THE omens remain frightful regarding what awaits us this year in the moral conscience arena of our ever more degenerate social landscape. On Monday, 14 January, a holy mob in Ekwe, a village in Isu Njaba Local Government Area of Imo State, arrested three men suspected of having consensual sex, beat them up, stripped them bare to their dangling nuts, tied them together and paraded them through the streets.

AS he is wont to do, Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi triggered another quarrel when he called for the banning of ethnic and religious organisations on the grounds that they inhibit the growth of an all-inclusive political process, threaten national unity and heighten the state of insecurity in the nation.

APART from the menace of terrorism in certain parts of Northern Nigeria, another seemingly intractable menace in the country is pipeline vandalism.

IN the News page of Vanguard, Monday, January 14, 2013 one finds these captions- “There is no security at Arepo”- Amosun; 3 more bodies recovered; pipeline vandalization, a big business- DPR”. All of these captions are perspectives on Arepo as a structure of anarchy.

YOU HAVE probably heard that former Rivers State Governor, Dr. Peter Odili has written an autobiography. I’ve not only heard; in fact, I have read through the 511 interesting pages of Conscience and History – My Story.

The first anniversary of the 2012 “Occupy Nigeria” fuel subsidy protest was marked recently in Lagos by Pastor Bakare-led ‘Save Nigeria Group’ with a lecture titled “Nigeria’s Fiscal and Monetary Crisis: the Way Forward”. The occasion afforded Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) the opportunity to publicly defend its failure to create an enabling environment for industries and businesses to bloom, in consonance with its core mandate for price stability. The major indicators of price stability, of course, relate to conducive low single-digit interest rates for bank loans and an even lower rate of inflation.

In many respects, the bible is a book of prophecies.  God says in the scriptures: “Don’t forget the many times I clearly told you what was going to happen in the future. For I am God- I only- and there is no other like me who can tell you what is going to happen. All I say will come to pass, for I do whatever I wish.” (Isaiah 46:9-10)

I am very sad and disturbed that we have not achieved much in the past 52 years. On my own assessment of how far we have gone in 50 years of independence, I will say we have gone some way but not very far in the area of women’s participation in politics and in governance.

TO be or not to be?” Shakespeare, 1564-1616 asked. That, again, is still the question. Whether or not we shall allow officials and their crazy convoys to continue to run us off the roads and kill us with impunity, this year will tell. I have no sympathy for any governor who gets maimed or killed because his crazy convoy had an accident.

“Look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both state and people can only praise their uprightness; but once they are fattened on the public funds, they conceive a hatred for justice, plan intrigues against the people and attack the democracy.”– Aristophanes