BY the time you’re reading this, it would have been three days since the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, formally announced names of Nigerians cleared to partake in the April polls.

TODAY, the first day of February, marks the golden jubilee birthday of Siyan Oyeweso, Professor of History, Provost College of Humanities and Culture and Chairman Committee of Provosts, Deans and Directors of Osun State University, Osogbo.

DECEMBER 2010 was Dakar, the capital city of Senegal’s, week of festival. From 10th of December to 31st the country hosted the 3rd World Black Festival of Arts and Culture otherwise known as FESTAC.

ALL through last week the Peoples Democratic Party was in the news. This had been the case for two weeks running when the Party began its primaries into various offices in its fold from the local, through state to the federal levels. While the gubernatorial primaries were held about two weeks ago, it was the turn of the presidential aspirants to flex muscles against one another last week.

THERE is no doubt that the political career of former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, has been one of the longest and most successful in Nigeria. Right from when he first entered national consciousness as the soldier who received the instrument of surrender from the defeated Biafran forces at the end of Nigeria’s Civil War, his rise within the polity has never waned.

ALMOST on a daily basis one year ago when Nigeria’s Umar Farouk, the so-called crotch-bomber, put Nigeria’s name on the international terror list by his failed attempt to bomb an airline on Christmas day in faraway America, Jos, the once-peaceful city in the centre of the country, erupted in violence.

WHEN former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, made the statement that has been turned into an albatross around his neck, could he have envisaged the meaning that would be read into it or the twist that would be put on it?

A LOT of what would make the 2011 elections successful is being hinged on the personal integrity of the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Attahiru Jega.

DO you know that it costs tax payers 290 million Naira yearly to maintain each member of our National Assembly in a country where nothing works and 80per cent of the population earn below N300 a day?

IT’S been a week since former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, emerged the consensus candidate of the Northern Political Leaders Forum (NPLF) led by Adamu Ciroma who has been in the vanguard of the call for a president of Northern extraction to finish what some members of the Northern political establishment say is the unfinished term of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua who died earlier in the year.

A COUNTRY that wants to be taken seriously by her counterparts must recognise when it’s being insulted and know how to reject such insult.

NIGERIA’S public officials never seem to mind History’s verdict on them. Their occupation of public office and their performance while they remain in such office often appears to them as exercises meant to satisfy the immediate wishes of those responsible for putting them in office in the first instance.

IN a few months time, precisely six months, a sizeable number of current office holders, including governors, would be leaving office having served out two full terms prescribed by the Constitution.

THE news had hardly made the rounds when it was denied. Vice President, Namadi Sambo, had last week announced to an audience in far away Oxford that President Goodluck Jonathan had of his own volition elected to drop the title of Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, all because he was sick of the tiring protocol associated with the title whenever he was introduced in public.

AFTER its executive council meeting in Zurich last Wednesday, Nigeria’s Amos Adamu and Reynald Temarii of Tahitii were formally suspended from FIFA. Adamu, Nigeria’s sole representative in FIFA has, along with Temarii, a Vice President of FIFA, been at the centre of a cash-for-votes scandal that is threatening to bring FIFA’s house of corruption down on its head.