THE rather untidy involvement of the military in the relocation of villagers around Jos to enable operations against identified terrorists has thrown into sharp relief the current engagement and disposition of the military in the affairs of the nation.

ON Thursday last week, our nation lost a little bit more of its humanity, after over one hundred people perished in a fire while scooping spilt petroleum from a crashed tanker. Exactly how many people died in those circumstances, in a State literally sitting on oil resources may never be known.

IF you are voter in Edo State who believes that your vote should and must count, you must be wondering whether it is safe to exercise your right to decide who becomes Governor of the State this coming Saturday.

Among the many vital requirements for good governance, the existence of openness and transparency in the manner Nigerian leaders manage our affairs is the most visible by its absence. An accountable leadership with a capacity to submit to the highest moral standards is absolutely essential as a requirement for the growth and development of our democratic system.

I AM writing this on the sixth day of the near-total lockdown of Kaduna State where I live. Since two bombs went off in two churches in my hometown, Zaria, and another in Kaduna, my fellow citizens have been back to familiar trenches or behind closed doors counting losses and licking wounds.

A WELL-DIGGER makes progress only by digging himself further into the ground, until he reaches water. Sometimes, he goes so deep into the earth that by the time he strikes water, he is too deep. Climbing up, or being pulled up and out of the well becomes a very hazardous affair and by the time he is out it seems as if it really wasn’t worth all the trouble.

THE crash of the Dana Aircraft last week in Lagos raises many issues regarding the manner our government relates to its citizens. It provides an opportunity to highlight basic flaws in the structure and operations of governance institutions in Nigeria, and identify critical areas where genuine improvements must be made.

IF you dropped into the country from outer space in the last one week; and read newspapers or listened to private radio and television or browsed the social media, you would wonder what can possibly be done to save President Goodluck Jonathan from the Nigerian people.

YESTERDAY, President Goodluck Jonathan celebrated his first year in office. If the last one year has been eventful, what will the next three be like? Better for Jonathan and the nation? More trying? Can we tell?

YOU would be forgiven if you think we are already in 2015, or thereabouts, and the election campaigns are in full swing. We are watching a drama unfold, which has many parts that are chilling in their effects. In a few days, President Jonathan will be celebrating his first year in office as a President sworn-in after an election he contested as a candidate.

A LITTLE over two years ago, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua died, providing a natural solution to a messy political and legal logjam that was to haunt the rest of his planned four – year term. It is a sign of the present times and the conditions we live under that the Anniversary was barely noticed.

ALL columnists are used to having feedbacks, some abusive, others encouraging. Indeed, these feedbacks mean a lot, even if, in many instances, they come from people who have either not read what you have written, or understood it.

BY the time you read this piece, a pile of sand around the Asaba Airport which had been planned for removal at the reported cost of N7.4b to allow President Goodluck Jonathan’s presidential plane to land at Asaba may have been cleared, or may still be there.

TECHNICALLY, we could claim to be at another starting point in terms of amending the Nigerian Constitution. Our constitution amendment attempts have been like races.

THE bomb that went off early on Easter Sunday at the heart of the commercial section of the city of Kaduna left behind it more casualties than most other explosions witnessed since the seeming democratisation of the knowledge, skills and means to inflict massive violence on Nigerians, centred around the Boko Haram insurgency.