CONTRARY to established wisdom of competitive dynamics of Adam Smith’s belief in the creation of wealth, in our country, wealth generation has become inconsequential. Rather, it is wealth grabbing!

MALEDICTIONS always fall upon those who hate and hunt down town-criers because they are revered everywhere , particularly in societies that still proudly retain all the accoutrement of traditional life. Town-criers are the modern-day equivalent of journalists: they gather people either through bell-ringing or drumming and create the atmosphere for people to debate and take firm positions on contending issues.

IN the days before the Osun gubernatorial elections, the indigenes of the State and other Nigerians were daily greeted by propaganda of the bizarre nature, some bordering on the desire to create fear in voters and prevent them either from turning out or, even if they did, to vote in a particular direction. And if the truth be told, the All Progressives Congress, APC, is roundly guilty of this.

BAMIDELE Francis Aturu, who died, July 9, 2014, abandoned a career in the military to train as scientist. Precluded from public service by an audacious act of objection to military dictatorship, he discovered a vocation as arguably the foremost public interest advocate of his generation in Nigeria. A lawyer and a pastor, he was also former student leader and prisoner of conscience. He was 49.

WHAT we know today as the Nigeria Customs and Excise Commission was founded over a century ago, precisely in 1891, as the Nigeria Customs Service, NCS, by the colonial masters basically for the collection of inland revenue in the Niger Coast Protectorate, the South of Nigeria. It later became the Department of Customs and Excise in 1922.