AS we steam closer to 28th March, the day for the Presidential and National Assembly elections, the hottest new bone of contention is the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Card Reader (CR).

PEOPLE of goodwill have been disturbed about the level of violence around our elections. Early this year, the fears here were succinctly captured in the words of Chief Emeka Anyaoku, the former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth: “Nigeria has a history of election and post-election violence and the signs are already there that the same would be repeated if nothing is done about it”.

IT is important to ask at this time if the ruling Peoples Democratic Party is really interested in contesting the rescheduled 2015 elections. This question has become pertinent in view of what looks like a deliberate attempt by the party to continue to stonewall any attempt to have the election until such time as it feels ready for it. The ‘filibustering’ tactics of the PDP are too obvious to be ignored.

SOCIAL scientists determine ethnicity to be an artificial construct based on shared beliefs of identity created over time. Groups (and their leaders) create certain beliefs in order to implement political strategies and control their followers. Ethnicity is thus a construct based more on power and status than on any real, intrinsic feeling.

ACTUALLY, it is a bit unfair to single out Mr Ayodele Fayose, the alleged rigged – into – office governor of Ekiti State( just listen to the hottest audio record in Nigeria, the Ekiti Election Rigging Tape) as the one, within the ruling party’s crowded barracoon of desperate power-mongers, whose recklessness is fast approaching a suicide bomber’s. Who, I ask you, plays second fiddle to another among these intrepid contestants for the prize of Enemy of Democracy Number One : Fayose; or Call-Me-a-Bastard-if-APC-Survives Doyin Okupe, aka Dr. Attack Lion; or Femi Fani-Kayode, whose congenital case of logorrhoea, “excessive and often incoherent talkativeness or wordiness,” is his only stock-in-trade; or AIG Joseph Mbu, non-card carrying member of the PDP; or Mujahedeen Asari Dokubo who threatens war if Jonathan loses the election; or National Security Adviser Dasuki, the de facto INEC Chairman; or Mrs. Patience Jonathan, who doesn’t need change because she is not a bus conductor and who knows a thing or two about “brain dead” people; or President Goodluck Jonathan himself, whose refusal to curb the excesses of his troops and corresponding eagerness to reward high crimes (as in nominating the prime suspect in the criminal subversion of democracy in Ekiti for ministerial reappointment), betrays a clear preference, his public utterances notwithstanding, for a hand-picked interim government over a democratically elected one?