Most times, what is said is less important than how it is said. This past week, the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria has been busy writing its own testimonials. We have a copy of the welcome address which the Senate President delivered to his colleagues on their return from recess.

Today’s title is borrowed from the fine works of Edward Weisband and Thomas Franck, who in 1976, assembled their highly provocative assessment of why high U.S. Government officials remain silent when they resign in disagreement with Administration policies; whereas their British counterparts would go public on resignation.

Before going into the subject for today, we would like to quickly give credit to our President on a matter of international importance. In his 18 months as the substantive President of this country, Goodluck Jonathan’s performance on policy issues may have been less than impressive.

Silence, they say, is golden.Silence means consent. A combination of these would make the power of the unspoken word very great. Most times, particularly in politics, those things you refuse to say come out louder than the spoken, or rather, the advertised ones. Yes, the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, was enraged by the facts on ground at the time the Port Harcourt conference was coming up. But they went a bit far.

And so, Mr. Logistics died. His soul will rest in perfect peace. For old time sake, today’s essay is deservedly dedicated to Pa Omogiate who has just passed on; and through him, all the old men in politics, without whom, the political meetings would have been drab, pall and most uninteresting.

Evidently, former President Olusegun Obasanjo has a lot going for him at the political arena. One may be tempted at times to reckon that he may have wasted his years in the military, when he should have enrolled in politics from the very beginning.

GIVEN the doctrine of separation of powers in our Constitution, the final word on the nature and limitations of governmental authority is generally supplied by the judicial branch of our government through judicial review.

WHAT is the population of Nigeria at any given time? We do not know. In terms of actual figures, we may never know because as we write now, there are numerous missing links; and between the idea and the reality, there are many shadows.

AS far back as 1601, some 410 years ago, many things, including people’s thinking patterns, should have been different from what they are now.

QUITE often, we lampoon judges, particularly when they deliver judgements that are distasteful to us. These judges come in various forms – good, bad; corrupt and incorruptible.

AS morning shows the day, it has virtually become the tradition of this column to review its injunctions to elected officials at the beginning of each new government.

IN the early 1970s a movie by our chosen title of today “Leben und sterben lassen” ran on German cinemas for a very long time. Apparently, our governors have a big problem in their hands and they think that the only solution to the problem is to create bigger problems; problems that would consume not only themselves, but also the entire nation.

IN a constitutional order, government stands on a tripod and governmental powers are shared among several independent but inter-related branches: in a broad sense, while the legislature makes policies, such policies are implemented by the executive and the judiciary steps in to interpret any question arising from the policies or from the Constitution.

HAVE you ever been embarrassed beyond measure? Don’t ever pray for it. That is exactly what happens when you invite say 500 people to a party and only about 50 reluctantly turn up.

MOST of the new governments in Nigeria have taken off once more on rather shaky grounds. We do not envy them, particularly with the myriads of problems and their inherited defaults from preceding administrations.