Apart from the neglected rail system which has burdened the Lagos – Ibadan Expressway beyond its intended load, also the neglect of the seaports towards the Eastern parts of the country (Warri, Koko, Port Harcourt, Onne, Ibaka and Calabar) because of undue preference for the Lagos Ports makes the near-total dependence of our people and the economy on the Expressway inevitable.

Hostility often arises when incumbent governors fail to secure a second term (as in the cases of Lagos, Adamawa and Bauchi states) or a departing governor fails to replace himself with a hand-picked successor (Imo and Ogun states) or an opposition political party is coming to power (Imo, Bauchi, Kwara and Adamawa states).

But the tide went against the 82-year-old sit-tight leader when he suffered a stroke in 2013 and became reclusive. He spent a lot of time in Swiss hospitals. His announcement of his intention to run again in the scheduled April 18, 2019 presidential election brought out Algerians to the streets in protest starting from February 22.

AT the close of one’s life on earth, questions are rarely asked about how wealthy one is, since “wealth” is not only a matter of cash. What reasonable people are interested in knowing are the contributions one made to society. Gabriel Imomotimi Okara (1921-2019) is generally considered as one of the founders of modern African literature.

On Tuesday, March 27, 2019 at exactly 3.00pm, the bulldozers of the Federal Capital Development Authority, FCDA, descended on the Divine Wounds of Jesus Christ Orphanage in Kubwa, Abuja, and brought it to the ground.

The National Assembly has strictly followed this objective reality since the birth of the Fourth Republic in 1999. Members of ruling parties which invariably command huge majorities in both chambers have often risen above the interests and demands of party leaders to vote in the national interest at crunch moments.

In Nigeria, the Judiciary though often succumbing to manipulations, has fought a good fight both to survive as an estate of the realm and to remain the last hope of the common man which it is constitutionally and morally mandated to be.   

IT is no longer news that Nigeria holds the unenviable world record in the number of out-of-school children. In 2013, the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Social Organisation, UNESCO’s Education for All Monitoring Report, EAGMR, unveiled the shaming report that Nigeria, with about 10.5 million children out-of-school, accounted for 47 per cent of the world’s total.

The senators said the increasing debt profile, if not checked, would put the nation’s generations unborn in very great danger. According to them, if caution was not taken, it would return the country to a highly indebted one as was the situation prior to the 2005 debt relief granted it by the Paris Club.

THE struggle by the Organised Labour to secure a new National Minimum Wage, NMW, scored yet another success on Tuesday, March 19, 2019 as the Senate approved the N30,000 agreed by a tripartite committee set up by the Federal Government. The House of Representatives had already okayed the NMW on January 19, 2019.

AHEAD of the anticipated inauguration of the second tenure of President Muhammadu Buhari, the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, has taken another bold step towards the actualisation of the nation’s economic diversification agenda by shifting the focus of the highly successful Anchor Borrowers’ programme to the palm oil sector. Rice production had taken the main benefit of the programme introduced in November 2015.

AS the nation gets ready for the supplementary elections scheduled for this Saturday, March 23, 2019, the eyes of Nigerians and the international community are still on the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to complete the work it started about a month ago: ensuring the emergence of governors and the remaining lawmakers in seven states through free, fair, credible and conclusive elections.

AS at Friday, March 15, 2019, the official count of the dead from the collapsed school building on Massey Street, Lagos Island, had reached 20, while 45 injured persons were still in various hospitals.

Apart from increasing the cost of our elections, it led to the printing of ballot papers that were so long they were difficult to handle. This obviously accounted for the large number of invalid and cancelled ballots which, in turn, resulted in an unprecedented number of inconclusive elections, especially during the Governorship and State Houses of Assembly elections.

Shortly before the rescheduled Presidential and National Assembly elections, Buhari deployed the military and ordered them to be ruthless with ballot box snatchers and ensure election riggers “paid with their lives”. Responding, the Chief of Army Staff, Lt-Gen Tukur Buratai, affirmed that the Army would carry out the President’s order in line with constitutional injunctions.