AN amusing report in one of the dailies last week claimed that PDP governors are demanding N46b worth of projects for their states for voting for President Jonathan in 2015.

AN electronic medium last week reported Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode as saying that he has Fulani blood in his veins. His full name, following an ancestral line which descended from a Muslim grandfather, Shiekh Nurudeen Sa’id from Ilesha, is Abdullateef Femi Fani-Kayode.

THE grounds are rapidly shifting away from the chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Bamanga Tukur.
For a man who came into the office under very controversial circumstances, his current travails should not surprise anyone. Still, you have to marvel at the speed of his declining powers, and wonder if it symbolises a massive decline in the fortunes of the PDP.

THE dust raised by his last controversial book There was a Country has not settled. A former Military Governor of North Western State during the Nigerian Civil War, Alhaji Usman Faruk has just published his own version of the war in which he casts the Northern leaders who executed the war as patriotic heroes. On the very day he died, alarming statements were being made by people who were not even born before the Nigerian civil war, most of them threatening mayhem, revenge and even another civil war following the bombing of buses in Kano which, as it turned out, mostly took the lives of people from the same stock as the presumed bombers. One or two prominent writers even hinted that the bombing in Kano may have hastened his death. Chinua Achebe’s Nigeria is falling apart at a rate no one could have imagined. The tragedy is that history will record him as a symbol of its cultural wealth, as well as a symptom of its failure to utilise its assets.

Something is seriously wrong at the highest decision-making levels of President Goodluck Jonathan’s government. A number of elementary but expensive errors of judgement are being made which, cumulatively, will cost the nation very dearly.

THE Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB, is a piece of legislation initially intended to address endemic structural, policy and managerial issues in the Nigerian oil and gas sector. Its goals were to enhance the value of the asset for the Nigerian people by plugging loopholes in policies and management and improving transparency and efficiency of the sector.

IT will be difficult to find enthusiastic, independent support for the continued existence of State Electoral Commissions. But they will continue to exist because they serve very powerful interests that have nothing to do with the growth and development of the democratic system.

THE way our President, Governors of the PDP, major opposition parties, eminent, perennial actors and fixers in the political system are running around in pursuit of 2015, you would think our democratic process is all about elections.

THE charade around the conduct and fate of an Assistant Director in the Federal Civil Service who exercises responsibility as Chairman of the Pension Reform Task Team, Abdurrasheed Maina appears set to continue.

THE planned merger of three or four parties is a major development in the nation’s current political disposition. Whether it lives up to its billing as the most significant development since 1999, or it falls flat on its face in the next few weeks will be determined by many issues and challenges.

PEOPLE who have taken ringside seats in the on-going bruising fight between President Goodluck Jonathan and President Olusegun Obasanjo must have been jolted when news filtered out that the two had attended a church service at the Presidential Villa, last Sunday and had a private lunch afterwards.

DO State governors deserve the approbium directed at them from all informed sections of the polity? What does it feel like to be a governor and exercise the type of powers that make you at once a major source of power and patronage, and an albatross around the neck of our democracy?

AS he is wont to do, Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi triggered another quarrel when he called for the banning of ethnic and religious organisations on the grounds that they inhibit the growth of an all-inclusive political process, threaten national unity and heighten the state of insecurity in the nation.

AT the zenith of his power, President Olusegun Obasanjo was credited with the quip that you should check your watch every time President Ibrahim Babangida said good morning to you.

Britain’s blue chip index fell on Monday for the first time this year, balking at technical resistance levels having reached its highest close for nearly two years in the previous session.

PRESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan says 2013 will be the year of his greatest impact. Most Nigerians will hope so. Leaders of the opposition and skeptics who hope he will disappoint again will pay for their hostility with higher costs for diesel for their generators, higher costs to protect and secure life and limbs, and uncertainties over whether a President who performs badly all through his four year s will allow a free and fair election to determine his fate in 2015. If 2013 will be the year President Jonathan will affect our lives most, what factors will be in play in shaping it?

THE awesome power of the Almighty was visible on Saturday last week when the plane which was flying the Governor of Kaduna State and former National Security Adviser, among others, crashed, and all lives in it were lost. The nation was also reminded of the deep submission to the powers of God by President Goodluck Jonathan in the manner his pictures were splashed all over the media and social network sites kneeling, as he did in 2010, before Pastor Enoch Adeboye, the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God.

THE kidnapping, last Sunday, of the mother of the Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, from her home will shock even those who have been desensitized by the endemic nature of this crime.

THE Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) stumbled last week in its search for a chairman for its Board of Trustees (BOT). The position has been vacant since President Obasanjo walked away from it some months back.

GOVERNOR of Rivers State and Chairman of the Governors Forum, Rotimi Amaechi provided a useful glimpse into the thinking of some governors on some of the key issues being discussed for constitutional amendments.

“Politics – the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.” -Oscar Ameringer

THE President’s men are busy putting out lengthy repudiations of allegations and suspicions that he has an agenda to scuttle the numerous initiatives towards arresting corruption and waste in our oil and gas sector.

THE dust raised by the chilling indictment of the Nigerian security agencies and the Jamaatu Ahlil Sunnah Diddaawati Wal Jihad (JASLIWAJ) (a.k.a. Boko Haram) by Amnesty International had hardly settled down when the war was taken up to new levels in Yobe and Borno States.

THE nation is being reminded that the interests of politicians is superior to all institutions, rules and processes, including the public service and procurement processes. Events are unfolding which explain why our politics in Nigeria is so anti-people, and how politicians are running our economy aground.

IMAGINE please what went through the minds of the four young men who were apprehended in Port Harcourt by a mob which tortured them, paraded them naked with tyres around their necks, and then set them ablaze.

IT would have been interesting to hear what the outcome of the aborted North-East Summit would say about issues such as the clamour for additional State(s) in the South-East, or on the demand for “true” federalism. Alas, the powerful Governors torpedoed it by simply staying away, and hinting that the Summit could be hijacked by hostile interests.

THE Federal Government was, yesterday, accused of not stating the fact by claiming that Nigeria had no fresh evidence to contest the International Court of Justice, ICJ, judgment of 2002 ceding Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroon.

A curious story in one of the news dailies a few days ago said that former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair advised our President Goodluck Jonathan to disregard the voice of Nigerian opposition and other citizens who complain over his policies.

JUST about everything that should be said about the illness and absence of Dame Patience Jonathan has been said. Her aides and Presidential spokesmen have been accused of lying, deception, cover-up, insensitivity and irresponsibility over her whereabouts and illness.

The uproar which greeted the publication of this year’s National Honours list has been very unfair to the majority of the those honoured. Most critics ignored the fact that many people on the list have eminently earned their recognition and rewards. A few are borderlines.

The arguments over the legality and propriety of the onshore-offshore dichotomy are likely to get louder and more involving in the next few months. It is safe to assume that this issue will feed existing faultlines in the nation, and will quite probably play a pivotal role in determining security issues around oil and gas, and even the 2015 elections.

In the midst of doom and gloom regarding the future of the nation, a spark of hope was ignited in a small town in Kebbi State. On Saturday 25th of August the small town of Koko was filled to the brim with Nigerians from every nook and cranny of the nation, and a rich assortment of representatives of the international community.