The decision of the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar, to wage a legal challenge against the proclamation of President Muhammadu Buhari the winner of February 23, 2019, presidential election has not received the encouragement of a few informed minds in the country. One respected voice, for instance, thinks that Atiku should instead join hands with other well-meaning Nigerians, the civil society and like-minded politicians to help to properly set up and strengthen democratic structures capable of hamstringing the repeat in future elections of the large-scale malpractices that allegedly marred the last elections – an issue that constitutes the main plank of Atiku’s suit.

THE video recording didn’t look staged and the little girl’s outburst also sounded credible. In this age of social media when everyone has become a performer determined to drive attention in their direction, it makes sense not to take everything one sees at face value. But so far, nothing has happened to make anyone question the authenticity of the little girl’s ranting bout as one made for the cameras.

JUST the morning after the governorship and state assembly elections, it had become clear that Nigerian voters might have found their voice and are beginning to talk. All too often Nigerians are urged to vote as their vote is supposed to be the means through which they demonstrate their power of choice. But many times the voice of the voter hardly counts. The norm in the last 20 years of the country’s return to democratic practice or civil governance, if it would seem too optimistic to describe what we’ve had until now as democracy, has been for the voice of the people to be stolen.

IN a national election that in the main featured two Fulani politicians as presidential candidates, the Yoruba and Igbo are again at loggerheads, locking horns over a matter that some would say at best makes them meddlesome busybodies and mere bystanders. The tension between the Yoruba and the Igbo which is the fallout of the February 23 elections reflects the age-long political fault lines between the two largest ethnic groups from the southern parts of Nigeria. Dog eat s—t, na goat mout’ dey smell!

THE Presidential and Nationals Assembly elections held on February 23 against the background of fears and speculations that they would again be postponed. They were to have held a week earlier before Mahmood Yakubu, the chair of the Independent National Electoral Commission, announced they had been postponed just a couple hours before the polls were to open.