PRESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan says 2013 will be the year of his greatest impact. Most Nigerians will hope so. Leaders of the opposition and skeptics who hope he will disappoint again will pay for their hostility with higher costs for diesel for their generators, higher costs to protect and secure life and limbs, and uncertainties over whether a President who performs badly all through his four year s will allow a free and fair election to determine his fate in 2015. If 2013 will be the year President Jonathan will affect our lives most, what factors will be in play in shaping it?

THIS, no doubt, is the appropriate note to begin the new year- with prayers for our own country. Not just because of the claim by many that the past year, 2012, was a terrible one. One can’t be sure if there would ever be a year when the whole country, to say nothing of the whole world, would be in agreement that a year has been so good nobody has something to cry about. One cannot deny last year was a hard year for Nigerians. Evidence abound that it was a tough year and up to the last few days, many could still point to incidents that brought tears to their eyes. There were still terrorist killings, unprovoked cowardly attacks that have been the hallmark of life in many parts of the country.

TODAY, New Year day, is supposed to be a happy one. Last week was Christmas which was expected to be merry. But many of our countrymen were weary and in excruciating grief as we celebrated Christmas. Many went to Church—if they did—with their hearts in their mouths because of terror bombers. And for sure, the demons with who we share a country sent many to their graves and their relations into mourning. Instead of singing soul lifting carols, many sang elegies to loved ones. Many donned black cloths as they lowered to mother earth loved ones who should have been sitting at lunch and dinner tables with them. Instead of passing the salt across lunch tables, many passed shovels of sand for the dust-to-dust rites!

OCHEREOME Nnanna in his Vanguard, Monday November 26, 2012 View Point explains why the planned Alliance between Chief Bola Ahmed Tinubu “Action Congress of Nigeria (CAN) and General Muhammadu Buhari’s Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) may not work. In the course of his explanation he brings to the fore the larger problem of the fate of opposition parties and the apparent futility of opposition politics in Nigeria. It is this latter problem that is addressed in this version of the Tuesday Platform.

Nigerians are, as a whole, not very comfortable with quantitative analyses. Our kids fail mathematics in droves at the School Certificate level and most of us, adults, are just a little better than our young ones. Yet, the entire argument about VISION 2020:20 is a simple matter of arithmetic; not even secondary school, but, primary school stuff.