WITH the stark realities of the current economic downturn staring all tiers of government in the face, it has become obvious that something drastic has to be done to reduce the high cost of governance in Nigeria. But the question remains, how far is the country ready to go in order to achieve optimal success in this direction?

WHEN former President Goodluck Jonathan and General Muhammadu Buhari emerged as the presidential candidates of the two major political parties – the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) respectively, it was taken for granted that the government that would assume office on May 29th 2015 would start work immediately. The reason behind this was simple: both men had occupied the highest office in the land and would not need to learn from the scratch on the job.

A MAJOR challenge that change faces is the attitude of Nigerians who believe the only government in Nigeria is the federal government. We have at least 812 governments in Nigeria – the Federal Government, 36 States, the Federal Capital Territory, and 774 local government councils. In Nigeria, we have governments, not just the one in Abuja.

WHEN we read stories of the type of bank robberies that take place in Ikorodu, the most recent was last week, one gets the impression that the security agencies have conceded that part of Nigeria to armed robbers. They could rob and depart without any hindrances. It should not be so.

THERE are hardly new reasons to adduce for the removal of fuel subsidy, except that the huge figures associated with the opaque practice are increasing in an economy that is almost on its belly. In simple terms, the burden of subsidising fuel is too heavy for the economy. The people, who the economy should serve, have their reasons for asking for subsidy.

SOKA, Oyo State, on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, made the map last year when police said they uncovered a den of kidnappers there. The graphic images of the discoveries were causes for concern. Public expectations that the police would investigate the matter were dashed.

IT is easy to misunderstand any position on Nigerians who are literally toying with their lives – and dying in the process. Some are trafficking drugs; if they are caught in some Asian countries they have procured death for themselves. Others make the long, dangerous and torturous journey to Europe through illegal routes in the Sahara Desert. If they survive, they could still perish at sea, crossing into Europe in over-loaded boats that hardly withstand the turbulent waters of the Mediterranean.

NIGERIANS have invested so much effort in discussing what legislators earn that the bigger question about what they do is rarely considered. This is not a debate on return on investment – if resources deployed to legislators could be so addressed – but an inquiry into what all arms of government do. Our grudges with legislators are mostly personal.

A CLOSER look at the last laws the previous National Assembly passed in its final sitting reveals a trap – one of the most applauded laws, the stiff sentences against rape and sexual abuse, supports child marriages. It is a legal assault on our future.

MUCH has been made of the invitation G7 extended to President Muhammadu Buhari. There are high expectations of new waves of relationships from the meeting.

IT is a great and tragic irony of history that about 200 years after Africans were being trafficked across the Sahara Desert and the Atlantic Ocean to the Europe and the Americas as slaves, Africans are willingly heading to Europe, in worse conditions than when they went as slaves. The new slavery has arrived.

WHY should a suggested ban of ogogoro, the locally produced gin linked to deaths in Ondo and Rivers States, be the first solution that crosses the minds of the authorities?

NIGERIANS 30 years – and older – would remember series of meetings at Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s farm in Otta to resolve the political jam the military created with the annulment of the June 12 presidential election of 1993.

MANY interpretations can attend Tuesday’s event at the National Assembly, when leadership of the Assembly went against choices of the All Progressives Congress, APC. Who power belongs to, after the elections, would remain a matter of speculations. APC is aghast, the opposition is celebrating.

WITHIN two weeks, a series of deadly petrol-laden tanker accidents brought sorrow, tears and blood to Nigerians, most of them uninvolved in the process. In Onitsha, disaster reaped a grim harvest of over 90 lives when a fully loaded fuel tanker ran into a bus and set it and everything else around on fire. A […]