WHAT does ideal democracy offer the people of Imo state? Ideally, democracy offers the people of Imo the promise that at the barest minimum, they should have unfettered opportunity to choose those to whom all Imo citizens can entrust with our welfare and collective development, those who will best represent Imo because our aggregated choices, counted as votes will make them our honest representatives taking our individual and collective interests before their personal and vested interests.

IN the last one month, Nigerians have witnessed the movement or abandonment by politicians of one political party for another. The reasons they give have ranged from impunity, inadequate reward, harassment and undemocratic impositions by their former political parties who now perceive them as political enemies.

In recent months, particularly in the wake of the utter chaos in the country, I have found myself going back again and again to the all-important question of leadership.

About a quarter of a century ago, while Femi Aribisala’s wife, Karen, was my teacher at the University of Lagos, a colleague of mine came to me and self-importantly announced: “God made all things; sin is a thing; therefore, God made sin.” I asked him whether he had ever heard of a thing called a spaceship and another called space travel, and whether God made either.

Since the financial crisis that enveloped the global market a decade ago, the profitability and reputation of banks has been under tremendous pressure worldwide, Nigeria inclusive. Whilst the banking industry is now regaining its health, the entrant of fintechs and neo-banks in the industry is posing a new threat. This digital disruption is changing the traditional way through which customers obtain financial services, hence putting more pressure on banks’ profitability.