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.

SINCE Sunday March 10, 2019, Nigerians have been in deep mourning over the death of Professor Pius Adesanmi, one of the 157 victims of the Ethiopian Airliners Boeing 737 MAX 8 which crashed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  

THERE is a frightening amount of hate speech circulating in the Nigerian political atmosphere right now. It was barely noticeable in 2011 when former President Goodluck Jonathan made his first presidential run.

Perhaps responding to the perceived lack of inclusion in the Buhari government, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and his Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, IPOB, mounted fusillades of hate speeches over his pirate Radio Biafra, calling Nigeria a “zoo”, insulting some ethnic groups and calling for Biafran independence.

Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, had announced the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, and incumbent President, Muhammadu Buhari, as winner with 15,191,847, defeating 72 other candidates, while Atiku scored 11,262,978 votes.

BARRING any last-minute force majeure that might come from the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC(which has formed the habit of postponing major elections), all is set for the Governorship and State Houses of Assembly polls.

UNDER the Federal Road Safety Commission Act, Part 11, Section 4 (t), “carrying passengers or loads in excess of the number a particular vehicle is licensed to carry” is a serious traffic offence.

Once the President is sworn-in for a second term on May 29, 2019 he should be ready for serious business. His cabinet should be ready for submission to the Senate, and a fine-tuned agenda to improve on the performances of the past four years should be immediately activated.

During the Presidential and National Assembly elections on February 23, 2019, among scores of people killed was an ad hoc electoral officer of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Ms. Ibisiki Amachree, who was reportedly hit by a stray bullet in Rivers State. About 13, 637 corps members were mobilised as INEC ad hoc staff for the 2019 general elections.

ONE of the ugly sides of the recently-concluded Presidential and National Assembly elections held on Saturday, February 23, 2019, was the reported ethnic tensions arising from the alleged harassment and disenfranchisement of a section of the non-indigenous ethnic groups in some parts of Lagos.

THE Presidential and National Assembly elections have come and gone. Winners and losers as announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, have also emerged. The winner of the presidential election, President Muhammadu Buhari, has already been issued with his Certificate of Returns by INEC.