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By Dele Momodu Fellow Nigerians, please allow me to set the records straight before I go into the main meat of this letter. On a personal note, I have no problem with President Goodluck Jonathan seeking a second term in office. It is his legitimate Constitutional right. It does not matter if he truly reached an unwritten gentleman’s agreement with some members of his political party, openly or clandestinely. When did it become a criminal offence for Nigerian politicians to renege on their promises? At the very worst, he would have committed a moral offence of being a reprobaterather than a gentleman who keepsto his words. Finito! But that is an act of indecorum which is not punishable under any of our Acts or Statutes. My take is simple and straight-forward: let Jonathan run, if he wants to. It is cowardly to stylishly force him out of the race. The essence of democracy is to give every aspirant a chance except we can establish legal reasons to deba...

Flakes of Mica © 2002 K.F. “Kevin” Corbin     We sat at a roadside pullout high in the mountains of British Columbia . We had stopped for breakfast about a half hour before and here on the mountaintop seemed to be the perfect place to do our morning devotions.   Kathy grabbed a chair and her Bible and went off in one direction and I grabbed a chair, my Bible and the dog and went a little way off. Genni settled in at my feet as I read of mountains in the Old Testament, seated looking across the valley at more rocky mountaintops.   The setting was ideal and a great place to commune with God. When I was done, I set my Bible down and took the dog for a short stroll.   As we walked, we came across a rock pile that some road crew had cleaned off the road from a small rockslide. The pile glistened in the bright morning sunlight as the sun reflected off the large flakes of mica on the rocks.   Fascinated, I picked up a large p...

By Chukwuma Charles Soludo Nigeria operates a peculiar kind of federation (unitary federalism) with overwhelming concentration of powers on the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN). Its fiscal federalism is also peculiar, with about 50% of the Federation Account shared among the 36 states and 774 local governments, and each armed with constitutional powers to spend without supervision by, or accountability to the federal government. Yes, the FGN has control over monetary, financial and exchange rate policies, taxation, external trade and finance, wage policy, and a monopoly of internal and external security. But the size, composition and quality of public sector spending still exert the greatest impacts on the economy and the welfare of citizens. Thus, given the enormous spending powers of the other tiers of government, it means that if they do not “perform”, efforts at the federal level to improve the welfare of citizens could amount to ...

The last one week has been busy. Like it always is for me. But the past three days have been interesting. On Monday we learnt that the first British female Prime Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher took her finaly bow. On Tuesday I had to successfully brave an onslaught of engineering gurus who took my design considerations for using historical Synthetic Aperture Radar data to explore for Oil Sands apart. Some how God had me prevail and today I dwell on Governor Rotimi Amaechi's sterling remarks on recieving the Vanguard Man of the year. It is customary to honour the dead so I begin with Mrs Thatcher. I grew up in London while she held sway as UK's Prime Minister. I was too little to understand the Miners Strike or her relentless privatisation drive. Nor can I recall when she abolished the General London Assembly or the Falklands War. What made this woman my mentor was her rags to riches tale. A grocers daughter that earned her place in the World stage becoming Englands first an...