WHEN former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s campaign team grabbed Ben Murray Bruce to coordinate their campaign in 1999, no one was in doubt that the team had struck gold. When it comes to putting up a show, you couldn’t ask for a better man than Ben Bruce.

THE news of the resolution by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) at its last retreat in Calabar to seek time extension for the forthcoming elections in January 2011 did not come to me as a surprise.

SOON, Abia State governor, Chief Theodore Ahamuefula Orji (Ochendo) would declare his intent for a second term in office on the platform of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

IT was more or less the same story in neighbouring Kenya. Prime Minister Odinga, a Kikuyi , who won the election wanted control of the Central Bank of Kenya.

DURING his address to the State House of Assembly on why the bill should be passed into law, Governor Amaechi explained that the law would consolidate all the recent developments in the education and health sectors.

Your editorial of September 24th 2010 titled: “The Balewa Saga” raised some interesting issues and frankly amused me. This was especially so when the writer asserted that “at five” I “was too young to have known what happened” and that I am relying on what my father told me “to refute Mbu’s story”.

It is heartening that the new Minister of Education has refused to grant approval to the management of the institute to commence expansion program that will allow it award degrees until she is satisfied that it has the capacity to effectively perform its mandate.

THE jumbled and slapdash pattern of providing free social services to the people by some States and regions over the years in Nigeria has consistently failed to produce desired results.

MANY Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs), especially state governors, have understandably become desperate ahead of the primaries of political parties that begin next month.

All the decisions he has taken, including the recent defection to PDP has been applauded and supported by the people. He has not miscalculated, because he consults widely. So what did Ohajuruka wants the people to believe and accept?

ALL states in Nigeria have always touted their commitment to attract investors, both local and foreign. The governors and key states officials have had cause to embark on countless foreign tours for this purpose.

The result of this was that many of us crafted our personal dreams and our dreams for our community and nation into one large dream. Our personal dream was woven into the fabric of our national dream, the Nigerian Dream, and soon we came to see and experience both as one and the same thing.

THIS is not the best of times for Governor Emmanuel Ewetan Udugahan, the Delta State Governor. The bell of his first tenure is tolling ominously, yet he is looking forward to a second term.

I AM someone who has devoted virtually his entire career, prestige and intellect to the uncompromising commitment to see a people, a nation and a continent achieve the search for self-actualisation through strategic self-development to global competitive capacity while ensuring the preeminence of a profoundly healthy, wholesome, peaceful, creative, actively engaged, enthusiastic and at all times fulfilling life for all our people.

European legislative pressures target for minimising landfill use in European countries and the amount of biodegradable municipal solid waste (BMSW) going to landfill must be reduced by 25 per cent by 2010, 50 per cent by 2013 and 65 per cent by 2020. Do we as a nation have such a plan? I don’t think so.