The rot is deep. The health sector is a suppurating sore. Quackery is rife.  If there is regulation, it doesn’t catch rogues. In nearly every district in Lagos there are flourishing  fake clinics. It isn’t just auxiliary nurses masquerading full time as doctors.  There are people who have received no medical training  but who are  confidently running thriving hospitals. The unsuspecting public are not to blame.  Patients do not usually scrutinize doctors licenses and qualifications. This army of  counterfeit doctors  attend to light and grave cases  and  routinely evacuate products of unwanted  conception. The roadside patent medicine dealers have been around since the ages. They have been dangerously filling gaps left by a decrepit health system. They  play the roles of doctors, pharmacists and nurses, combined.  They are responsible for most of the avoidable deaths from illegal abortion.

Apologies to China Achebe. It appears Buhari’s benevolent spirits have started cracking his palm kernels. It had been one week one trouble. He conceded many own goals. His opponents were euphoric. Some angry  bishops joined the chorus of some  old generals. They wanted him to return  unceremoniously to his farm in Daura. The National Assembly leaders were pursuing vendetta in clandestine flirtation  with impeachment. Then  in one simple stroke against a 25 year old  injustice, his opponents fell into disarray, and the president had his best week in years.

Since he sat in  fellowship with the opposition and got catapulted to that great height he has never really slept with both eyes closed. He has flown without perching, and when he perched, he perched  on one foot.

Rich and successful blacks are denied it. True status belongs to whites only.  Racism may have left the streets but it has burrowed in  hearts. It basks  in  bedrooms and private gardens, out of the view of political correctness. It seems almost immortal. Rosean Barr, a popular American television star, took a few tablets of Ambien for insomnia  and called Valeria Jarret an ape. She thinks she made a mistake.  The mistake was that she took to twitter  when the drug had opened the gates of her mind.

The  church prohibits  premarital sex. The Bible labels it fornication.  The church condemns premarital physical intimacy between intending couples. The Bible deems it  sexual immorality. The church abhors marital separations and divorces. The Bible says marriage is for better and for worse. And many Christian  denominations interpret the Bible to mean that a divorcee cannot re-marry. So Christian marriage is considered sacrosanct.

They are home to the two most important towns in Nigeria outside of Lagos: the headquarters of the Northern and Eastern regions.  They are a story of  a broken promise. Port Harcourt could have been a dazzling garden and port city. It was the place where tourism planned to meet business.  Kaduna represented power and hope. Now, it represents the North and its  baffling  retardation, retrogression. It hosts a multitude of educational institutions yet owns  a teeming population of  idle illiterate youths.

When Obasanjo  gets going, he leaves no stone unturned.  He has taken on Buhari and has not spared the president’s supporters.

The bishops are fed up. They want the president to resign and  return to  his farm in Daura. They had  met him two months ago, in February. They were  sad but polite then.  Now they believe righteousness lies in being brutally frank. 

The APC needs an overhaul. The vehicle was hurriedly  assembled, cobbled. It was expected to fall apart even before the race began. It defied its disjointedness and many soothsayers, and creaked to victory in 2015.

Thugs came to the Senate. And took the mace. That sums it up.  Fani Kayode wants the Arch Bishop of Canterbury tied to a stake, quartered and butchered. The Arch Bishop’s offense is that he supports  President Buhari.

Adebayo Shittu is the summary of our degenerate  politics. He was elected into the Oyo house of Assembly at 26. He must have been such a promising prospect.  He had two brief stints as commissioner in Oyo state. He was even the  state Attorney General. Many must have had real hopes and perhaps confidence in him.

Many are disappointed with the ruling party. The opposition has been presented a ridiculous opportunity. But a bleary-eyed,voluble, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has allowed  beer-parlor  habits distract it from diligent purposeful oppositional politics.

The Thomases of 2014, after a brief sally into reality, have returned to base

But until Abuja finds wakefulness and anger,  Benue may not know peace 

Rochas Okorocha is his own enemy. He preaches power  rotation and Igbo presidency in Abuja.  But at home, he wants to keep the Imo governorship in his family’s piggy bank.  He has built more roads than any other governor  in Imo state’s history.  But he is known  outside the state only for puerility and building  of statues. Okorocha  has energy and drive. But he lacks circumspection and sense of  optics.