IN  deciding to embark on a nationwide strike to press home its demand for a significant increase in the minimum wage payable to workers, the Nigeria Labour Congress , NLC, and its affiliate bodies have chosen on, perhaps, their only and most potent weapon of offence against a recalcitrant government. In this battle, the NLC is pulling all plugs and its members, it would appear, have been adequately mobilised and braced for the success of the exercise.

AS the 2019 elections  hot up , Nigerians are once again clamoring for President Muhammadu Buhari to produce evidence that he attended secondary school up to school certificate level. This is not just an idle but a constitutional demand that requires contestants for the office of president to be secondary school graduates at the very least. Mr. Buhari, as Nigerians well know, has not been able to produce this evidence. His explanation is and has been that the original copies of his school certificate are with the Board of the Nigerian Army where he submitted them at the point of enlistment in the military.

TO say that the All Progressives Congress, APC,  is a party currently in turmoil is stating the point mildly. The APC is reeling in trouble, stumbling from one crisis to another even as the country inches ever closer to the 2019 election. The just concluded party primaries through which the various political parties produced candidates to stand for elective offices from February 2019 have left in their wake armies of discontented stalwarts across the different parties.

THE President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration has once again provided further evidence of why many Nigerians continue to view the administration as at once anti-democratic and incompetent. The latest gaffe of this fumbling administration comes via a so-called ‘executive order 6’ or EO6 that the President’s Senior Special Assistance on Media, Garba Shehu, announced last weekend. A salient element of the executive order is the placement of some fifty Nigerians on a security watch list that demands the seizure of their passport and by that the restriction of their movement to Nigeria until cases of financial crime brought against them by the state have been determined.

These should be sober times. They should be times of introspection and self-appraisal when we all should be mindful of the days ahead. But our politicians are hyper excited, engaged in buying votes, casting votes and returning incredible figures even in primary elections in which only card carrying party members are involved.