President Goodluck Jonathan did not give $9,000 to PDP delegates for their votes. That is authoritative. But, some people, from shady sources including, perhaps, donations from some international oil companies and beneficiaries of inflated contracts combined with his campaign organisation to give out real American dollars to delegates. The least given, from my own sources, was $9,000; some received as much as $20,000.

The big story of the week, so far, is the release of the lists for the candidates that emerged from the primary elections for all the political parties which are recognized by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. There were allegations, or suggestions, that elections as laid down by democratic processes did not really take place in several constituencies. There is a mix-up of disparate perceptions here.

If politics, devoid of its absurdity, is regarded as the art of governance or the science of state organization, politicians would be regarded as those who are interested in understanding the nature of a State (Country), how it is being governed and by which method. Since according to a Greek Philosopher, man is a political animal, the assumption is right, we are all politicians.

President Hosni Mubarak has succeeded in postponing his “Day Of Departure”. That was the day set aside by pro-democracy demonstrators in Egypt for him to depart after three decades as president.

WE are making progress in our sports (football), depending on who is compiling the scores and the indices he is using. I take consolations in gains, no matter how minuscule they may seem, though I am prompt to admit too that some of these advances are like the movement of the pendulum – swinging all the time in the same directions.

REVERED retired Justice of the Supreme Court, His Lordship Anthony Aniagolu used to have just one piece of advice at every forum when suggesting the way forward for Nigeria: “Reform the Police and the Judiciary and Nigeria will be great”.

WE have maintained, perhaps with monotonous regularity, that in time of increased problems, it is simply natural for people to look in every direction for possible solutions. Yes, of a truth, there is hardly anyone who would not be perturbed by the very sad events of the bomb blasts that greeted our celebrations of the 50th anniversary of our nation’s independence in Abuja on October 1, 2010.

BY the time you’re reading this, it would have been three days since the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, formally announced names of Nigerians cleared to partake in the April polls.

PAMELA HORN begins the first chapter of her book titled The Rise and Fall of the Victorian Servant with two quotations one from the Lord Jesus and other from Aristotle.

HE was not the first to say it. The Director General of the Jonathan/Sambo Presidential Organisation, Ambassador Dalhatu Sarki Tafida, had on September 18, 2010, issued a statement saying that if elected in 2011 the President would spend only one term in office.