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.