AS the battle for control of the Nigerian Governors Forum continues, we are reminded once again of how our pretence at nationhood reduces governance to absurdity.

HAD Nigeria, like Britain, an unwritten constitution, no one would know ours is officially a secular country. Every politician not only wears his or her righteousness like the mark of Cain on the forehead but is also a lay pastor or imam.

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.