Two hundred and thirty-four years ago, Adam Smith, a Scottish philosopher and political economist died on 17 July, 1790. Born in 1723, Smith is generally eulogised as the “Father of Capitalism,” “Father of Economics,” and for “putting economic development on the map as a subject for general analysis.” The ‘founders’ of the United States (US) viewed his ideas as a critical work of national wealth, statecraft and societal development. Karl Marx benefited immensely from Smith’s ideas in the evolution of Marxism. But since the late 1970s, neoliberal forces who claim to have Smith in their DNA, have turned economics upside-down…

Last Wednesday, Nigeria’s upper parliament became a grammar class where semantics, syntax and structure are examined. The Senate President of Nigeria, Godswill Akpabio, suddenly became an emergency interpreter and lexicographer. Akpabio’s interpreter’s dilemma reminds me of Field Marshal Gerald Templer. A senior British Army officer, Templer was best known for the implementation of strategies that heavily contributed to the defeat of the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) during the Malayan Emergency of 1949 to 1960. On the instruction of Prime Minister Winston Churchill to temper communist insurgency among the Malays, Templer arrived a Malayan village where some communist guerillas were…