THE Inspector-General of Police, Mr Mohammed Abubakar, wants to raise the entry point salary in the force from N28,000 to N100,000.

WHAT do the Nigerian people have to do to be heard by their government? As you read this, President Goodluck Jonathan is busy trying to impose amnesty on a bloodthirsty jihadist group that feels insulted by the idea.

EVEN before the offer of amnesty was made, it was rejected out of hand. In words dripping with scorn and disdain for constitutions and the rule of law, two leaders of the terrorist group Jamâ’a Ahl al-sunnah li-da’wa wa al-jihâd (Congregation of the People of Tradition for Proselytism and Jihad), better known as Boko Haram (Western education is forbidden), spat in Jonathan’s eye.

CHINUA Achebe’s stoic and gradualist approach to life was evident not only in his unhurried diction and surgically measured prose but also in the kind of solutions he proffered to the vexing questions of the post-colonial world. Particularly, in Nigeria, the country that vexed him the most — to the point of death in exile.

PRESUMABLY, President Goodluck Jonathan and the members of the National Council of State who granted a state pardon for the convicted former governor of Bayelsa State, D. S. P. Alamieyeseigha, are aware of Section 14 (2) of the Constitution which states that “The Federal Republic of Nigeria shall be a State based on the principles of democracy and social justice,” and accordingly “sovereignty belongs to the people … from whom government … derives all its powers and authority.”

SPEAKING at last of her hitherto ultra-secret six-week “rest” in Germany, Mrs Patience Jonathan, not known for nuance or circumspection, made a direct comparison to the Biblical Lazarus whom Jesus raised from the dead. “I am not Lazarus,” she said, then added “but my experience was similar to his.”

I OWE the title of this column to Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s classic song of outrage, and call to action, against the live evil of corruption threatening to throttle Nigeria to death.

AS the world moves away from capital punishment, Nigeria, always to be found in the rear-guard of progress, has embraced it with renewed vigour.

THE omens remain frightful regarding what awaits us this year in the moral conscience arena of our ever more degenerate social landscape. On Monday, 14 January, a holy mob in Ekwe, a village in Isu Njaba Local Government Area of Imo State, arrested three men suspected of having consensual sex, beat them up, stripped them bare to their dangling nuts, tied them together and paraded them through the streets.

MRS. Obioma Imoke is 50 years old and I wish her well, just as I wish all the fellow citizens who marked their golden anniversary on earth that same day. Mrs. Imoke is the wife of the governor of Cross River State, Liyel Imoke, formerly a senator. The whole world knows about her birthday because half of the eighteen local governments in her state bought full-page adverts in a national daily on Saturday, 5 January 2013, to congratulate her.

YOU wish to Allah the Merciful that what you heard about the request for an additional N9 billion for the construction of a brand new mansion for the Vice President is not true, that you had just woken up from a nightmare when you heard lying voices in the dark seeking to “heat up” your head and “the polity” (apologies to President Jonathan’s spokesmen).

A COLUMNIST in our beleaguered nation is a frustrated citizen. She tries in vain to oblige the government’s spokesmen and not “heat up the polity” with yet another lament of our unending woes.

AND it came to pass, that the congregation of the Lord in the Word of Life Bible Church took count of the 40 years marked by the wonderful things that Jehovah, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, had done through his humble servant, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, in their lives and they were ashamed that they had treated the anointed servant of the Lord very poorly.

WHICH of the following statements, in your opinion, best reflects President Goodluck Jonathan’s “honest-to-God” attitude to corruption?

MILLIONS of pounds sterling. That’s how much Bola Tinubu, former senator, former governor of Lagos State, former democrat of NADECO fame (I will explain at the end of this column), says he “spent on” Olusegun Mimiko, governor of Ondo State.

NIGERIA is under water, literally. From the Adamawa highlands where the Benue enters Nigeria to Lokoja where it joins with the more majestic Niger for a single course to the Atlantic via the massive alluvial fan we call the Niger Delta, the country conjures images of the primeval flood at the beginning of creation.

His Excellency, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, a man with great quest for knowledge holds a Bachelor of Science … Master of Science … and Doctor of Philosophy … from University of Port Harcourt ,” so begins a profile of our president available online (http://www.onlinenigeria.com/links/LinksReadPrint.asp?blurb=640).

And so, once again, the wife of a serving president flies off to Europe in search of a cure for a non-life threatening problem.

ON September 5, 2012, it will be three years since Gani Fawehinmi died of cancer and joined the ancestors. The void he left in our political life remains unfilled, for so large was his presence while he breathed.

TWO weeks ago, a faction of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People led by Goodluck Diigbo proclaimed political autonomy.

The Jama’atu Ahlissunnah Lidda’awati Wal-Jihad sect, better known as Boko Haram, has very clearly spelt out the goal of its bloody jihad: to establish Allah’s kingdom in Nigeria. As the pre-history of Nigeria informs us, however, this is an old cause dating back to Usman Dan Fodio’s jihad of 1804-1808.

ACTUALLY, the title is misleading though only by half. Unless he was already a millionaire, a president of the United States must perish the thought of becoming one while in office.

IF you ever wonder what goes on in the heads of our rulers, then you must be “grateful” for the answer you got on Sunday, June 12, 2012, from the President himself, Dr Goodluck Jonathan.