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.

VIOLENCE is a major offering preceding the July 14 governorship election in the Edo State. It should not be allowed to persist. The flood of allegations between the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, fuels the violence.

JUNE 12 may be a fading political memory, but the thousands who converted it to a political cheque, which they are still cashing, ironically oppose it most stridently. Most Nigerians younger than 30 years do not have firm memories of the election, 19 years ago, which Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola won but the military annulled.

CIVIL society groups that insist the United States report on corruption in Nigeria said nothing new are right. In the same way, nothing new is being done to curb corruption in Nigeria, not even from the civil society groups, which contentedly fight corruption with words.

THE renaming of the University of Lagos (UNILAG) as the Moshood Abiola University of Lagos (MAUL) by the federal government as announced by President Goodluck Jonathan in his 2012 Democracy Day address to the nation came to many as a rude shock.

NIGER State set a record last month when its State House of Assembly had third speaker in one week! The most important work of the House seemed to be the replacement of speakers.

TOUCHING signs of the nation’s mourning over the ill-fated Dana airplane continue, keeping other things in the background. Nigerians are mourning.

TEARS are running. Anger is mounting and experts and pseudo experts are filling every available space with what should be done, what should have been done and what must be done. How long would these last? What would change?

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.