The study of mathematics is as good as its application. As a field of study, its treatment of learners is very fair.

And by this it means, if the answer is 1, it is 1 for everyone regardless of the age, sex, colour, origin, social status, time, inter alia.

Same goes for its application. If you're by requirement, should administer a medicine of 250mg, you cannot administer more or less because that is all that you're left. It is that simple!

National Petroleum Authority (NPA) regulation instructs that gas and fuel stations should be sited at a minimum of 30.8 metres or 100 feet away from residential areas.

Yet you find fuel and gas stations fighting for space with people who either have their homes or businesses closer to these stations.

And we're asked to accept this by the argument that the expansion of homes and businesses creates the closeness. And that if we're to insist on Safety Precautions it shouldn't really matter.

This is an abuse, misapplication, massage of mathematics intended to favour.

You have a situation where fuel and gas stations are sited in the 'middle of town'. At any given time, the regulation is still intact and unchanged but is overlooked.

Structures are brought down and fuel stations are quickly put up nowadays. Again, permits (directly and indirectly) are given to people to operate within the very regulation set to ensure safety.

Safety starts with regulation. The intention of the regulation is to ensure safety. We cannot abuse the regulation and still think that we're safe by applying something else.

In any case, if we think we're safe by applying some other safety precautions why do we set the regulation in the first place? Let's scrap it then.

Now, let's go and check the number of fuel and gas stations the regulation doesn't apply. This is an abuse and misapplication of maths. By who? Of course, the very institutions that refuse to enforce the regulation.

Can we apologize to that person who has written and continues to re-sit Mathematics because we have made him or her understand that Maths is a core and our society needs it?