Thuggery is the reason our politics is not for everyone. Thuggery furnishes the apprehension that suffocates and debilitates politics in Nigeria. It impoverishes choice. Some families think only the suicidal opts for politics. And it cripples the very act of selecting from a wretched menu. Voters stay home to stay away from trouble .

THE attempted coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey on July 15, 2016 did not come as a surprise. The surprise expressed by some Western countries – who have first hand information about the state of affairs in that country – is hypocritical.

Earlier on this week, the Right Honourable Yakubu Dogara, Speaker of the House of Representatives, addressed a National Stakeholders Summit on Petroleum Industry Reforms in Abuja. Here are some excerpts from his speech:

Whenever theorists and men of learning postulate about the organic nature of ‘state’ and ‘democracy’ as a necessary dung of its bloom, the composite demon conjured always is ‘dictatorship’, especially of the ‘military’ kind which is imposed and sustained by the power of arms. And so it was about the military that Samuel Adams had warned that “A wise and prudent people” should “always have a watchful and jealous eye over”; because as he argued, “the maxims and rules of the army are essentially different from the genius of a free people.”

The legislative arm of gov-ernment all over the world is often a theatre of the absurd. I recall one of these ugly episodes, and incidentally, Dino Melaye was a principal actor in it as a member of the House of Representatives. On June 21, 2010, a faction of the House which styled itself as “Progressives”, had raised a motion for the impeachment of the then Speaker, Hon Dimeji Bankole over some contract issues.