Point One

 Early this March, the House of Representatives rejected a bill by one of its members seeking to bar public officials from sending their children or wards to schools abroad unless under exceptional terms. It was a repeated time the legislature turned down the proposal by Sergius Ogun (PDP, Edo), who had unsuccessfully sponsored a similar bill in the eight National Assembly. The same lawmaker had in February sponsored another bill prescribing a seven-year jail term or N500million fine, or both, for public officers who spend taxpayers’ money on foreign medicals. That health bill scaled through to second reading by the ninth House, unlike in the eight NASS where it was roundly rebuffed. The education bill by Ogun that was rejected proposed that a public officer could only send his/her children or wards to foreign schools after obtaining specific approval from the Education Minister, and after the officer concerned had provided documentary evidence of capacity to pay the fees without r...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has incurred the reputation of an international monster and outlaw since he launched his country’s invasion against neighbouring Ukraine penultimate Thursday, almost renascent of how the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 to trigger the Persian Gulf War. But there will be no global war – the touted World War III – resulting from this invasion. Much as the Russian aggression has been trailed by moralist babble and fury, it is playing out within international realpolitik and will be sorted out ultimately within that context. At the end, all parties will be losers and there will be no winners. But the realpolitik will hold up, take my word. By his invasion of Ukraine, Putin returned for an encore of Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from the same country in 2014: another motif in the wider Russo-Ukrainian War that has dragged on through geopolitical history. Only that he will stop short of annexing or occupying Ukraine, ev...