ONE of the cherished traditions of developed democracies is the creation of fora for contestants to public office to sell their programmes to the electorate before live audiences. Contestants present their party’s manifestoes and planned activities on attaining power in form of debates that are often transmitted live to audiences via the broadcast media. These events are organized and moderated by select members of the mass media and others, not party partisans. This is especially the case for contestants to high offices like that of president. Since the 1960s, no presidential election takes place in America without a presidential debate. It is just a convention of American democracy that is now widely accepted and practiced the world over. It may not be a constitutional requirement but no candidate into elective office who wishes to be taken seriously spurns it.

THE other day in London, National Security Adviser Col. Sambo Dasuki called for a postponement of the February elections. I am vexed by both the call and the venue, so a word first on the latter. For news so important, you would think that Nigerians ought to be the first to know, and that it would come at the end of consultations with the electoral commission (INEC), National Assembly, and political parties, if as usual the general public is to be ignored. But I’m assuming that Nigeria’s public officials respect Nigeria’s public institutions or the Nigerian people.

By Uche Onyebadi LAST week, I watched with intense attention as President Obama presented his annual State of the Union address to the joint session of the U.S. Congress. He did so with a sense of accomplishment reserved for seasoned matadors. There he stood on the presidential podium, gleefully reeling off layers of his administration’s […]

THESE are interesting times. Muhammadu Buhari, the APC presidential candidate whose only policy plank is that he will fight against corruption without wavering, is not as straight-forward as he would have Nigerians believe. Buhari lied under oath. He perjured himself claiming his school-leaving certificate is with the military. This has now been revealed to be a tissue of lies.

ELECTORAL violence has been an ugly face of our political culture. It comes before, during and after most elections. The only election that went without the slightest stirrings of electoral violence was the annulled 1993 presidential election won by the late Chief Moshood Abiola. That of 2011, which was highly acclaimed by local and international observers, would also have been violence-free but for the organised killing of many youth corps members who helped the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to carry out the assignment in parts of the north.