IT is fairly easy to guess why everyone wants to be a Minister in the cabinet that is in the works. The focus may be the resources Ministers control and the powers that flow from allocating the resources.

PROMISES raise our hope, increase our confidence, and change our attitude to situations. Our reactions to promises depend on who made them and the circumstances that produced them.

SOMETHING happens to Chief Olusegun Obasanjo each time he travels abroad, he speaks in ways that cut an image of the Obasanjo that Nigerians never know, though he was a military Head of State for three years and a civilian President for eight years.

INTENTIONS, no matter how noble they may seem, are no longer enough as the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, would have discovered in its most recent conduct of examinations into universities.

OUR security agencies are becoming an embarrassment. President Goodluck Jonathan compounds the situation by excusing the lapses. According to him, the bombs that have been going off in Nigeria were the country’s portion of the rise in global terrorism.

THOSE who have canvassed part-time legislatures have a point as the long recesses, high costs of maintaining legislators and their low contributions to the society are showing.

ARE celebrations about the passage of the Freedom of Information Act too early? They seem so. There are checkpoints along the routes to the expected explorations of the new territories the slightly lifted veil on information could provide.

TIME and expertise have run out on whatever decisions the Central Bank of Nigeria wants to take on the eight banks it dislodged their boards from 14 August 2009. Tired of nearly two years of equivocation, CBN is threatening to revoke their licences if they do not meet a 20 December 2011 re-capitalisation deadline.

FEW will allow others to write history against them and maintain silence, especially where they have a chance to represent issues in ways that will portray their fondness and sacrifices for humanity.

THE high cost of kerosene has been with us for a while and so have increasing dangers of this cost. Among them are the sale of adulterated kerosene by greedy merchants who exploit the gap in supply, and the devastation of the environment.

THE June 1 letter from the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, SERAP, asking President Goodluck Jonathan to obey the ECOWAS Court of Justice ruling that makes education of the Nigerian child a right, it is the latest effort in the new direction the quest for social justice is taking.

ON 11 December 2006, matchet-wielding youth bombarded the Oyo State Government Secretariat, Agodi, in Ibadan, to prevent the return of Governor Rashidi Ladoja – the court had just reinstated him from impeachment.

THE Fiscal Responsibility Act, FRA, a 2007 law that expects prudent management of public finances from governments and their agencies is observed mostly in breach as cases of outright malfeasance show.

SOME say that not everything that is counted that counts, but the it may be important to count how Governor Isa Yuguda has tempered his stand on the 10 members of the National Youth Service Corps killed in election-related crisis in Bauchi State.

CHANGE, no matter its dimensions, can fundamentally alter the way we do things. We believe that change is on its way to the National Assembly, which has undergone its most profound makeover, in composition in the past 12 years.