I was pleasantly surprised to stumble into a television documentary during the week which featured Mohammed D. Abubakar, the Inspector General of Police (IGP) functioning as a traffic warden. Unfortunately, I did not get to watch the entire episode but the two short scenes I saw made salient points. In one case, he was portrayed directing the free flow of traffic at a busy location.

Last week, the Senate screened and approved four additional nominees as Ministers. On the occasion, Senate President David Mark admonished the nominees to assume office with a mindset to live above board. Since Ministers as leaders are expected to serve as role models by shunning all acts of impropriety, the admonition appears rational. But was I or any other citizen for that matter supposed to have faith in the said caution? Put differently, is it unlikely that David Mark himself, the author of the admonition may not have believed in it? Those who wish to see this viewpoint as cynical are free to do so but they cannot stop us from being skeptical about the possibility of any political office holder in Nigeria operating with any appreciable level of integrity. History does not seem to support a contrary view.

The agonies of residents of Nigeria’s federal capital city and its environs especially the impact of two consecutive bomb blasts in Nyanya a few weeks back were yet to subside when another bomb blast occurred again last Wednesday in Wuse, Abuja. On the basis of vicarious liability which in law, refers to the blame a leader bears on behalf of his team, it is rational to blame our numerous security challenges on our over-all leader, President Goodluck Jonathan. But since the security challenges are getting more severe and spreading as well as biting harder by the day, the direction of the blame game is probably too simplistic and narrow. A more realistic analysis of the unending nature of our current insecurity, is likely to show that there are many other leaders that are blame worthy concerning the subject.

The re-election bid by Comrade Adams Oshiomhole as governor of Edo State was probably his publicly known stiffest challenge in life. The electioneering campaign leading to the July 2012 governorship election in the State was more or less a nightmare for him and his party, the then Action Congress of Nigeria. The heat brought to bear on the contest by the candidate of the main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was so intense that the previous daily beating of the chest by the governor that he needed no campaign ostensibly because of his development projects virtually fizzled away. Indeed, his tractors and caterpillars that were expected to campaign on his behalf were in reality inanimate.

The expectation in some circles, the other week, that Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the immediate past Governor of our Central Bank may not be selected as the new Emir of Kano because of his controversial nature is now stale. Only last Monday, he formally took over as the new Emir of Kano succeeding his uncle – the great Ado Bayero who died a few days earlier. Some analysts had opined however that he was not really or properly selected because of the riots which followed the announcement of his appointment.