Odilim Enwegbara

If a team is hired to turn around a badly managed economy, but after 18 months on the job, rather than turn it around, it has made matters worse, should the team be singing its own songs of praises or should become sober for its failure?

By the time the ravaging global liquidity crush, which started on Wall Street in September 2008, was over, Nigeria's own version of the financial fiasco couldn't be more dramatic. Dropping from N13.5 trillion to N4.6 trillion, the country's stock market had lost a monstrous N8.9trillion...

Until recently, public outcries that government agencies have been mismanaging the revenues they generated have been received as fallacious. And because most past legislative investigations into these allegations have ended up compromised, those carrying on this act seem to believe to have mastered how to circumvent the law...

First indictment was that former President Obasanjo left a whopping $67 billion in foreign reserves for his successors. Second indictment was that Yar'Adua and Jonathan administrations squandered that money in addition to billions of oil revenues accruing to them. Third indictment was that because of ''squandering'' of public funds, ''poor Nigerians have suffered the effects of failing health and education systems...

Given how long-term growth prospects and macroeconomic sustainability are interwoven, securing the financial sector's soundness in the economy should never happen in isolation...

Discovering how difficult to win the battle of enforcing their so-called patent rights, rights that should come with excessive royalties, the US Department of Agriculture has since joined hands with these patent paddlers to now arm them with the Terminator Seeds...

The havoc the 2008 financial crisis brought to Nigeria would have been minimal, had it not been that the breakdown in CBN's oversight and surveillance system allowed the country's banks to engage in Ponzi schemes...

No doubt Mr. President did not surround himself with some of Nigeria's best men and women. But, then, given the kind of arrangement we have in place that places not in his hands the selection of his team, should he just be blamed for having these men and women around him?