IN the last few weeks, the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke has come under intense and sustained attacks ostensibly from members of the opposition party.

GENERALLY, I rarely venture into Nigerian politics and its goings-on but three news stories in recent months that appeared in Thisday, National Mirror, and The Sun, titled “Ike Ekweremadu I Know,” caught my interest. The focus of the two stories was on the leadership and associated accomplishments of the Deputy President of Nigerian Senate Ike Ekweremadu. One of the news stories described the Deputy Senate President as “leadership personified”. I was excited and encouraged by this description knowing that political leaders are more exposed to temptation and error than most professions.

WE choose selective amnesia whenever it is our desire to score cheap political points. When the intention is to corner political power, our unflattering past is covered with the ageless toga of “progressives”. When the idea is to deflect investigation from our direction, we turn emergency whistle blowers.

I DO not need to recount the recent Immigration Service recruitment fiasco here. The horrors are still fresh, the insensitivity of the Interior Minister—self-styled ‘Comrade’ Abba Moro—continues to rankle; so does the indecent attempt by the opposition to build political capital out of the unfortunate affair.

THE President inaugurated the National Conference in Abuja on Monday. By so doing, he has fulfilled another promise of “this nebulously packaged Transformation Agenda”. Another noise making gathering of the people has commenced. It shall produce nothing except the desires and wishes of the man who singled out everyone that is qualified to be member, and that is the President himself.

NIGERIA is bleeding and convulsing in pain throes. She is gradually sliding into the impotence of error. Her efforts at steadying the tottering steps – even if on the slimy blood of the innocent victims quartered in death by the Boko Haram suicides – appears vacuumed of effect.

SUSPENDED Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, made an earth-shaking disclosure about the $20 billion he accused the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) of not remitting to the federation account.

WITHIN a week, last week to be precise, the name of the National Security Adviser to President Jonathan suddenly became an item in opinions and features. Most of them actually wanted him to be visible and outspoken on security activities in the country, especially the barbaric atrocities being committed in a section of the country.

DESPITE relatively high oil receipts in the past decades, for instance, Nigeria’s human development index has shown only a negligible drop in its poverty index. Official figures reveal that those living on less than $1.25 daily moved only marginally from 64.6 percent in 2004 to 62.6 percent in 2010. Taken together, what then confronts us is a big puzzle indeed. Apart from the white-collar audience at the IOD, the Edo Governor also engaged in informal chats with members of Nigerians in Diaspora, preaching national unity. As always, he never tires to liken the Nigerian union to a Catholic wedding where divorce is not an option.

THESE are certainly not the best of times for the Itsekiri and Urhobo ethnic nationalities in Nigeria. Things are even unimaginably critical for Itsekiris in comparison to other ethnic nationalities in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.