VARRYING assessments have attended the recently conducted Delta local government elections. As to writing off the process as abhorrently compromised, a perfect specimen would be Ogaga Ifowodo’s last two offerings in his Vanguard column. There is a rumour circulating in Delta to the effect that he wants to run for a position in the federal legislature under the All Progressive Congress, APC.

IN the last few weeks, the Ekiti State Governor, Mr. Ayodele Fayose, has dissipated too much energy trading words with his predecessor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, over how Ekiti State, also known as the Fountain of Knowledge, has been badly run and why things are bound to go from bad to worse. Fayose seems to be preoccupied with petty matters making many people to wonder whether the Governor really have much to offer his people.

When, a few weeks ago, Chief Peter Obi, the immediate past governor of Anambra State and one of the stoutest supporters of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, called the bluff of his once beloved party and announced his defection to the Peoples Democratic Party, the frailty of man resonated and the slippery components in the making of legends became apparent.

At a meeting with the leadership of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, President Goodluck Jonathan officially informed them of his intention to seek re-election next year. He made good his promise by picking the party’s nomination form as well as the expression of interest form at the party’s National Secretariat in Abuja on October 30 this year.

ON Thursday, October 16, 2014), the All Progressives Congress, APC, startled decent Nigerians when its national chairman, Mr. John Odigie-Oyegun, announced that the party put the cost of its expression of interest and nomination forms at the cost of N27.5 million in order “to separate the men from the boys.” Another way of saying this is ‘to separate the wheat from the chaff!’

A COUNTRY that cannot feed itself is doomed. In fact, there are two basic requirements for a country to enjoy absolute sovereignty – the ability to feed itself and the ability to defend itself physically from external aggressions – every other factor is secondary.

OF all the sub-committees of the Constitution Drafting Committee of 1975, none was more important than the subcommittee of the executive and the legislature.

IN his magnum opus and literary tour de force entitled Heauton Timoroumentos the philosopher and essayist Publius Terentius Afer said: “Humo sum ; humani nihil ame alienum puto” ( I am a man; and nothing human is foreign to me).

GOVERNOR Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta State has certain ordinariness about him. He carries himself with simple gait and ordered steps.He lacks the arrogant superiority that goes with powerful men of politics in Nigeria .His arrival to an expectant crowd scarcely evokes awe. An encounter even with a casual bystander easily reveals a man patterned to […]

THE main opposition party in Nigeria, All Progressives Congress, APC, may, in fact, be changing name very soon again. Of course the party has had a history of name-changing – from Action Congress, AC, to Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN and to the present All Progressives Congress. Lest we forget, it started out originally as Alliance for Democracy before Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his group broke away with the soul of the party to form Action Congress. All these changes were all in search of true identity for the opposition party. And the identity, which the leadership of the APC is working very hard to sell to Nigerians albeit without much success, is that the party is a “progressive” party built on solid “integrity”.

The political theater in Edo State is gripped by sanguin activities: An intrusive legislator was alleged to have been beaten to pulp by opponents, the legislators quarters was said to have been invaded and mayhem was let loose, party chieftains allege gun attack and counter attack on their properties and explosive devices are feared to have been introduced as political weapon.

For a long time it has been very difficult for me to decipher the direction of the 2015 Delta State governorship election due to the plethora of governorship aspirants that have indicated interest for the seat. Every governorship camp deemed to wield so much political influence that it was hard to concede political superiority to any one aspirant.

AT times of intense politics and politicking like these, what would you, if you were President Jonathan’s adviser, have the President do? Canvass popular support from all and sundry for his reelection bid, or develop a long memory and seek to avenge his alleged failure to install the leadership of the House of Representatives?

THE power of incumbency is a pervading force in Nigeria’s political/electoral system. Its effect is most felt at the executive stratum of government where the President, governor and, at the much lower level, the local government chairman, use their big sticks to achieve their political/electoral ends.

Dr Junaid Mohammed,a member of the House of Representatives in the Second Republic and currently coordinates the Coalition of Northern Politicians, Academics, Professionals and Businessmen. He treats other zones of Nigeria with little respect, and obviously cannot hide his hatred and disregard for Ndigbo of the South East Nigeria. In the Punch Newspaper of September […]