This chronic health worker shortage that has prevailed in public hospitals over the years in Lagos and Nigeria as a whole has steadily gone from bad to worse.

The last appears not to have been heard over the Enugu Catholic Rev. Fr. Ejike Mbaka’s new year message that President Goodluck Jonathan should forget re-election for lack of performance.

As the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) began the distribution of Permanent Voter Cards (PVC) preparatory to the February 14 general elections in Borno State, there has been an increase in the spate of bomb blasts and deadly attacks by insurgents.

Despite Nigeria’s efforts, the schemes have reached “epidemic proportions. A publication by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said the agency received more than fifty-five thousand complaints about them last year, nearly six times as many as in 2001. The increase is due in part to the Internet, which makes it easy for scammers to reach potential marks in wealthier countries. “If we educate the public to the point where nobody falls for it, then they’ll go out of business,” Eric Zahren, a spokesman for the Secret Service, the lead U.S. agency in investigating advance-fee frauds, says.

Based on the deep thinking by Professor Bolaji Akinyemi on the need for the presidential candidates to sign a pact for a violence free election, anyone who witnessed the orgy of violence and destruction that trailed the 2011 general elections in Nigeria would not hesitate to sign off on the Abuja Peace Accord sealed on Wednesday by 14 presidential candidates in the February elections.