Gully erosion has today become a major problem in many parts of Nigeria. Thousands of buildings are threatened by erosion, which endangers the economy and makes it extremely difficult for people to earn a living.

There is one serious route not yet travelled by Nigeria in her quest for viable elections. It is the way of an enabled, enhanced and encouraged judiciary. Our attempts at any judicial reform have remained at the level of abstraction and total unseriousness.

WANTED URGENTLY: President of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria – the nation’s Number Three Citizen. QUALIFICATION: Minimum, Primary Six Certificate; Applicant must be of the Ndigbo extraction – from the South-East Geopolitical zone; and must have won election to the Senate on the platform of the APC.

Evidently, we have just gone through the most keenly contested presidential election in the troubled history of this nation. At no time has the ruling class been so desperate to carve up the citizenry along the primordial lines of ethnicity and religion.

IN the same way that the darkest part of the night is just before dawn, the most important part of an election could also reside in some of the things we do, or fail to do, immediately before the election.

AT creation, God blessed Nigeria. All the necessities of life, He gave to us freely and in abundance – the precious air we breathe; the water we drink; and the expanse of fertile land – were just there. Where the terrain was difficult, He tucked underneath the earth, the wherewithal for its development.

PEOPLE of goodwill have been disturbed about the level of violence around our elections. Early this year, the fears here were succinctly captured in the words of Chief Emeka Anyaoku, the former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth: “Nigeria has a history of election and post-election violence and the signs are already there that the same would be repeated if nothing is done about it”.

EVERY State, Country or Organization has a Constitution – the body of laws, basic principles, rules and regulations – by which it is governed. The Constitution is variously referred to as the ground-norms and the supreme law of the land.

WILLIAM Shakespeare was essentially right when he asserted, “What the great ones do, the less we prattle off”. In Nigeria, people change at will from one political party to another.

IN normal climes, many would be disappointed that, for the second week running, public discourse in Nigeria is still largely dominated by considerations around the desirability or otherwise of the election postponement.

EVIDENTLY, the more things change, the more they remain the same. These people are taking us round in circles. Thank God, Prof. Humphrey Nwosu, the distant predecessor of Prof. Attahiru Jega, is still alive. He must be smiling somewhere as Nigeria gets set for a total re-enactment of the shameful scenario of his era.

AS we begin the countdown to the February 2015 elections, it is necessary to remind ourselves that these elections are merely the process of choosing the people who will lead us for the next four years. Elections are, therefore, not ends in themselves but means to ends.

TODAY, we shall attempt to follow petrol on its journey from 6 kobo to N97 per litre – from General Yakubu Gowon to President Goodluck Jonathan. It has been a journey in which the Federal Government has always portrayed fuel price hikes as the panacea to every problem in the economy.

CLEARLY, the Mbaka episode is multi-dimensional and it is getting messier by the day. It has reached a point where President Goodluck Jonathan and his wife cannot remain mute for too long, lest they will continue to be misunderstood. The theatricals are still unfolding.
Act I: Scene I – Dame Patience Jonathan visits the Catholic Adoration Centre in Enugu, a church headed by Revd Father Ejike Mbaka. Madam is pleasantly received and Father Mbaka eulogises her husband to the high heavens. So impressed was Dame that she dropped N5 million in the offering bag. And this was marvelous in the sight of Mbaka.

SOMEBODY should call the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to order for failing to ask Alhaji Muhammadu Buhari to take a bow at the recent screening of candidates for the 2015 presidential election.