PROFESSOR Julius Ihonvbere, the Secretary to Edo State Government, provided an insight that is useful in the appreciation of the challenges confronting the President’s National Security Advisers. It is as C-in-C that a President is intimately involved in national security management through the appointment of his National Security Advisers.

By John Amoda CAN the governing elites in Nigeria be divided on the intentions of the Boko Haram? The answer is yes, they are divided. But should they be divided, the answer is no- they should not be divided. Why? The Boko Haram have not hidden their intentions to transform Nigeria into a Sharia state […]

AS a republican in a Republic of Nigeria I have not harboured kind thoughts on the value of the institutions of traditional rulership. I saw their survival in an empire as a function of the strategies of pacification and policing of populations ultimately ruled by imperial force.

SIMON Kolawole’s “A Lesson Or Two From Super Eagles” in ThisDay of Sunday February 17, makes the connection between politics and excellence. The Super Eagles, according to Kolawole, exemplified the relevance and wisdom of decision made on the merit of what is the case.

THISDAY, February 17, 2013 in the Sunday News page carries the story titled, “Nigeria Sliding into a Failed State, say Nwabueze, Akinrinade, others- seek convocation of National Confab”. It is this phrasing of the National Question that informs the title of this particular column.

THE Constitution of this country has established the prime value of the currency of Nigerian citizenry, and our politics instead of being the cultivation of the appreciation of Nigerian citizenry, has been and continues to be a process of a structured depreciation of the value of citizenry.

HAKEEM Baba-Ahmed reviewed the meeting of Eminent National Leaders of Thought arranged by the National Summit Group.

OCHEREOME Nnanna’s Vanguard, Monday, January 28th, 2013, is devoted to President Jonathan’s explanation of the Boko Haram insurgency in his recent interview by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. Ochereome quotes the President:

THE text of President Barack Obama’s second inaugural speech delivered January 21st, 2013 at the National Mall of the Capitol, Washington DC is similar in tone, gravity and perennial lucidity and clarity to any of the chapters of Moses’ Deuteronomy in the Holy Bible.

IN the News page of Vanguard, Monday, January 14, 2013 one finds these captions- “There is no security at Arepo”- Amosun; 3 more bodies recovered; pipeline vandalization, a big business- DPR”. All of these captions are perspectives on Arepo as a structure of anarchy.

HAKEEM BABA-AHMED approaches issues of Nigerian political ethos with the energy and perspicacity of Chidi Amuta and I read him for his reading of politics in Nigeria. In his North: The goals of power, he attempts analysis of the political North in a way politics that should encourage politicians in the South to engineer a Political South.

WHAT is the context of the present security condition of society in Nigeria? Is it one of continuity from the colonial to the post colonial or is it one of transition between the colonial and the post colonial? The process of decolonisation in Nigeria was one of change of the officeholders of the British colonial government. The statecraft of the Nigerian Independence Politicians, or more cryptically phrased, the Nigerian Political Class, from Independence to the present has been one of governance adaptation of the institutions of British Administration for the colony of Nigeria. Independence was instituted by both Britain and colonial Nigeria as succession in office. In the gallery of succession in the offices of heads of ministries or agencies, there is first the picture of the last British Office holder and then the picture of the first Nigerian successor.

OCHEREOME Nnanna in his Vanguard, Monday November 26, 2012 View Point explains why the planned Alliance between Chief Bola Ahmed Tinubu “Action Congress of Nigeria (CAN) and General Muhammadu Buhari’s Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) may not work. In the course of his explanation he brings to the fore the larger problem of the fate of opposition parties and the apparent futility of opposition politics in Nigeria. It is this latter problem that is addressed in this version of the Tuesday Platform.

PROF. Akinyemi’s treatment of nationality as the unit of Nigerian federalist statecraft is his strategic framework as affirmed in the following: “Nigeria, made up of 250-300/350 nationalities (depending on which 1 study one consults) of disparate population sizes, was obviously a candidate for federalism”.

THE title of the essay implies that both religions, Christianity and Islam are anti-ecumenist, and depend on the growth of their adherents on convertion of non-believers.