Like one writhing from the pangs of judicial guilt, in a valedictory about a decade ago marking his retirement from judicial service, Justice Abdullahi Mustapha –one of a few infamous Federal High Court judges who presided over the treason trial of the late MKO Abiola- said that the winner of Nigeria’s freest and fairest election would not have died in detention if he had not refused the conditional bail his court had granted him. In fact, besides being proverbially an ‘after-death-the-doctor’ kind of self-praise, this unsolicited piece of irrelevant obiter dictum, merely reversed the aged-old saying that ‘the witch cried at night and the baby died at dawn’.

If not for the burden of my profession, I would not read what media aides of Nigerian public office-holders write. In most cases, they follow the same pattern of wallowing in sycophancy for their principals. They are hardly sobre and dignified in tone, nor do they truthfully address the issues at stake. There is always that “fight-back” thing, which is why some see Nigerian media aides as “attack dogs”.

On the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton, speaking of her plans for the American economy, said she wanted “to make the economy work for everyone, not just those at the top”. Social justice is an important theme in the upcoming US elections, one which elicits passion and feelings of outrage across board. We in Nigeria are all too comfortable with inequality in our society, which is seen as an almost inevitable fact.

There are actually very concrete ways to measure the increasing cost of living in Nigeria which in turn explains why Nigerians are increasingly disenchanted with the Muhammadu Buhari administration. A simple way to go about this is to measure how the cost of common household goods and foodstuffs have either tripled or quadrupled in the last six months or thereabout.

Even the most implacable critic of President Buhari would have to concede that Boko Haram’s capacity to “shoot, slaughter and kill”—as its avowed means of establishing Allah’s loving and peaceful caliphate in North-east Nigeria—has been significantly degraded.