THERE is a particular local saying that when a child is crying and pointing in a particular direction, it is either the mother or father is there.

RESILIENCE has become the buzzword in international development circles in recent times. The ability to withstand adversity and bounce back is a simple definition of this word.

IN the typical Nigerian fashion, the political scene gets more charged with desperation and desperadoes as the election year approaches and there are all the signs that general elections fever has since gripped the nation.

I READ with scarcely restrained stupefaction, the sweeping conclusions Mark Onome managed to distil from the contrived premises in his ‘The Uduaghan-Ochei tug of war’, [The Vanguard of Wednesday April 24, 2013].

Since Dr. (Chief) Patrick Ekeji’s retirement was announced two weeks ago, there have been mixed reactions from many people on how he ran the National Sports Commission (NSC) in his capacity as director-general which began in 2009 and ended in April 2013.

MY first encounter with Chinua Achebe was through the sociological cum literary eyes of the immortal and seminal Things Fall Apart (TFA), first as a secondary school aficionado of the in-any-form written word.

WHEN politicians cry to the high heavens about some inanities as if their entire lives depended upon them for survival, discerning onlookers are always amazed.

I HAVE lived through several administrations since the creation of OsunState and none has had the sort of visible impact that this man has had in so short a time.

IN his address to the Institute of Directors, Brian Anderson, who was until June 1997 the Managing Director of Nigeria’s Shell Petroleum Development Company Limited observed that: “The world around us is changing rapidly; liberalisation, globalisation and technology are three powerful forces at the global level shaping the future.

A BOLD foreign policy has become major mishap in the face of grave internal problems confronting Nigeria today. As they say in Latin, FUIMUS TROVES-we were once Trojans but TROY is no more.

YOU cannot legislate a society of law and order into existence. Neither can you cause it by fiat. You build. Law and order are the conditions for all other socio-economic activities of man,” wrote Alozie Ogugbuaja, in his controversial memo on “The People’s Police”.

Whatever has a beginning surely has an end. While the end could be accentuated by the coloration of the beginning, the exactness of the summation varies according to the level of compliance of the interacting agents in a consistently changing time.

God today has a word for you that will encourage you and strengthen you to hold on to Him because He is not through with blessing you just yet.

Rev. Chris Okotie’s analysis of the amnesty request by Northern leaders in an Article titled, ‘’The Boko Haram Amnesty Conundrum” published in the Sunday Vanguard of April 20, 2013 laid bare the mischief behind the comparison of the amnesty granted the Niger Delta militants and the strident call for same for the Islamists by leaders of the beleaguered region.

THAT Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC, is a major stakeholder, player and partaker in the petroleum industry remains a cardinal fact. Shell is synonymous with the petroleum industry in Nigeria. It is the initium-et-finis and the locus classicus of the petroleum industry and it constitutes the structural matrix on which the petroleum sector and subsectors lie.