NO other issue is as topical in the country today as the Boko Haram. Not even the screening of the ministerial nominees in the National Assembly has enjoyed such attention.

AND even in some states like Delta, thetake-home of the so-called elected class with their political appointees may well be anything five and 10 times that of the civil service.

MOHAMMED Haruna has used two successive editions of his People And Politics column to assail and denigrate the personality, integrity and professional competence of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (The Nation Wednesday July 6 & 14, 2011). He called the former and new Minister of Finance incompetent. He called her unpatriotic. He called her a saboteur.

AS a matter of priority, the President must encourage the diversification of Nigeria’s economy. It is the only viable way to survive the current environment of global economic uncertainty. It is crucial that President Goodluck Jonathan and his economic team do not believe, like most Nigerians, that oil provides an endless source of revenue.

IF governance is all about tackling and surmounting daunting challenges on entirely sacrificial note with huge results, you will need the likes of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and David Ben-Gurion. Those beautiful ones are not yet born in Nigeria.

THE public jubilation that greeted the appointment of Dr. Simon Imuekemhe as Secretary to the Edo State Government re-enforces the high fidelity and depth of the Oshiomhole vision in a revolutionary process never before witnessed in the annals of the heartbeat state.

SATURDAY, July 9, 2011, the continent of Africa recorded another historic landmark, this time away from liberation from the shackles of colonialism to the birth of a new nation, South Sudan. South Sud an becomes Africa’s 54th nation and the world’s 193rd independent nation.

OUR paths crossed per chance, one coldwindy morning of December 1963 when we were barely nine years old and we remained intimate, until that fateful Tuesday the 26th of April, 2011 when Alhaji Abdullahi Yusufu Jega breathed his last in a Cairo hospital, leaving me to face the horrifying vacuum his departure has created. When we first met, young Abdullahi was living with an uncle in Gusau (the present capital of Zamfara State) but his family was based in Sokoto.

NIGERIA as a nation is blessed with both human and natural resources, yet women die everyday from the scourge of maternal mortality.

The open admission by theformer FCT Minister, Malam Nasir El-Rufa’i that he had no concrete proof that former Vice President Atiku Abubakar was involved in corruption at the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) is a very interesting revelation of how private vengeance became the official policy of the former President Olusegun Obasanjo administration.