FORTY is a unique number. The letters of the word are in alphabetical order. This is the only number that has this linguistic property in English. The wife of the Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Mrs. Ekaete Unoma Godswill Akpabio has clocked the unique age of forty today, with all the uniqueness associated with the propriety of forty.

MY fellow Northerner, Kawu Moddibo, I chose to address you in this manner because I am a Northerner, from Okene, Kogi State.

THIRTY years ago, this month, health agencies in the US began monitoring unusual clusters of diseases that would later be identified as the first cases of AIDS.

THE provision of a functional educational system should be the highest priority of government. This is more important than even addressing the short fall in the power/energy sector as an adequately developed human capacity is the greatest asset any country or people can have.

CHIEF Peter Obih proved with ease in his Daily Sun interview of Thursday, May 19, 2011, that ignorance could indeed be blissful. As a cheerleader of Dr Chris Ngige’s fan club, his excitement over Ngige’s first ‘election victory ’in over 12 years of aspiration for public office is understandable. The expression, election victory, is used advisedly because the declaration of a candidate as winner by the INEC does not constitute the end of the election process.

THE 2011 budget has just been passed by the National Assembly nearly half way into the year. The delay in consideration and passage of the budget has been a source of worry across the country these past months because President Goodluck Jonathan had presented the 2011 Appropriation Bill of N4.2tn to a joint session of the National Assembly as far back as December 14, 2010.

SINCE Professor Dora Akunyili, the former Minister of Information and Communications lost her senatorial bid to the former governor of Anambra State, Dr. Chris Ngige, there have been a litany of reactions.

AS the nation basks in the euphoria of the inauguration of President Goodluck Jonathan and states governors, it is mix feeling for the parents of “NYSC 10” – the ten National Youths Service Corps, NYSC, members who were butchered like animals by rioters in some Northern states of the country in the aftermath of the crisis which trailed the April 16, 2011 presidential election.

THE trunk (federal) roads in the South West on which I have travelled frequently since late 2004 are worse today than they were in October/November 2004. Electricity supply is more epileptic in Lagos State and Ondo State today than was the case in late 2004. (Those are the two states where I spent most of my time during the period).

DECADES before the assumption of office of Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan as President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on May 6, 2010, the country was reputed for perennial scarcity of petroleum products especially petrol.