Point One

Another timeline in conventional calendar is on the verge of expiry, as we here post the last outing for this column in the year 2017. And all we want to do with this piece is think back and be thankful, because there are many things to thanks Heavens for. Today is Christmas, and humankind is with near unanimity in celebratory mood despite the different religious persuasions of the diverse peoples. Permit me to seize the opportunity availed me by this platform to say ‘Merry Christmas!!!’ to you, my dear reader. From the North Pole to the South, today’s event is customarily an entrée of sorts for the grand exit of an ebbing year. With barely a week to see off the year 2017 into the annals of history, therefore, we must acknowledge and be thankful that it is great grace to have come this far in spite of the enormous rigours of living – particularly in a clime like Nigeria. And, trust me, living has been quantumly rigorous on Main Street where most Nigerians reside, if perchance it...

An idea is much like beauty, its appeal is in the eye of the beholder. That must be why there’s been so much firestorm over the sheer ingenuity in statecraft unveiled lately in Nigeria’s southeast state of Imo. State Governor Rochas Okorocha came up with the brainball of an idea and he’s just not being appreciated for it. He minted a crisp ‘Ministry of Happiness and Purpose Fulfillment’ out of the state’s dreary bureaucracy and named his biological kid sister, Mrs. Ogechi Ololo, to oversee the portfolio. But no one seems happy with this governance novelty other than the appointed happiness commissioner and, of course, the governor with his camp. What philistinism! How much else can artsmanship in the handling of a bogus bureaucracy get? Ololo was among 28 commissioners sworn into cabinet by Okorocha penultimate Monday to administer Imo – a state with a population of some 3.9million people, going by the grossly outdated but only available official data of the 2006 census. That is n...