FOR almost one week now Americans have been mourning the passing as well as celebrating the life and legacy of one man they believe epitomises the idea that the goal of every citizen, much more a political leader, is to put service to the country first and above any other consideration. Senator John Mccain who died last weekend of brain cancer at the age of 81 is for many Americans that symbol of a leader as a servant of the people.

THE raw anger that one felt about the virulence of corruption under the Goodluck Jonathan administration has somewhat abated in the last three years. Then it was a free-for-all race to win the corruption medal among officials, cronies, associates and family members of those connected to the government. And President Jonathan just didn’t know what to say much less do about how to end the epidemic-like level of corruption going on under his watch.

THE ongoing struggle for the control of the National Assembly and by extension Nigeria’s political space by the All Progressives Congress, APC, and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, is not about ending even when the 2019 elections are still many months away. At present, the battle between the two leading parties is playing out mostly among the country’s legislators in the national and state assemblies. Things took a dramatic turn last week when operatives of the Department of State Security, DSS, took over entrance to the National Assembly in a move the PDP and especially, President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, has interpreted as an attempt to unseat him as the leader of the Nigerian senate.

PRESIDENT  Muhammadu Buhari has by now spent about a week of his ten-day medical leave in the United Kingdom. As we move closer to next year’s election and the possibility of the president winning his re-election bid (even as that looks increasingly precarious), Nigerians should look forward to the president spending more time outside the country.

LAST week’s copy of this column that centred on the probability of members of the Reformed All Progressives Congress defecting to the Peoples Democratic Party where most of them had originally defected from to join the APC- that copy was hardly dispatched for publication when the nation was gripped by news of the defection of the law makers who had for a while now been disgruntled with the leadership of their party. They had by Tuesday last week made good their threatened defection as the National Assembly led by leaders of the estranged faction of the APC summarily proceeded on recess. Since then the cat and mouse game between members of the R-APC and the leaders of the APC has escalated.