ONE of the notorious quirks bedeviling governance in Nigeria is the tendency for what started out as a firm, decisive and desirable government action to unceremoniously fizzle out into blatant back-tracking or abrupt disinterest and lingering inaction, often witnessing a pathetic return to business as usual.

A SYSTEM which community members prefer inferior values and products over others of superior quality; in which one’s own is looked down upon in preference to another’s, to artificiality and superficiality; in short, a practice which condemns the followers who are actually victims of their creation to self- depreciation is vanity and sure proof of emptiness: a substandard culture.

Its large population and market size bestow tremendous potential on the Nigeria economy -Africa’s second largest and among the most rapidly growing. The country’s ambitious Vision 2020 programme and the UN Millennial Development Goals together represent considerable challenges in terms of economic revival.

I visited Lagos lastyear from my base in Abuja, for the funeral ceremony of Mrs Florence Akinlemibola, the mother of my childhood friend. She lived to a ripe old age—so it was ‘owambe’ galore. We adorned our ‘aso ebis’ and boogied to juju live band music as we sent mama on her way to a glorious home-coming.

CAN these rescuers be saved? I mean Edo Rescue 2012? It’s an emergency group suspected to be under the sponsorship and financial war chest of the Peoples Democratic Party candidate for July 14, 2012 governorship elections, Gen. Charles Airhiavbere.

EVEN with the country’s incurable overdependence on oil, the commodity could have served Nigerians better if the proceeds had been better managed over the years to achieve better linkages and funding of national infrastructure.

SENATOR Edobor Ehigie Uzamere, representing Edo South Senatorial District, struck the right note as he paid tribute to the ex-Biafran warlord, Chief Chukwuemeka Ojukwu. The issues of marginalisation which Ojukwu fought for 40 years ago, he said, are still very much with us.

ON assumption of office as the governor of Akwa Ibom State on May 29, 2007, Chief Godswill Obot Akpabio, who had been a member of the State Executive Council in the preceding administration for about five years, and had visited every nook and cranny of the State while serving as the Commissioner of Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, resolved to pursue development of the State with anger.

THE link between the success or failure of a government, and the quality of its public administration is pretty tenuous. There are those who deny it. An eminent former permanent secretary once said there was no problem in the society, only that the government could not make it worse.

THE wound may go, but the scar might remain and might continue to haunt those who inflicted it. That seems to be the true scenario of the aftermath of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, governorship primaries in Edo State that produced Major General Charles Airhiavbere (rtd) as the party’s candidate for the July 14 governorship election in the State against all expectations.