When Jesus chased away those who had made the defilement of the temple their occupation, he was perhaps short on due process. But that is what rottenness and wanton impunity invite – drastic intervention. If that synagogue were a Nigerian institution, many would have flung his rule of love at Him. And labeled him a rascally hypocrite – preaching love and ruthlessly whipping elders.

Audu’s death was unfortunate. Its timing was profoundly problematic. But what is ludicrous is what it exposed. The lack of painstakingness in our attention to important details. There will always be hard cases in law. Cases will always lie on the fringes.

So it’s 56 years since independence. Who knows where they imagined we would be? Yes, Hebert Macaulay and co-dreamers. Perhaps in the neighbourhood of Indonesia. Fate can be treacherous and life cruel, but many disasters are self inflicted.

She is neither. Rigour has become outdated, noisy charlatanism reigns. Howlers are everywhere. So Kemi Adeosun scampered to safety. She left her case. The accusation of blasphemy by Nigeria’s ‘Almajiris’ , religious or political, is not fought with reasons and arguments. A minister of finance has a duty to be honest and compassionate, and a compelling duty to prevent and stem panic. The proposed emergency economic bill is evidence of direness and government’s appreciation of it. It’s incontrovertible that sufficient urgency and dexterity haven’t been marshaled against our predicament. But it isn’t because Adeosun is ignorant or callous.

When others, constrained by scruples, could only whisper their conspiracy theories , ‘the mother of the nation’ asked for cameras. What followed was even by her standards an epic. In that melodrama, she reveled all her parts – warmth, emotionality, irreverent spontaneity, crudity, daring aggression. She wouldn’t join her dithering husband in skirting around, she dived headlong and wallowed in it . In being more simple and less sophisticated, a certain license to disregard the bounds of propriety is assumed. Artlessness becomes sincerity. And peevishness can become virtuous unpretentiousness. Loyalty was being redefined as worship. Dame was an emerging political Juggernaut