For those who have often found it comfortable to seek cover from serious discourse behind the mantra of, “Don’t heat up the polity”, the time is up! Election time is here, and the criss-crossing of political animals over party lines for the purpose of seeking comfort zones for themselves, has created a friction that is generating a rising heat allover the land.

Just a week ago, the nation was agog with the news of two breakthroughs, one factual while the other was uncertain even on the face of it. In the first instance,the World Health Organization declared Nigeria free of the onslaught of the dread Ebola Virus Disease, and only one other news could have been as welcome as that. The nation had also been under the menace of the Boko Haram terrorists who had become a massive thorn in the flesh of our security.

Among the names that came out of the Nigerian Civil War is one that streaked out as the fiercest, or the finest—depending on your perception of military discipline. Some even described him as brutal. I perceive him as purely professional. The name is Achuziah.

We have once again just passed through the season when all the insufficiencies of our amenities are paraded for us to throw at the government of the day. For the past decade, or so, it has been the theme song on the occasion of our National Day celebrations as the routine answer in the consideration of how well we have fared as a nation in the preceding years.

Flatterers have abounded down the corridors of history. They lurk in the shadows or dare the glare of public awareness in various forms and shapes. They grovel on the floor as toadies, or crawl on all fours as creeps, or put on the bold face as full-blown lickspittles. Whatever their colour, they are distinguished by one fell purpose:cupidity.

It was nothing short of war from the beginning, but we seemed reluctant to admit it to ourselves. Boko Haram must been laughing their heads off. They were obviously toying with us while we kept playing games with ourselves, and they joined us. They bombed and killed and committed all manner of mayhem on the people almost at will, until at last a state of emergency was imposed on the three States which had borne the brunt of the onslaught from the enemy. That was what, as far back as February this year, (on the 22nd, to be precise) prompted this page to come out with the comment reproduced hereunder:

WHEN Muhammadu Buhari came into the saddle as Nigeria’s military ruler he astounded quite a number of people by one of his early statements: “I am going to tamper with the press,” he announced.

Among the recommendations of the recent National Conference of 492 delegates are some proposals that need to be seriously reviewed. One of them is the removal of the immunity clause from the Constitution.

A lot of issues keep cropping up over the pres-ence of the dreaded Ebola disease in Nigeria since that miscreant, Patrick Sawyer, brought it here from Liberia. What one finds rather disturbing is the fact that his trip into the country was deliberate.

Some developments in the continuing saga of uncontained terror visited on Nigeria by the Boko Haram terrorists are becoming frightening. They indeed need to be carefully evaluated as their implication may call for a better apprehension of our predicament, and thus the ordering of a more adequate responsibility in our conduct.