Due to the laziness and incompetence of our successive governments Nigeria has failed to establish such a quick-check system.

Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, gave conflicting signals recently when she said Nigeria will no longer borrow to fund the budget, only to recant shortly after. We are fully in support of the need to apply more caution in our current craze for borrowing because the economy is being increasingly over-burdened by debt.

Torrential rains in Lagos and its environs and in other parts of the country have, once more, exposed the failure of urban and regional planning tenets in our country. In Lagos residents of highbrow Lekki, Ajah, Victoria Island and Ikoyi were the worst-hit this time . Human and vehicular movements were hampered, and some residents were forced to vacate their homes. Much damage was done to the environment and property.

The death knell may finally sound for the Federal Government’s anti-corruption crusade if a bill pending before the House of Representatives seeking amnesty for treasury looters is allowed to sail through.

THE nation’s biggest opposition party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) was saved from the pangs of self-inflicted extinction when the Supreme Court, on Wednesday, 12th July 2017, returned full authority to the Senator Ahmed Makarfi-led main body of the party in a unanimous decision read by Justice Bode Rhodes-Vivour.

A public forum held in Abuja recently provided another opportunity for the financial autonomy of the legislature at state levels to be put on the front burner of national discourse. Financial autonomy enables the state assemblies the freedom to access their budgetary allocations directly without the current trend of depending on the good graces of the Executive Branch (the Governors).

We are gratified to note the concerted efforts being made by leaders at various levels of authority to bring succour to the victims of the Ile Ife communal crisis which erupted on 20th March, 2017. It claimed no fewer than 46 lives, sent about 90 injured victims to the hospitals and rendered a lot of people homeless.

THE dreadful activities of the Badoo gang in the Ikorodu axis of Lagos State has, again, brought out the urgent necessity for community policing. The gang had unleashed terror on Ikorodu communities where many families have been brutally wiped out. Vital organs of their victims were allegedly removed for purposes that are yet to be determined.

The report that the country’s electricity grid collapsed fourteen times this year should alarm all of us and serve as a wake-up call to governments at all levels. Furthermore, the fact that the entire nation can be adversely affected by any one such incident is one more reason the calls for restructuring or true federalism should be treated as urgent.

THE recent disclosure that a presidential aircraft has been parked on the tarmac in a London airport since May 10, 2017 and the explanations offered by an aide to the President, Mr Garba Shehu have raised issues which must be resolved now in order not to establish a precedent that will come back to haunt this nation in the future.