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The Lessons Beyond the Tears The Verdict By Olusegun Adeniyi;olusegun.adeniyi@thisdaylive.com "Something interesting happened on my way to Oshodi this morning. At the motor park, this rough mean-looking conductor was screaming for passengers, his vernacular oscillating between Yoruba and Pidgin English. “Oshodi! Oshodi!” he shouted angrily as I, along with some other passengers, struggled for seats. There was this beautiful young lady who couldn’t throw caution and decorum to the wind but waited patiently until the bus was almost filled. Then she pleaded to sit by the conductor until somebody came down, when she would have a proper seat. "The bus conductor didn’t even look at her pretty face; he hissed and shouted at the driver to move, while asking the girl why she didn’t rush like the other passengers. The girl started pleading in Yoruba interspersed with English before saying, “I know you are a good man, never mind the fact that you have been sh...

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...

By Plamen Monovski, CIO Renaissance Asset Managers When the prime minister comes to sell you an IPO, you, the investor, take the meeting. When that prime minister turns up with
no bodyguards and shows remarkable knowledge of the company he is promoting, you, the investor, take notice. When Nika Gilauri, the premier of Georgia, tells you that the prosperity of his country has been achieved because it has become one of the “least corrupt” countries in the world, you, the investor, take note. But it wasn’t always like that. After the demise of the USSR, Georgia was not only one of the most corrupt of the former-Soviet republics, it was one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Bribe-to-drive was the norm; police stopped cars at least twice an hour to extort a non-trivial sum of money. The then-interior minister infamously quipped: “Give me petrol only. My people will take care of their own salaries.” Being
a traffic cop was so lucrative that you had to pay ...

Why was no help forthcoming for the passengers who’d survived the initial impact? Indeed, accounts of them dialing their loved ones in panic after the crash and screaming for help inside the plane were quite unbearable. Reports of the position in which some were found, for instance clutching their babies to their chest, were heartrending. Imagining their agony was sheer torture. Why did it take so long (accounts range from half an hour to two and a half hours) for emergency services to arrive the scene? Especially as the pilot had earlier declared an emergency and radioed in a Mayday? In the interim some residents in the neighbourhood had tried to contain the fire which had started in the cockpit but was yet to spread with pure water sachets! Pure water? My God! Does it get any worse?  Why did the fire service which eventually arrived very quickly run out of water and firefighting foam? Why do we not have emergency air ambulances to transfer injury victims safely ...

This is a true story. As a child, along with my younger brother and sister, we refused to eat our own mothers pot of soup. Yes! We returned from Command Children's School, An's Barrack, Yaba, tired and very hungry. Yet we took one look at the freshly prepared "Eba and vegetable soup" and declined to eat. Before you draw the wrong conclusions permit me to say it was not that my mother was a terrible cook (she is a great cook in fact) nor was it because we were spoilt brats. It was not because we were still getting accustomed to Nigerian culinary delights after the preceding 5 years in England. The truth was that there was kerosene (otherwise known as Jet-A1 fuel) in her soup. It was so thick you could smell it. How did kerosene  get in to the vegetable soup? It was a simple error in skill or technology or both.  This gist begins with my dad bringing home a live goat (if you are a vegetarian or animal rights activist you may want to skip to the next paragraph). De...

At the beginning? Well there was nothing. Isn't it amazing how scientists, church folk and traditionalists all agree we came from nothing? OK so church folk differ a little. They say there was darkness and nothingness but God existed before all that. While the Darwinian crew say there was a big bang. Yes. Please think sagging jeans and converse trainers with hoodies when i say "Darwinian crew". If E=mc squared and the grand all unified god theorem is true then my solution is simple. God said, "Let there be light" and bang there was! Don't you dare look at me like that. Everyone plagiarizes. Is there such a word? Anyway I never did say i was religious guru, scientific aficionado and historian rolled in one. I love the way that word rolls on my lips, "aficionado" and i am not even certain i spelt it right but yeah neither physics nor religious knowledge were favorites in school. So? Excuse my lame excuse for history. And forgive the pun while your ...