Dogs don’t eat bones hung on their necks. Niger Delta Maritime University wasn’t lucky. They say when local dogs start lapping milk they let human feces be. Perhaps not political dogs. Well, lecturers scratch . So they force students to buy handouts. That’s pardonable extortion. Politicians munch crunchy security votes. And yet pad budgets, inflate contracts, and seize communal lands. Thieves , sensible thieves, steal from strangers. Mature pickpockets don’t work at home. And if home is miserable with great affliction then such looking inwards for local content is inhumanity. Niger delta thieves don’t get it.

The recent spate of bombings of oil facilities in the Niger Delta has put the Nigerian economy in dire straits, plunging the country further down the road to a financial crisis. Latest data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, said the Nigerian economy is teetering on the brink of recession and the increase in bombings is throwing the country deeper into the abyss. The situation becomes worrisome when viewed against the backdrop that crude oil exports account for about 70 per cent of Nigeria’s revenue and 90 per cent of Nigeria’s foreign exchange earnings.

The 2014 National Constitutional Conference was one of the boldest attempts in recent times in appraising the operational structure and system on which the country is run. The conference which was convened by President Goodluck Jonathan in 2014 however faced many controversies, the first of which was its acceptance. The 492 delegates of the conference following months of brainstorming finally came up with a report which among others sought the creation of nearly 18 more states, the systematic restructuring of the polity, rotational presidency, the creation of state police, the scrapping of state/local government joint accounts among several others.

It was salt upon injury for the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. At a time when the party was still trying to resolve the crisis in its national leadership, the party’s lot in the House of Representatives sank further after two of its members defected from the party to the All Progressives Congress, APC last Wednesday. The defection of the two lawmakers came a day after the end of the nine-day lockout of staff and officials of the party out of the national secretariat by the police. The police claimed to have acted to prevent any of the factions contending for the party’s leadership from taking over the national secretariat.

The din of the enthusiasm to have a say about the performance—or non-performance—of the first year of the Buhari administration, has subsided in connection with some issues. It will no doubt linger for a while longer over some other issues that need to be further addressed, if they are subjected to the lack of urgency that has been a noticeable habit of the government’s approach to some pressing issues over the past year. Although the response to the quality of governance has not been resoundingly encouraging among the populace, as gathered from reactions through the mass media, the plea for patience seems to have become mixed with emotions roused by disappointment over unfulfilled promises.