A MONTH after 153 people died in the Dana air crash, the lamentations have not abetted. Motions on improving air travel safety continue. Some have lost their jobs and billions of Naira will be expended in improving airports, which national legislators rate so important that if they suffer blackouts, sessions are held on the implications as if the country was coming to an abrupt end.

NIGERIANS are still waiting for the security agencies to prosecute Farouk Lawan, the embattled chairman of the House of Representatives Committee that probed government expenditures on petroleum subsidy. It seems it would be a long wait.

President Joyce Banda, 62, emerged as Africa’s second female president on April 7th 2012 after her predecessor, Malawian President Bingu Wa Mutharika, died of heart attack. She promised to shake things up and improve relations with aid donor countries.

THE 2012 Children’s Day, the 58th Children’s Day since the United Nations Assembly declared it in 1954, was unique. It fell on a Sunday, so it passed without embarrassments governments would have endured about their neglect of children.

THE Dana Air crash threw up ample evidences of the internal problems of domestic airlines. Air Nigeria whose pilots and engineers were on strike for weeks, alleging poor pay and inadequate attention to industry imperatives was added to the suspension list. There may be more.

EARLIEST interests in constructing Nigeria’s coastal road, dates back eight decades. The Niger Delta Environmental Survey of 1998 rated the road among development priorities for the Niger Delta Region.

WITH days to his promised end of June restoration of normalcy, President Goodluck Jonathan sacked General Andrew Owoye Azazi, National Security Adviser and Mohammed Haliru Bello, Minister of Defence.

WHY do you feign unconcern and indifference when your party people complain of being abandoned by your government, especially when a little assistance could have prodded them onto genuine electoral victory? After such a long time you have no excuses not to hold and organise local government elections in your state.

OIL theft dates back to the 1970’s when Nigeria had the first oil boom. With the return to democratic governance in 1999, many big time oil thieves became political leaders and many political leaders became oil thieves. They formed cult groups in the oil producing areas from which they linked their contacts in government and the security agencies.

PRESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan headed off to Rio, Brazil, Tuesday to attend the World Earth Summit. It is not as if, important as the summit is, it could not go on without him. His choice of Rio over the security of his people was a poor decision.

EXCHANGE by its accepted nature is a two-way traffic with possible diversions. There is giving, there is taking. Where the Stock Exchange is involved, investors give their money in exchange for shares in organisations of their choice.

PROTESTS in Gabon are rooted in the country’s history that saw its first President Leon M’ba collapsing dictating a one-party state in 1964. At his death three years later, Albert Omar Bongo, his successor, ran Gabon for 42 years. Only death, in 2009, at 71, abbreviated Bongo’s tenure.

WITH more than 6,000 Nigerians in foreign jails, we thought President Goodluck Jonathan would have added their matter to charges he gave Nigeria’s 93 new ambassadors. He did not.

THE 15-member Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, is clearly in a quandary over the complex situation in Mali. On the one hand, the Captain Ahmadou Sanogo-led military junta, which seized power from President Toumani Tuore last March 22, is unwilling to comply with the one-year transitional agenda leading to a presidential election.

NOBODY expected the weighty allegations made against fuel importers and their collaborators would have gone without a major reaction. The growing bribery scandal on the committee that turned out that report could just be one of the reactions.