LAST week, the British general election results were inconclusive. The ruling Labour Party was humiliatingly forced into second place by the Conservative Party, which won the most parliamentary seats. But the Conservatives didn’t win enough seats to secure an overall majority and a political deadlock ensued.

It all started shortly after we began taking his course. He would go on and on about our dressing, picking some of us out of the crowd. I was his first casualty, nothing I did seems to please him. One day he told me to see him after the end of the lecture in his office. He said he wanted to ask me a few things and advise me on how to go about life. It was a big lie.

But it is not clear at what point, exactly, that statecraft morphed into kleptocracy, to the extent that the only reason anti-graft government agencies are set up is to get rid, or keep in check, the enemies of the powers that be. The general unspoken agreement has it as somewhere within the maze of our protracted military intervention(s) when, while literally holding a gun to our heads, the soldiers promoted themselves to the highest ranks possible without fighting a single war and cleared out the evergreen treasury in the mean time.

WHEN I first read about the intentions of the Imo State Government to infuse a massive number of 10,000 jobs into its public service, like many others, I was incredulous.

TODAY, the official days of mourning are over for President Umaru Yar’Adua. Most of his life, he did not court controversy. But in sickness, especially in the last six months of his life, some members of his immediate family, his aides and hangers on clothed him in the full regalia of controversy.