Columnists

I AM worried by the widespread optimism in the land following the visit of President Muhammadu Buhari to the United States of America. The mood belies the reality. It is being projected as if the President returned last Thursday from the US with a bag of solutions to all of Nigeria’s problems.

YES! All eyes are on Nigeria’s oil money. Hardly one minute passes without stories of stolen billions and how to recover them. Fine and good; but we don’t see the same energy channeled towards making new money and opening up other sectors of the economy, as replacement for the thinning and tired oil money.

UNITED States (U.S.) President, Barack Obama, is heading to Kenya – the birthplace of his father – on 24-26 July. He will co-host the 2015 Global Entrepreneurship summit. This first presidential visit to his ancestral home at the fag-end of his second term, is the ultimate triumph of the “politics of symbolism” that has characterised…

DAVID Runciman in his Confidence Trap, an interesting analysis of democracy’s toil through the prism of de Tocqueville’s reading of America’s democracy in the 19th century, underlines the views of Tocqueville on the advantage of democracy over autocracy. According to him “…the long-term advantages of democracy are not readily apparent. They can’t be grasped in…

IN 1949 when Mao Zedung became the leader of the Chinese people, the economy was in chaos. The Russians on whom the Chinese had depended upon for a long time had quarreled with them and stripped Manchuria, the most built-up city of everything. The transport system was in ruins and the currency worthless. The Chinese…

SENATOR Ibikunle Amosun of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has commenced his second term in office as Governor of Ogun State.

THE raging controversy and public discourse on whether or not fuel subsidy should be removed by the Buhari government has generated heated arguments for and against by analysts, commentators, politicians and generality of Nigerians.

Some may wonder how the Buhari administration could possibly finance stimulus spending, considering that the administration not only inherited an empty treasury, but also face dwindling oil revenue and a very volatile global oil market.

OVER lunch a few days ago, the usual debate over the nascent Muhammadu Buhari presidency ensued in the home of a senior colleague. As usual, tempers rose and fell on whether this is the dawn of a profound change or the beginning of a disappointing era, signposted by confusion in style and substance.

THE crisis in the All Progressives Congress (APC) can be described as a storm in a teacup, a passing phase. The Guardian, in its front- page news-story, used the words ‘Civil War’ – July 2, 2015. Such development is characteristic of every human organisation. There is, invariably, the innate tendency of behaving like men of…

EDUCATION is about learning and teaching; and education policy is concerned with the ways in which learning and teaching are organised and delivered in order to ensure that all citizens have the appropriate opportunities to learn. It is in every sense, one of the fundamental factors of development. No country can achieve sustainable economic development…

THE exclusion of 40 items from the interbank foreign exchange market by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is pragmatic and should be applauded by well-meaning Nigerians and friends of Nigeria. Pragmatism is to think about solving a problem in a practical and sensible way rather than by having fixed ideas, theories and ideologies. It…