Two hundred and thirty-four years ago, Adam Smith, a Scottish philosopher and political economist died on 17 July, 1790. Born in 1723, Smith is generally eulogised as the “Father of Capitalism,” “Father of Economics,” and for “putting economic development on the map as a subject for general analysis.” The ‘founders’ of the United States (US) viewed his ideas as a critical work of national wealth, statecraft and societal development. Karl Marx benefited immensely from Smith’s ideas in the evolution of Marxism. But since the late 1970s, neoliberal forces who claim to have Smith in their DNA, have turned economics upside-down…

At the end of July 2017, the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, UNODC, and Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, issued a joint report on the public experience of and response to bribery in Nigeria. Among its findings, the report ranked several institutions with reference to public perceptions or experience of demand for bribes from officials at the point of service delivery. With a score of 46.4%, the report ranked the Nigeria Police Force highest in public perceptions of bribery. The report also noted that “at 33 per cent the prevalence of bribery in relation to prosecutors is…

Last Wednesday, Nigeria’s upper parliament became a grammar class where semantics, syntax and structure are examined. The Senate President of Nigeria, Godswill Akpabio, suddenly became an emergency interpreter and lexicographer. Akpabio’s interpreter’s dilemma reminds me of Field Marshal Gerald Templer. A senior British Army officer, Templer was best known for the implementation of strategies that heavily contributed to the defeat of the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) during the Malayan Emergency of 1949 to 1960. On the instruction of Prime Minister Winston Churchill to temper communist insurgency among the Malays, Templer arrived a Malayan village where some communist guerillas were…

And when he was come in, he saith unto them, Why make ye this ado, and weep? the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed him to scorn. But when he had put them all out, he taketh the father and the mother of the damsel, and them that were with him, and entereth in where the damsel was lying. And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi …. And straightway the damsel arose ~ Mark 5:39-42. Introduction Every good thing that has ever happened in your life happened because something changed.…