YOU would be forgiven if you think we are already in 2015, or thereabouts, and the election campaigns are in full swing. We are watching a drama unfold, which has many parts that are chilling in their effects. In a few days, President Jonathan will be celebrating his first year in office as a President sworn-in after an election he contested as a candidate.

A LITTLE over two years ago, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua died, providing a natural solution to a messy political and legal logjam that was to haunt the rest of his planned four – year term. It is a sign of the present times and the conditions we live under that the Anniversary was barely noticed.

ALL columnists are used to having feedbacks, some abusive, others encouraging. Indeed, these feedbacks mean a lot, even if, in many instances, they come from people who have either not read what you have written, or understood it.

BY the time you read this piece, a pile of sand around the Asaba Airport which had been planned for removal at the reported cost of N7.4b to allow President Goodluck Jonathan’s presidential plane to land at Asaba may have been cleared, or may still be there.

TECHNICALLY, we could claim to be at another starting point in terms of amending the Nigerian Constitution. Our constitution amendment attempts have been like races.

THE bomb that went off early on Easter Sunday at the heart of the commercial section of the city of Kaduna left behind it more casualties than most other explosions witnessed since the seeming democratisation of the knowledge, skills and means to inflict massive violence on Nigerians, centred around the Boko Haram insurgency.

FORMER President Olusegun Obasanjo and Chairman, Board of Trustees of the People Democratic Party (PDP) made a turn on his celebrated political route, and has left the nation guessing and following with intense interest.

THE just concluded National Convention of People Democratic Party which produced a new set of its leaders is a study in the perversion of all the core values of the democratic process.

YOU did not hear it from President Goodluck Jonathan, his deputy and the highest ranking northerner, Namadi Sambo, or any Minister, or Special Adviser, but it is now official.

GOVERNORS from South South states are angry with the north over its temerity to hint that their States are sitting on, and developing on resources to which they are not strictly entitled. They express a widespread indignation across much of the oil and gas producing region which has followed the publicized intention of Northern Governors to demand for a review of the formula for allocation of revenue from oil and gas derived from off-shore resources of the nation.

I HAVE never met Professor Chidi Odinkalu, the Chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in person, although I hear he is the type of Nigerian I should list among my friends.

Chidi and I belong to a cyberspace group which has many other people I know very well, most of whom think very highly of Chidi. Every time Chidi says or reacts to something someone says, you see evidence of learning, grooming and an open-mindedness rare even among educated people these days. Our group is passionate about most important things , and we often get all worked up for days when there is something to argue over. Chidi is always in the thick of it.

THIS piece was written a day after Ojukwu died. I have decided to have it published after his burial because the issues raised by the article are even more relevant today than when he just died. The reader also does not need to be reminded of the views expressed by the Igbo people, his former adversaries, enemies and friends, many of them sincere, many expressed just to capture a mood.

THREE important comments have recently been made on the linkages between poverty, politics and insecurity, and the current state of the North. First, the Governor of Borno State said that poverty and poor governance in the last few years are responsible for fuelling the Boko Haram insurgency in his region.

A GROUP which gave itself the title of Eminent National Leaders of Thought met a few days under the umbrella of a forum called National Summit Group with suspicious official support at the expensive Sheraton Hotel and Towers, Lagos.