A FRIEND of mine always says“anybody who marks his own exam papers will get an A”. That was exactly what the new Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Chief Olisa Metuh, did in appraising the 13 years since the Party took charge of the affairs of the country from the military. He claimed that the party “has put the nation on the path to sustainable development and steady economic growth as the basis to stabilise and consolidate the nation’s democracy”.

ADDRESSING a conference of the (rather innocuous, pardon my ignorance) Academy for Entrepreneurial Studies in Lagos, last week, former President, Olusegun Obasanjo, for the umpteenth time, let loose a cat amongst the pigeons of Nigerian political society.

HISTORY repeats itself once in a while. It has taken almost four centuries for American history to replicate itself in Nigeria, more specifically, in the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN. We are reminded of the Biblical case of the rejected stone that later became the cornerstone.

YESTERDAY, President Goodluck Jonathan celebrated his first year in office. If the last one year has been eventful, what will the next three be like? Better for Jonathan and the nation? More trying? Can we tell?

YOUR Excellency: I have on two occasions applied for a German visa in as many years and both applications have been conference-related. If I have, as a Nigerian academic, come this far without yet visiting Germany, it is nothing short of gratuitous insult for your embassy to imagine that a visit to Germany is de rigueur for my academic career or even worse, that such a visit is for economic migrancy.

A WEEK ago, I read a story in a newspaper that I found very interesting. Nigerian traders in Ghana were appealing to the Federal Government to intervene on their behalf over Ghana’s refusal for them to sell generators in Ghana.

HE noted that of the three amalgamation of the British colonial government, India, Sudan and Nigeria, only Nigeria stands at present… “We can’t ignore these facts. We can’t take these facts for granted. We either sit down and talk on them or we will wish them away as our leaders are trying to make us believe”.

WE read so much about the many new ideas that Governor of Imo State, Owelle Anayo Rochas Okorocha, has introduced since he mounted the throne vacated by Sir Ikedi Ohakim one year ago.

Nigeria’s capital market is totally wrecked. It had been partially demolished by 2008, but there was still some hope. Now it is in ruins – thanks to the heads of the two institutions controlling it. The global community, and nations with honest capital markets, whose shares are heading for the basement, must be amused that in Nigeria those who are supposed to build the capital market – the NSE and SEC—are exactly the ones destroying what is left of it.

The FIFA website has it that this week end, over one hundred countries, translated to fifty matches, will play preliminary matches of the 2014 World Cup kick off all over the world and Nigeria definitely is involved in the fray.