Point One

 It’s nearly two weeks since the Supreme Court overruled the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on its naira swap policy, but Nigerians yet struggle with scarcity of cash and gridlock in digital banking for daily transactions. The regulatory bank is playing dumb on the apex court’s verdict, and so is the Federal Government despite that President Muhammadu Buhari took frontal ownership of the policy through a broadcast on 16th February approving the use of old N200 notes till 10th April, out of the currency denominations declared to have ceased to be legal tender since 10th February. In other words, the authorities appear to have found a convenient turf in a brutalised citizenry to test the limits of obduracy against judicial supremacy.   CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele had on 26th October, last year, announced the policy by which he said the N200, N500 and N1,000 denominations were being redesigned and the old notes withdrawn from circulation. The regulatory banker cited as a maj...

Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain, Senator Dino Melaye, has never been someone constrained by civility in public comportment. He expresses himself impulsively, and at times with grotesque exertions bordering on the comical. One image of him that endures in memory was from way back in 2007, at the early stages of his National Assembly (NASS) career. There on the rostrum in the House of Representatives was torn-vested Honourable Melaye who, as a member of the green chamber, dug in at the side of then House Speaker Patricia Etteh and waved his shirt that he had pulled off as he fiercely defended Etteh against internal rebellion by a so-called Integrity Group. Not that he succeeded with that pitch, because the first and till date only ‘Madam Speaker’ in Nigeria’s history was displaced by the insurrection after barely five months in the saddle. Later when he  moved to the Senate chamber and crisscrossed between PDP and the All Progressives Congress (APC), and even in the last few...