IT is pertinent to advise political leaders to cultivate the habit of generating raw data for analysis with respect to planning and setting up of priority since governance is a very serious business. Governance cannot be divorced from statistics, planning and priority setting so as to address the basic needs, yearnings and aspirations of the masses.

One would only be echoing the obvious by saying that the life and death, as well as the burial of Late Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu were phenomenal. While Ojukwu’s life, right from the cradle, provides ample resources for the making of thrillers in the world of creative arts, and transcendent study in the field of socio- philosophy; his death and the activities immediately following it are not less eventful.

In his book “The Problem with Nigeria” the irrepressible literary icon, Prof Chinua Achebe, states with brutal honesty that the problem with Nigeria “was a failure of leadership.”

The Ondo state governor, Dr Olusegun Mimiko has registered his name in the nation’s judicial record books as the first administrator to provide a court within the prison premises to accelerate the dispensation of justice.

THE December 2010 Arab Spring has no doubt extended its wind of change to Syria, as the people resolutely demand for just one thing: the only constant thing in life, change. Syria had its turn of the social upheaval, Day of Rage, ravaging the Arab world by demanding for an end to autocracy and calling for a greater social, economic and political freedom from the hegemonic rule of its rulers.

IT is understandable why Edo State Governor, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole is hysterical. He is confronted with the monstrous reality of defeat in the scheduled July 14 governorship election in the State. And because his administration is on a quicksand, he has become desperate, seeking platforms and structures that will give support to his precarious re-election project.

THE immediate past administration oiled so many Irrevocable Standing Payment Order, ISPOs, running into N50billion and still counting. Ironically, all the projects which the former governor claimed to have tied to the ISPOs are in a sorry state. Prominent among them is the Kokidiete Koki Specialist Hospital at Opolo and Melford Okilo Memorial Hospital, both in Yenagoa which were abandoned by Sylva.

THE fourth Chief Executive of Bayelsa State, Governor Henry Seriake Dickson, a seasoned lawyer, administrator and lawmaker par excellence is in a class of his own. It is amazing that even after becoming governor, Dickson still lives the spartan life that I know him for. He still wears his old cloths, uses his old MTN SIM card, picks his calls and keeps tab on his friends.

IT is no longer news that governance in the world’s most popular Black nation and self-proclaimed Giant of Africa, Nigeria (subject to data and statistics) is one of mock charade.

Last year, I visited a mother’s group in the Korogocho slum in Nairobi to learn more about family planning in Africa. At the end of our conversation, a woman named Mary Ann told me something I’ll never forget. She said she plans her family because she wants to “bring every good thing” to one child before she has another.