The year 2012 was a good one for the Nigerian capital market. It was the year patient investors recouped some of the money they lost in the 2007 market crash. The All Share Index (ASI), which captures how market prices change from day to day and from year to year, moved up by a significant 35.54 per cent emerging among the top 10 best-performing stock markets globally in 2012. The only stock market that performed better in Africa in 2012 was the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE) in Kenya, which moved up 39 per cent.

The commodity super-cycle – in which commodity prices reach ever-higher highs, and fall only to higher lows – is not over. Despite the euphoria around shale gas – indeed, despite weak global growth – commodity prices have risen by as much as 150 percent in the aftermath of the financial crisis. In the medium term, this trend will continue to pose an inflation risk and undermine living standards worldwide.

From January 13 (my birthday) to January 20, 2013, the seventy “Senior Elders” from Nigeria held all-night vigils at St. Peter’s Square, Rome, as supplicants. The Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, overwhelmed us all by his beneficence and goodwill. However, he gently admonished us: “The God we worship does not encourage selfish prayers. You should pray for others, not yourselves.” It was a salutary intervention and wake up call. What was truly amazing was that the more earnestly we prayed for others, especially the poor and the downtrodden, the more the Almighty blessed us!

An archive is a collection of historical documents or records of a government, a family, a place or an organisation, or the place where these records are stored. It is a place where people visit in search of information. It affords the user the opportunity to gather firsthand facts, data and evidences from letters, reports, notes, memos, photographs, audio and video recordings and other primary sources that were generated from time earlier.