WITH the new found power of the electorate to determine the outcome of elections in Nigeria, the race for the 2019 elections have effectively begun – that is, if the perception of Prof. Attahiru Jega’s election is truly free and fair.

I WILL start this response using the Yoruba adage; agba kii wa loja ki ori omo tuntun wo, which pre supposes that elders are stabilising forces for the peace of society. It gives pre eminence to the role of elders in guaranteeing stability and peaceful co-existence of various components of the society.

IT was one year last week since the demise of activist, lawyer and politician Bamdele Aturu at the young age of 49. Whilst it was easy for me those days to yearly write about one of my godfathers, late Air Commodore Anthony Ikazoboh when he was murdered in 1999, it has not been easy for me to write any tribute about late Bamidele Aturu for the singular reason that has to do with Yoruba tradition on the age difference between the living and the dead, vis-a vis tribute, eulogy or dirge.

I HAVE watched carefully, with high expectation, but also with a tinge of regret, certain national developments since you were sworn-in as the democratically elected President of Nigeria on May 29, 2015. People have accused your government of lethargy.

There is intellectual recession in Nigeria. It is high time we conducted an intellectual audit of tutors in our higher institutions of learning. Is it refutable, as someone recently argued, that ‘half-baked’ graduates are produced by ‘half-baked’ lecturers; that a mango seed can only produce a mango fruit, certainly not an orange? When you have a system where a lecturer appears at the beginning of a semester, dumps the scheme of work or course outline on the class and reappears about a week or two to the semester examination to give ‘areas of concentration’ to the students or allow cash and sex to determine their grades, then you are bound to have ‘half-baked’ graduates.

“A problem shared is half solved”. This is a popular statement, but does it bring immediate solution?

The receipt and recognition of popular participation in governance, being elective or on the basis of appointment is the hallmark of true democracy and anything short of that could be best described as an attempt to dent the principle of natural justice in a democratic setting.

With an unalloyed and total commitment to serving his people spanning over decades through his highly esteem position of honour and responsibility without blemish, as well as maintaining high record of integrity, and untainted rectitude, the Delta State Governor Senator Ifeanyi Arthur Okowa, a trained medical Doctor and astute politician, no doubt, has demonstrated true spirit of leadership to the people of Delta State.

It was President Barrack Obama while campaigning for his first term, who told his supporters: “We are the ones we have been waiting for; we are the change we seek!” In many ways, Delta State Governo Ifeanyi Arthur Okowa can be validly situated within the context of a long awaited leader of pan-Deltan credentials and trans-generational appeal; in other words, the sort of chief executive the state yearned for.

THE states in Nigeria have become used to collecting monthly allocations from the Federation Account, squander it and return for more since the past years. From 1999, the Governors spend more time and energy plotting how to be more creative in collecting allocations, than growing their states’ economies. Agriculture, mining, use of solid minerals, and manufacturing were relegated , for quick money from the centre, so much so, that today, a state governor, like in Edo State, can stand on a podium and start accusing the Finance Minister of spending money without approvals , while the beam in the eyes of his administration remain un- attended to.