Nigeria has for most of the Fourth Republic had the unenviable experience of having inexperienced persons as ministers of sports. However, it is arguable if a worse experience can be imagined than the present situation with the incumbent Minister of Sports, Mr. Solomon Dalung.

The 2016 budget has recorded a number of firsts in the history of Nigeria. It is the most controversial, the first in President Muhammadu Buhari’s Change Agenda, th first to be declared missing and the first to be highly padded. It is also the nation’s highest in norminal terms since independence and longest in the passage process.

WITH less than a year into his first four-year term in office, President Muhammadu Buhari is already being wooed and prodded to contest for a second term in 2019. Those championing this are some members of the national caucus of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and other interest groups within the party.

The Federal Ministry of Education’s move to reduce the workload of primary and junior secondary pupils from 20 to a maximum of ten subjects under the nine-year basic educational curriculum was welcomed in most quarters as it would align our system with international paradigms.

THE Inspector General of Police, Mr Solomon Arase, has directed that hard drug tests should be conducted on urine samples of policemen before they are allowed to handle firearms and lethal weapons. This decision is timely.

THE statement issued by the Directorate of State Services (DSS) on Saturday, April 9, 2016 accusing the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) of murdering five men who, according to the Service, belonged to the Hausa-Fulani ethnic stock, came as a rude shock. The bodies were discovered in shallow graves in the Umuanyi forest, Isuikwuato LGA, Abia State.

The 14th of April has become a day that the failure of leadership and governance in Nigeria led to the disappearance of 276 students of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok in Borno State. Today is exactly 731 days or two years since Boko Haram terrorists walked into the school in the dead of the night and took away final year students waiting to complete their final exams.

The reign of confusion that has bedevilled the 2016 Appropriation Bill continues to reverberate with the allegation that the two chambers of the National Assembly distorted the infrastructure development agenda of the Federal Government before forwarding the Bill to President Muhammadu Buhari for his assent.

Minister of Agriculture, Mr Audu Ogbeh, has revealed President Muhammadu Buhari’s directive for him to establish 50,000 hectares of grazing reserves within six months. According to him, this is meant to end the conflicts between Fulani herdsmen and farmers in the country.

Abia State Governor, Dr Okezie Ikpeazu, offered a useful and wise piece of advice to the Acting Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Mrs Ibim Semenitari, when she recently visited his office in Umuahia, as part of her tour of the eight states of the Niger Delta.