THE full title of my last column (27 January 2015) is “How Col. Dasuki Confirmed Nigeria as the Never-ready Country (and Why the Elections Must Not Be Postponed).” It was published without the second part in parenthesis. But I had been expressing a vain hope.

THE other day in London, National Security Adviser Col. Sambo Dasuki called for a postponement of the February elections. I am vexed by both the call and the venue, so a word first on the latter. For news so important, you would think that Nigerians ought to be the first to know, and that it would come at the end of consultations with the electoral commission (INEC), National Assembly, and political parties, if as usual the general public is to be ignored. But I’m assuming that Nigeria’s public officials respect Nigeria’s public institutions or the Nigerian people.

OKOWA’S running mate: Clark, Manager, Tompolo in a fierce battle,” so screamed the headline (Vanguard, 20 December 2014). I saw at once the chronicle of another humiliation foretold: of the three personalities mentioned, none is Isoko. But one should not deduce the facts of a newspaper story from its headline. So to the story I went but before another word,the context for my conclusion. I had recently come to the view that the Isoko people are poorly served by their leaders and expressed it openly on April 7 when I declared my intention (aborted precisely eight months later on December 7 at the APC primaries) to run for a seat in the House of Representatives.

I HAD intended my post-primaries statement as the last word on my rude initiation (baptism of fire, if you like)into our country’s rough-and-ready politics. But the main aim of my statement — to congratulate my opponent on his victory and to thank my supporters — did not allow much room for critical reflection.

By condoning, if not authorising,serial acts of impunity, is President Goodluck Jonathan transforming democracy by redefining it as minority rule? Or simply returning us to the forgotten epoch of might is right? The most popular definition of democracy remains that proffered by Abraham Lincoln in the famous Gettysburg Address to commemorate the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the American Civil War. In the long closing sentence of the short 278-word speech, Lincoln uttered the words that every junior secondary school student knows by heart:”government of the people, by the people, for the people.”