Hi Readers! Talk of the wind blowing weeds into your garden of lovely roses! It was a Saturday mid-morning and our materials supplier had just delivered the various materials we were going to use for Heather’s white wedding in Accra. We were in high spirits as we admired one material after the other.

In some countries, political debates are often cumbersome to undertake. Nigeria is one of such countries because candidates in a Nigerian election are usually too many to engage in any meaningful debate. For Presidential elections alone, there were five candidates in 1979; six in 1983; 20 in 2003; 23 in 2007 and 19 this year. Nigeria has thus maintained a funny history of Presidential debates deviating from the envisaged format of diametrically-opposed viewpoints being canvassed at a time for meaningful comparison.

Yesterday, Nigerians went to the polls to begin the round of elections that would lead up to the presidential election this Saturday. Starting with the elections into the parliaments, these elections do highlight aspects of an emerging national electoral culture that we will need to think a bit more about in the future.

Dear reader, yes, yesterday, the first of the three-part elections this month was concluded. According to the election time-table released by the partially-dependent Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), elections into the two chambers of the National Assembly were slated for yesterday, Saturday April 2, to be followed by the presidential election this Saturday, April 9.

Madam, is everything all right?” I asked a neighbour who I saw standing outside a nearby private hospital with one of her sons. “Hope no-one’s hurt.”