FOLLOWING from comments made here last week about how some members of the Buhari administration have been shifting the goal post in terms of when Nigerians can expect to begin to see the gains of a Buhari presidency , I wish to underline some points. Leaders have both to be focused and inspirational. That to me is the whole point of last week’s piece.

WHEN recently the Department of State Security, DSS, arrested seven very senior judges, including Justice John Okoro, and Justice Sylvester Ngwuta of the Supreme Court, many Nigerians condemned the raid for the manner it was executed and not because they considered the judges above the law.

IN ‘Beyond Muhamadu Buhari’s anti-corruption rhetoric: return of the fifth columnists?”, I had begun by seeking answer to the simple question of whether President Buhari was still in charge of his administration. That question was directed at the president and/or his minders.

What type of corruption is Buhari fighting when he shut his eyes to allegations of budget padding, gets cosy with the ‘budget rats’ and ‘padders’, gets reprieve for those he wanted prosecuted for forging house rules but keeps Sambo Dasuki in jail?

OCTOBER 1, 2016, Nigeria’s 56th Independence Day, came without much fanfare even if many had looked forward to the one-day holiday it afforded. The question on the lips of many was; what was there to celebrate about this day. Many would often wonder if Nigeria’s Independence Day is worth rolling out the drums for.

THAT the country is in recession and the economic crisis in which we’ve found ourselves is biting hard is now old news. Yes, we are in recession and Nigerians are presently preoccupied with finding solutions to our economic troubles.

THE best period to know an individual’s true character is in times of crisis. Anybody can lay claim to being anything when all is well but when the tide turns only then is true character reflected. It is for this reason I wonder what it would be like to conduct a patriotism test on Nigerians in this time of economic crisis, the worst in about three decades.

SOMETHING doesn’t look right about the decision to postpone the Edo State governorship election slated for last week. This is regardless of whatever reason or reasons informed the decision for the postponement by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. But even on this there is nothing to fix the decision on. Conflicting reasons have been adduced for the postponement and the fact that no consensus can be reached on this apparently simple matter only raises suspicion about INEC’s motive for tinkering with the electoral calendar.

PALPABLE frenzy gripped the nation’s media last week. Among the country’s newspapers it all looked like a competition, a race to be the first to report that the country had slipped into recession. The front pages of these newspapers reported the news with muted glee it seemed. We had finally made a remarkable achievement, maybe a dubious one.

Nigeria’s journey from fraternal hostility to national integration was on course (at least with no major or visible bumps) for nearly a quarter of a century after the civil war ended. But from the mid- 1990s onward the country entered a new and sustained phase of ethnic tension following a long period of military rule led by Nigerians from the North of the country.

Now the Rio Olympics is over it may be time to take stock of Nigeria’s participation at the games. After what were clearly shoddy preparations or in fact non-preparation for the games, the result of our participation is now out for all to see. A bronze medal in football couldn’t possibly be all we spent the last four years preceding the games preparing for. It was clear that nothing good could or would come out of Rio for Nigeria in the light of how we programmed ourselves to fail.

There are actually very concrete ways to measure the increasing cost of living in Nigeria which in turn explains why Nigerians are increasingly disenchanted with the Muhammadu Buhari administration. A simple way to go about this is to measure how the cost of common household goods and foodstuffs have either tripled or quadrupled in the last six months or thereabout.

The 2016 Rio Olympic Games took off to a slow start last week, precisely August 5. I didn’t watch the opening ceremony although I had looked forward to it. There was less to see by way of recorded broadcast of the opening activities even after the events.

There is something truly rotten about the state of our National Assembly. Like many aspects of Nigerian public life the National Assembly represents a moral blackhole in the firmament of the country’s existence. The whole place needs to be overhauled if our country is to regain its moral health.

JUST days after he left office as the Inspector General of Police, Mr. Solomon Arase was all but declared a thief by his successor as IGP, Idris Ibrahim. It was a bizarre and most unexpected indictment that gave one the impression that something must have been fundamentally wrong in the relationship between Arase and Ibrahim.