THERE has been a loud increase in calls for the adoption of the zoning principle from the North. Calls for the application of this unfair advantage has been coming, not unexpectedly, from that section of the Northern oligarchy whose hold on leadership in this part of Nigeria and, indeed, Nigeria at large has become a stranglehold.

The first of these pitfalls is the fact that President Goodluck Jonathan failed to adhere to the recommendations of the Uwais Panel on the appointment of INEC chairman, a recommendation that would have required him to make his choice from among nominees recommended by the National Judicial Council, before sending his choice to the Senate for ratification.

FOLLOWING calls for the application of appropriate sanction on Oba Oluwadare Adesina Adepoju, the dethroned Deji of Akure, who had led a lynch squad to the house of his estranged wife, Bolanle, only to find himself in an unseemly street melee, a roforofo fight in which he was reportedly flung into a gutter, traditional beads and all, by his own ‘subjects’ who came to the rescue of the woman, Segun Mimiko, the Governor of Ondo State, had warned that he would not be stampeded into deposing the Kabiyesi.

For a graduate of the Abacha School of Torture who by self-avowal had been through the valley of the shadow of death, it was both natural and not asking too much to expect that he would be different. True Obasanjo has not been shown to manage a killer squad, but his military past seems to have clung to him so much that he abhorred opposition, especially where such opposition displayed sufficient know-how that called into question Baba’s know-it-all tendencies.

Just before I got down to writing this, I heard a news report that Adamu Waziri, the Minister in charge of Police Affairs, had advised 139 police officers demoted alongside Malam Nuhu Ribadu to apply to have their demotion reverted.