Today, by God’s grace I see myself as a success. By profession I am a Credit Controller Manager, a position that I have occupied for over 3years now. When I first joined the organization I work for, their total receivables (debtor’s accounts) amounted to over Two Hundred Million Naira. The organization was already in deep financial mess, yet had so much outside. It was so unfortunate. One of the first areas that I had to tackle was the aspect of policy formulation. This was because the organization was so much interested in generating more sales without a guiding credit policy, so; marketers had all the freedom to negotiate terms of sales and credit. And, sure you know that the average marketer is more interested in their commissions. It was a hard fight, but thank God that today everybody is now smiling. Our present total debt profile had been reduced to below Twenty Three Million from over Two Hundred Million naira. But, it is not this success that is actually my greates

There exists a kind of an unbroken chain in the vicious relationship between poverty and disease. Heart disease, cancer, arthritis, diabetes, hypertension, etc are all examples of chronic illnesses that so many people are battling with today. Chronic diseases mostly do not have an immediate cure hence, the best that any medical doctor can do is to prescribe some medications that addresses the symptoms of the disease; just to give the patient the opportunity of living a bit longer. Battling such health condition for a life time can be very traumatic and the socioeconomic effects on individual and their household can also be very catastrophic. For instance the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had observed that chronic disease is the cause of 70% of deaths in the United States of America.  In terms of the financial implications, they further observed that more than 75% of the total budgets annually for health is actually spent on managing chronic diseases.

It’s no longer news that the Acting President, Pastor Yemi Osinbajo, on Monday 12 th June, 2017 signed the 2017 Appropriation Act into law. As it’s always the case in Nigeria, this 2017 budget is christened: ‘Budget of Economic Recovery and Growth’. According to the projections, the government is expecting total revenue of N5.08tn and an aggregate expenditure of N7.44tn. This leaves us with a projected fiscal deficit of N2.36tn which the government says will be financed largely through borrowing. Although after signing the document into law, the Acting President told Nigerians that the 2017 budget is an important milestone in the nation’s Economic Recovery and Growth Plan that was unveiled in April by President Muhammadu Buhari. But, as it stands today, the 2017 budget, even before its commencement had already suffered some serious setbacks which I fear may bring disappointments eventually. For instance, at the time of preparing the budget, the projections were predicated

There is this common assumption that people with parents who reached a very old age before they died are more likely to live to a very old age themselves. But this is not the whole truth, according to a recent research finding by Lars Wilhelmsen (Professor Emeritus of Cardiovascular Epidemiology and Prevention) and his team from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, as published in the Journal of Internal Medicine. Lars Wilhelmsen and his team observed that, healthy aging and longevity in humans are modulated by not only genetic factors but, our lifestyles and the environment we live. In another related study, Dr David Demko, after serving on two American government commissions investigating the effects of ageing, believes that a long life is not just a question "of smart genes and dumb luck". In his observations, 80 per cent of the factors that control how long you can live are related to your lifestyle, not your genes. Did you hear that, “80 percentage”! That’s