Clearly, however, the retired General certainly does not need an early confrontation with the public or indeed Labour who will as usual insist that subsidy should only be removed after sufficient local refineries can meet domestic consumption! In the event however, that refineries (depending on size) have between 18-36 months gestation, this may suggest that subsidy may not be wished away very soon!

We may soon start paying a heavy price for electing a man who first ruled us 30 years ago. We may be headed for a gerontocracy; a government populated by old men and women.

Last Saturday, May 16, the who’s who in track and field in the land gathered at Okpekpe, a sleepy town, about 23 kilometres from Auchi for the 3rd IAAF Sanctioned Okpekpe 10 Kiliometre Marathon.

Professor Tam David-West, nearing 80 but still going strong, and as irrepressible as ever, had made the case for those involved in electoral malpractices to be treated as armed robbers. Some have even likened it to treason – an attempt to distort the will of the people illegally. While their anger is understandable, they will not solve the immediate problem. In fact those suggestions will merely delay justice. Nigeria’s electoral laws as they stand, have never been fully tested until now. Violators have gone unpunished and we don’t know how strong a deterrent they will serve against future occurrence. At any rate we don’t have to waste time passing new laws. We should test the ones we have to the limit.

They have been arriving in thousands. Some of them are weak, others are kept strong by hope for a better future. So many die daily, while many others are carried in body bags at the end of the journey. While the less fortunate ones are fed to the creatures under the sea. It has been dubbed the journey into the unknown, and undertaken only by the bold.