By Bola Bolawole

Will sleaze and controversy ever depart from these shores? Two of such making the rounds at the moment are the BBC documentary on the late Prophet Temitope Balogun (TB) Joshua of the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) and the multi-billion Naira scandal involving two of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s ministers – the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Betta Edu, and the (before now?) top-flight Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo.

By Bolanle Bolawole

Recently, an undercover reporter blew open the scandal of overseas university education and its deleterious effect on our educational system and national development. But it is not as if we have not always been aware that many of the certificates brought home from abroad by our folks are sub-standard and do not compare to any acquired at home. For anyone who has travelled in neighbouring Benin Republic and Togo, many of the one-bedroom-flat universities there are ramshackle and the quality of education they offer leaves much to be desired. Same applies to some extent even in Ghana. Many simply go there to acquire certificates which they return here to flaunt for prestige purposes. Lazy students whose parents have excess money to spare prefer these so-called institutions where they get on a platter what serious students elsewhere sweat it out to acquire. I have seen graduates of some of those institutions who could not write a simple letter. One such graduate that I even tried, without knowing the truth, to get enlisted in the NYSC failed serially to compose a simple letter. She claimed to have spent three years in a university in Benin Republic to study Business Administration! For years she failed to scale that simple hurdle but many of her classmates who were well connected, according to her, got promptly admitted to the NYSC without even writing any letter! They must be working in some highbrow MDAs or blue-chip private companies by now!

By Steve Osuji

THE BEAUTIFUL THIEVES:

Should we make a law urgently that our beautiful women should never be allowed near the national till? Has anyone else noticed the seeming emerging trend of our women public officials outdoing the men in making a mess of our national treasury? The womenfolk seem to take no prisoners when they have opportunity to attack and they show exceptional impunity and the iron balls of hardened pyrates. In May 2014, this column (then appearing in The Nation newspaper), had described Diezani Alison-Madueke as “the beautiful thief”). Diezani was minister in charge of Petroleum under President Goodluck Jonathan.

By Celestine Okafor (Editor-in-chief) @CelestineOkaf11

Immediate-past Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPL) Limited and former Anambra North Senator, Senator Margery Okadigbo, speaks on the twentieth anniversary of the death of her husband and Nigeria's former Senate President, Dr Chuba Okadigbo.

By Emeka Obasi

National Security Adviser ( NSA ) Nuhu Ribadu needs to begin 2024 with a private dinner with the Service Chiefs devoid of work environment. It should be a no holds barred party, spiced with choice wines, anecdotes and sidetalks.

By Emeka Obasi

Anytime Nigeria confronted West African hosts in the group stage of the African Nations Cup, the Eagles ended up as third best. It began in 1978, happened again in 1992 and continued in 2002.