The utility value of mobile technology is almost second to none. In sub-Sahara Africa, the mobile phone has proven to be an innovative and transformative tool for positive social and economic change, empowering individuals, communities and organizations in a variety of ways.

“Mr Lely, I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts and everything as you see me, otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it. – “ Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, to his Portrait Painter, Sir Peter Lely.

The hysterical reaction in some quarters to the visit by Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike to the office of the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) is a well-known perception management technique that seeks to, through deliberate misrepresentation and misinterpretation, cast aspersion on the integrity of a targeted individual. It is hardly surprising that the usual suspects in character assassination are in the forefront of those who have sought to discredit Wike and, in the process scoop political capital out of their reaction to a harmless undertaking by the governor.

I fully endorse President Buhari’s commitment to initiate a probe into the past administration of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. He would of course require the legislature to commence this probe, because by law, the legislative arm of government, that is the National Assembly, specifically the senate, is the arm empowered, through its various committees, to investigate the activities of the government, following which the president may be compelled to establish or initiate, through the Attorney-General, prosecutorial remediation.

The ‘historic’ visit of President Muhammad Buhari to the United States of America has long come and gone. Mr President had returned to Nigeria, while his host, Barrack Obama had afterwards undertaken a tour of certain African countries, including his ancestral home, Kenya. The U.S. President’s visit to Africa immediately after Buhari’s sojourn had somewhat over shadowed the importance of meeting the president of the country once referred to as “Giant of Africa”.

Many informed observers of Delta State politics must find the current rumpus over the DESOPADEC Amendment Bill, initiated by Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, disturbing.

One can guess that the Nigerian Army is numerically better than Boko Haram, but as we have witnessed since 2009, the battle is still on and the number of internally displaced people is increasing. As at June 2015, there were 1,385,298 internally displaced persons (IDP) from Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Taraba and Yobe states and they are being supported by the Federal Government, host families and benevolent donors.

Please let me use this medium to sincerely commend President Muhammadu Buhari for giving a comprehensive bailout package worth N713.7 Billion to cash strapped states, to pay arrears of salaries and pension of pensioners who have not been paid for months.

There have been media comments on the Centenary City Project and we have deliberately refrained from responding to most of them. The reason is quite simple: Some are outrightly mischievous, uninformed or speculative, while others, in countering the mischief, sought to advance public discourse. With both sides of the debate out in the public domain, our view was that truth would emerge in the course of the exchanges.

BETWEEN the summer and autumn of 1940 when Britain stood in grave danger of being overwhelmed by the all-conquering German air machine, the small Royal Air Force (RAF) of Britain braved the odds to defend the Island in World War II’s first major campaign fought entirely by air forces. Known as the Battle of Britain, it was also the largest and most sustained aerial bombing activity to that date