If the number of challenges which the 2016 budget has encountered is anything to go by, the document would go down in history as a special budget. To start with, it is the first budget of change by President Buhari’s government. In which case, it ought to depart from the “rub my back and I will concur” posture of the past. Surprisingly, change didn’t quite occur along that line as efforts were made from the beginning to adulterate the budget.

The token gesture of reducing the number of ministries by the President notwithstanding, there is no evidence that the cost of governance has gone down significantly to the extent of impacting positively on the lives of average Nigerians. Information in the public domain about the billions of naira earmarked for the renovation of Aso Rock clinic, feeding in the Presidency, purchase of exotic BMW cars, and maintenance of aircrafts in the presidential fleet indicate that the despicable Animal Farm syndrome characteristic of political leadership in Nigeria is still with us despite the propaganda of change by the APC.

Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, former President of Nigeria is by no means a great communicator. As a matter of fact he is very drab and uninspiring. This self-effacing, terribly inarticulate man is burdened by the need to clearly put his own achievement in context. One of Jonathan’s greatest problems is that his media team has been unable to put across the achievements of his government, and place his work in its proper context.

I begin today’s Joyful Homes with this cheering testimony sent to me with pictures.

Patience Agbaheme has been consumed. Religious extremism and ethnic bigotry haven’t had their fill. Religious murderers and arsonists have for so long enjoyed unmitigated impunity. Soldiers of God. That impunity fortified the hedges of apparent legitimacy mischievous interpretation of religious duty built for a most wicked act. That ordinarily horrendous unconstitutional act of chasing and hacking to death suspected blasphemers. Sinners executing people for God. A Kano mob in the throes of religious passion, rejected all pleas and, smashed a woman’s skull. ‘Saints’ cleaning up ‘filth’ for God. But these murderers are neither perverts nor deviants. Despite all the ‘shock and horror’, they can’t even be described as daring. It had to be in broad daylight. It was nothing that sinister and didn’t have to be done clandestinely. Her husband and perhaps a thousand others were made to watch. Death for blasphemy in Kano? Why is it now so so shocking?