Mountains will be in labour, and the birth will be a ridiculous little mouse -Horace, 65-8 B.C., (Vanguard Book of Quotations p. 166), The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers -William Shakespeare, 1564-1616.

MOST lawyers will roast in hell anyway (except my daughter of course), whether we slaughter them or not. God knows they have been responsible for drafting the obnoxious decrees by which the military has enslaved Nigeria and the current constitution which has granted criminal licence to office holders thereby inviting the unprecedented kleptomania we have experienced since 1999.

Right about now, unlike Shakespeare the people we should be most wary of are professors and not just because of the latest abortion called book launch by Professor Nwosu on the June 12,1993 elections but because, by and large, professors in government in Nigeria have and are proving to be great disappointments. Even those who have registered some good performance in one area quite often muck it up in another area.

We recollect Obasanjo's minister of aviation who was stubbornly foisted on the nation by OBJ until aircraft started dropping from Nigerian skies like ripe mangoes in March. Professor Iwu was booed in absentia by people attending the book launch even when the M.C announced that he was only "ably represented" by an errand fellow. Professor Ojowu, erstwhile chief economic adviser would be remembered for two things while in the service of Obasanjo.

He went to deliver a report in which he asserted that 70 per cent of Nigerians were living in poverty. Obasanjo would have none of it because it meant that the government was failing in one of its two major objectives (the other was fighting corruption to a standstill - please don't laugh). Chastised Ojowu, a professional economist son produced a new set of documents claiming that poverty in Nigeria had declined to 54 per cent; meaning that 22.4 million Nigerians have crossed the poverty line in less than five years - a world record.

When I challenged Professor Ojowu to prove his claim he wrote a rejoinder that is only fit for the marines. It is instructive that among Ojowu's colleagues in government at the time, who fell in line with the fallacious 54 per cent poverty level were Dr. Okonjo-Iweala and Oby Ezekwesili - both now at the World Bank where the poverty level in Nigeria is still listed at 70 per cent.

Then there are the promoters of Vision 2020, mostly professors, who know better that no country even with sound infrastructure and uninterrupted power supply has ever grown its GDP by 15 per cent annually for eleven years. Yet these men want Nigerians to place their hopes in a pipe dream. Finally, although, I could furnish more examples of professors professing falsehood in Nigeria today, there is the "professor" at the helm at the Nigerian Stock Exchange, NSE.

She has managed to achieve what no one else has done since the history of exchanges started in the world. By the time you read this article, the NSE would have operated for three weeks during which no shares registered a loss; it has been gains!!! The reason she and her colleagues have given is the most laughable I have ever heard. They don't want shares to undergo a free fall and undermine the NSE.

That sounds to me like the "professor" is trying to stop a dam break with her fingers because the NSE "dam" is set to break whether or not she likes it and I will give her two reasons among several because this column is not about the NSE. That will come later.

The public offers for subscription by banks which boosted the shareholders capital were successful (in fact too successful) mainly because the banks mostly supplied deliberately over optimistic future estimates about dividends and share price appreciation and then followed this up by getting complaisant stock brokers to help manipulate the share prices beyond levels justified by real performance. Second, several investors were lured into acquiring shares with bank loans generously offered by the banks.

Unfortunately, most such investors expected the share certificates to be delivered to them speedily to enable them sell and make quick profit while repaying back the loans. This has not happened; so there are billions of bank shares still locked up which if released will flood the market; the dam break "Madam NSE" is trying to prevent will occur and will be more damaging than if she had allowed market forces to prevail. She will, at least, lose her finger and possibly more. I don't wish it for her but it will happen anyway.

Additionally, there are more scandals coming about how share prices were manipulated by a cabal among stock brokers. The cases of companies whose shares appreciated despite liquidation by a court or those which have closed down for years represent the tip of the iceberg. And Cadbury was not the only company inflating results. All those examples are designed to set the stage for the comments on Professor Nwosu's new book.

Like most academicians, he gave the book such a long title, like those papers they deliver at the faculty's seminars, one would need about five minutes just to read the title. Why he could not have titled it: June 12, My Story is a mystery to me. But then I am not a professor. Two, for all the hype that preceded it, the book was a complete let down. Since Professor Nwosu has spent a great deal of his adult life grading other people's paper, I hope he does not mind being told that this is one book that fails in every respect.

Mainly, it has added nothing significant to the sum total of our knowledge about the subject. Furthermore, he had incurred the unintended consequences of having his "facts" challenged because on too many instances they were not proved beyond reasonable doubt or substantiated by primary documents. But, perhaps, the most important damage he had done to himself lies in the fact that he has exposed himself to the charge of image laundering for Babangida. "From the sublime to the ridiculous there is only one step", wrote Thomas Paine, 1737-1809 (Vanguard Book of Quotations p. 236).

Professor Nwosu, once a hero of the June 12, 1993 election has just destroyed his own reputation more decisively than his worst enemy could have done. I pity him because I know how difficult it is to write a book as I am battling with two at the moment. It is mostly a lonely enterprise unless it is a joint-effort ab initio. I don't want to join the hounds after his flesh. But, if he wants my advice (although he has not asked for it), he should go underground again and not try to defend himself against the attacks that will certainly come fast and furious.

Are Nigerian banks dealing honestly with customers?

0805-231-7142: ...You have to do a story on how Nigerian banks are defrauding customers -Harris

0805-194-9048: Dele, let's start something on banks before they milk us to death....these days banks don't give loans or overdraft facilities per year.

They prefer to make it monthly, quarterly, or if you are so special to them (banks) semi-annually. The reason is that the three per cent facility and management fee is flatly charged and shall be repeated every time you are granted a facility, i.e. if you as a trader receive overdraft of N15 million, the banks will deduct upfront N450,000 for every three months making a total of N1.8 million a year instead of N450,000 per annum. Can you understand why banks declare moonslide profits. Dele, you helped us expose others before...Regards, Sam.

LET me deal with the second text message first because there appears to be a slight misunderstanding here instead of a serious charge against the banks. If the sender, who I assume is a business man and directly affected, has not paid more than N1.8 million on a N15 million facility, then the interest rate is 12 per cent per annum.

No bank in Nigeria can charge three per cent annual interest because they borrow from the Central Bank of Nigeria and from fixed depositors at more than three per cent. Nobody can expect the banks to lend to his business at less than the interest rate the banks borrow themselves.

Unless there is another charge, I think the situation is in order. But, please let me know as soon as possible if there is more to this. The focus for two weeks is on banks.

As for my good friend Harris, you have to be more specific about the charges. One cannot go to court, even court of public opinion on a loosely framed charge of "banks defrauding their customers."

To assist Harris, this matter is thrown open to our readers. Send me proof of fraud by your bank and we can now have a go at them. At least I am also a customer to three banks. For all I know they might be defrauding me.

To be continued next week