IT is curious that nearly 20 years after the end of military dictatorship in Nigeria, elements in the governing circles have continued to explore ways of gagging the media. In March 2016, the Frivolous Petitions Prohibition Bill (also known as the Social Media Bill) was being pushed in the Senate. It was later thrown out due to massive opposition.

ELECTORAL rigging is considered as the mother of all other maladies in a democracy. Once a mandate is obtained through fraudulent or criminal acts it lacks legitimacy. This is a precursor for corruption and lack of accountable leadership.

THE negative effect of money in elections is a source of concern in all genuine democracies. Though no election is possible without the funding of activities around it, unbridled deployment of money can derail its primary purpose, which is to ensure that the electorate cast their votes freely and that candidates who get the majority of votes will be declared winner.

We wish to also alert government to the need to pay similar attention to the various bridges, flyovers and causeways built between the 1960s and the oil boom years of the 1970s. Even though the Federal Government had announced its intention to do just that in September last year, little activity in that direction has been noticed.

Days after the end of the global fiesta, distressing videos and photos of stranded Nigerian youths sleeping on the streets of Russia trended like wildfire. In a scenario reminiscent of the migrant slave trade scandal recently exposed by the CNN, videos of Nigerian young men calling for help to return to their country made the rounds.

SINCE the President Muhammadu Buhari regime assumed power over three years ago it has tended to pay serious attention to the deleterious effects of climate change in the Northern extremes of the country, especially the rapidly-disappearing Lake Chad. The President has addressed at least two major international fora, calling for urgent measures to resuscitate the lake which was once home to millions of people who have now been displaced.

We are waiting impatiently for the Presidency to also affirm these attacks as “genocide” and immediately mobilise the armed forces to move in and bring the aggressors and their sponsors under the full weight of our laws.

In spite of the open anti-corruption stance of the current Amnesty Coordinator and Presidential Adviser, Professor Quaker Dokubo, committees he set up to evaluate all the sectors of the Programme still discovered that only 314 out of 1,061 students slated to participate in the programme for the 2017/2018 session were actually found in the database of the Amnesty Programme.

During the trial, many meanings were read into the case. With the lawmaker insisting on being innocent and the anti-graft agency countering that he had cases to answer, the Saraki case dominated public discourse for nearly three years. The lawmaker bore his cross and faced his trial squarely.

AS autonomous bodies, regulatory agencies empowered to oversee particular sectors of the polity should ordinarily be seen to be well above-board. When functionaries of such agencies are upright and conduct their operations through best practices, it boosts confidence in the sector.

THIS  year’s ongoing Federation of International Football Associations (FIFA) World Cup, which will be winding up in Russia this weekend, has lived up to the quadrennial soccer extravaganza’s reputation as a showpiece of colour, glamour, culture, global unity in diversity, competitiveness and triumphs in “the beautiful game”.

The call became necessary because the wheel of justice is extraordinarily slow in Nigeria. It is even slower when it comes to the trial of big-time corruption cases, especially politically-exposed persons and bankers who capitalise on the slow judicial process and elements within the anti-graft agencies to frustrate the anti-corruption war.

The present stand-off where a FAAC meeting had to be suspended indefinitely has the potential of addressing the fiscal irresponsibility that has been bedeviling Nigeria’s public finance for too long, at least to some extent. We hope this opportunity should not be missed to reconnect fully with the principles of the Fiscal Responsibility Act which has been eroded.

President Muhammadu Buhari is the first Nigerian leader to appoint individuals reportedly close to him into the INEC which will conduct elections in which he and his direct interests will be involved. The notion of “independence” has traditionally been underscored by the fact that before Buhari, Presidents tended to appoint the Chief Electoral Officer of the Federation from regions other than theirs.

Many of them who did not bother to hide their identities were recorded on videos which went viral on worldwide networks. In a dramatic attempt at damage control, however, Police Spokesman, Moshood declared: “The Force wishes to categorically state that it is not correct that police personnel protested in Maiduguri today, July 2nd 2018.