Point One

Amidst the onslaught of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19), communal life is in retreat everywhere and hardly any public system will be left standing in the coming days unless there is providential abatement in the global pandemic. In Nigeria, as everywhere else, all aspects of communal life have shuttered in. Late last week, the Federal Government ordered the closure of the tertiary school system and students were sent home by institutions on unscheduled break – the effective duration of which is made contingent on how the viral pandemic pans out. Earlier, the government had cut short the 2020 Batch A Stream One orientation camp of the National Youth Service Corps (NYCS) originally scheduled to last three weeks. Among other measures, it had also stepped down major sporting tournaments like the National Sports Festival and the National Football League from earlier announced schedules. At the last count, most states have ordered the closure of education systems under their jur...

When he came tumbling down last week, the path of former Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II of Kano away from royal pinnacle was no less turbulent than the path of his ascendance to that peak. He came down in a hail of controversy just as he had gone up in the heat of controversy. Recall that just before he became emir in 2014, the ace economist and banker was controversially removed as Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor by former Goodluck Jonathan administration, manifestly on account of his needling exposé about underpayment of some $20billion into the national treasury arising from fraud in government funding of fuel importation subsidies, illicit transfer of state oil assets into private hands and other losses associated with mismanagement at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) over a 19-month period. It was in its pushback that then Jonathan presidency incredibly accused him of “financial recklessness” and “far-reaching irregularities” in his stewar...