On Monday February 25, 2013, some students of the Nasarawa State University, Keffi were killed by armed men suspected to be soldiers. The dead were some Nigerians including students who were on a public demonstration against continued lack of water in the town. No one knows how many people actually died.

The last time I spoke with my brother, Joe on phone, he wondered how my weekly column is always able to follow with ease, the ‘goings-on’ in Nigeria when I am hardly in the country these days. What my brother did not immediately appreciate is that people abroad do not need to spend too much time searching for Nigerian events or indeed what the details are. A few minutes of “browsing” will expose the typical issues and because Nigerian matters take the same pattern all the time, any analyst can easily fill in whatever gaps there are.

The issue of the moment in our clime is obviously the coming together of opposition political parties to wrestle power from the dominant ruling party- the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The activities of the opposition in this respect have been many and perhaps exceedingly loud.

The inability of government to persuade the people to embrace its policies is not new in Nigeria. During the Babangida days, the then Minister of Information, Prince Tony Momoh thought he could redress the situation through what became known as ‘letter to my countrymen’- a write-up by the Minister to his fellow citizens to change their perception of government.

One vital aspect of Nigeria’s public affairs that is not transparently part of the transformation agenda of government is health care delivery. No one in authority appears to be genuinely interested in it. Indeed, not much happens even in the basic area of primary health care because the local government councils to which the subject is assigned merely pocket the little that their state governors allow them to have of their monthly allocations.