and depressing for the parents of the girls. A common parlance in Yoruba language ‘omo mi ku san ju omo mi sonu lo’ (a situation of my child is dead is better than that of my child is missing) is apt. One cannot but sympathise with these parents who are so unfortunate.