Happenings

Yemi Akinsuyi The Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, has attributed the continuous poverty in the country to bad governance and its attendant misplaced priorities, corruption and huge debt burden. Sanusi, who stated this yesterday during a conference on effective strategies for reducing poverty and scaling up implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Nigeria, organised by the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), also gave non-competitiveness of Nigerian goods in the international markets, few economic opportunities, conflict and violence, huge debt burden, low productivity, high rate of population growth, and suboptimal human capital as part of the poverty problem in the country. The CBN governor, who was represented by Dr. Olaitan Mudashiru, lamented that Nigeria had no business being poor with the immense wealth in the country. He said: “Nigeria which was one of the 50 richest countries glo...

While it depends on the circumstances for any given spill, shellfish, finfish, and whales could be affected in various ways during oil spills. Here we discuss the possible impacts and some response considerations for these marine organisms. Fish were killed in the polluted waters following Hurricane Rita in the Gulf of Mexico in 2005. (NOAA)How Are Fish Affected by Oil Spills? Most often, shellfish and finfish either are unaffected by oil or are affected only briefly because most oils float and routes of exposure to organisms living in the water column or on the ocean floor are typically very limited. However, these animals can be substantially affected in some circumstances, especially when oil spills into shallow or confined waters. Many shellfish species are relatively immobile and often are indiscriminant filter-feeders, which means they may not be able to avoid exposures to oil. In addition, they don’t possess the same suite of enzymes to breakdown contaminants ...

The theme of the 1993 United Nations world conference on human rights in Vienna was Women’s Rights Are Human Rights. I was with the Civil Liberties Organisation then and attended the conference. Why was it necessary, you might ask, to state that incontestable fact 45 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the very first article of which asserts unequivocally that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights?” Aren’t women human beings? Funny as it may sound, the status of woman as human wasn’t always “settled.” Indeed, a much earlier conference is believed to have been convened in France, circa 586 A.D., to resolve the question whether or not women were human! It was my former colleague at the CLO, Chidi Anselm Odnkalu, now chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, who first mentioned this outrageous outcome of prejudice born of the fear of difference—whether it be racial, gender, religious, sexual, or even plainly ideological. In h...