Nigeria is the irritant. An irritant may not accept that it is one. But the tag is supplied by those who look at you, watch what you are doing and smile if you vibrate on the same wavelength as they; or you make them want to throw up by what you do.

Nigeria is the irritant. An irritant may not accept that it is one. But the tag is supplied by those who look at you, watch what you are doing and smile if you vibrate on the same wavelength as they; or you make them want to throw up by what you do.

THE Nigeria Bar Association, the Senate of the National Assembly, the Nigerian Press, Civil Society bodies and all others who have a stake in fighting for and ensuring the supremacy of the constitution must rise as one body and ask for the resignation or, if he fails to quit, then the removal of our minister of justice and attorney-general of the Federation, Michael Aondoakaa for stubbornly seeking legal subterfuges to undermine the clear provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

IT is very embarrassing indeed if and when a public officer articulates a position that is not grounded on set rules and procedures. That public officer ends up having what we call a bad press. The tragic outcome is that one with a bad press leaves behind a record that is distorted even if otherwise credible.

The structures we have would win for us a gold medal if having them was all that was needed to judge them. America does not even have them – huge cars and convoys for public officers and their dependants; full time pay for all cadres of public officers for no jobs done; billions sunk into buying aircraft for use of heads of the organs of government.

There are at present 774 local government councils with elected council chairmen and councillors who are “working” fulltime. This level of government is the greatest fraud that has been visited on our democratic outing since May, 1999, and has been responsible for the lack of growth in the local government area.

I AM unhappy about what our lawmakers are making of lawmaking. The number of words in their dictionary seems to have been reduced by one important word in the armoury of men of honour. That word is shame. Our lawmakers know no shame, and it is a pity.

Another thing about time, to me, is that behind, or below that blank canvass are dynamic laws, giant mirrors not just reflecting, for all to behold, everything we think and say and do, but huge transmitters of the reward and punishment for everything we put into its bowels. There is, therefore, this constant teasing awareness that it is what you put into time that grows you, your family, your nationality group, your race, even mankind. So, by everything you do as an individual or in groups, you invest in what can grow you or retard your growth. How true it is, therefore, that man is the architect of his fortune and misfortune.

NASS is short for National Assembly. I am inviting you to the National Assembly tomorrow. For the avoidance of doubt, tomorrow is Monday, November 16, 2009. The National Assembly? It’s a big complex where you have, making law for our governance, 109 senators and 360 members of the House of Representatives.

So the crowd that had been captured as party men at a political rally was in fact a football crowd in a football field! Oh yes, we were being done in with a photo trick! So when recently I read in the papers that there was going to be an Action Congress rally in Benin City and the PDP warned all and sundry that thugs would be imported into that arena and that the police should stop what might degenerate to a breakdown of law and order, I called my sister-in-law Safu who is a woman leader and told her what I had read in the papers.

THE coin in issue is Nigeria. A coin is said to have two sides, a head and a tail. The head does not and cannot make the coin; nor can the tail. We then usually say two sides of the same coin, meaning the head side and the tail side. I saw the Nigerian coin at work on October 23.

JUST last week, I was straining to present in a more palatable way the crass lawlessness we have exhibited in the operation of our laws. I wanted the proof of the pudding in that regard to be in the eating, more because I wanted to save face for us than that I had no facts and figures to back up the claim that we are an embarrassment to a world where the recognised method of accessing justice is through the rule of law.

The amnesty programme of President Umaru Yar’ Adua was a success. This is obviously his biggest achievement so far, even though in Nigeria it pays to withhold praise from politicians.

A COUNTRY would not be a country if it was not anchored on laws. But a country can be described as one without laws where it has laws that are not enforced or that are enforced more in the breach than the observance.

But there is one other way he can grant reprieve, and that is if the person pardoned was concerned … with any offence created by an Act of the National Assembly. All the offences in the Criminal and Penal Codes are Acts of the National Assembly for which reprieve may occasion either because the one being let off had been convicted by a court of law or he had been accused of committing such an offence. He does not even have to have been arraigned. Read section 175 (1) of the Constitution ten times.