IT was a shock to many last week, when respected former lawmaker, top civil servant, Alhaji Tanko Yakassai, revealed that he knew the “Acting-Chairperson” of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) “Mrs Amina Zakari since childhood, and that her late father, the former Emir of Kazaure, was married to President Buhari’s elder sister”.

The utility value of mobile technology is almost second to none. In sub-Sahara Africa, the mobile phone has proven to be an innovative and transformative tool for positive social and economic change, empowering individuals, communities and organizations in a variety of ways.

“Mr Lely, I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts and everything as you see me, otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it. – “ Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, to his Portrait Painter, Sir Peter Lely.

The hysterical reaction in some quarters to the visit by Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike to the office of the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) is a well-known perception management technique that seeks to, through deliberate misrepresentation and misinterpretation, cast aspersion on the integrity of a targeted individual. It is hardly surprising that the usual suspects in character assassination are in the forefront of those who have sought to discredit Wike and, in the process scoop political capital out of their reaction to a harmless undertaking by the governor.

I fully endorse President Buhari’s commitment to initiate a probe into the past administration of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. He would of course require the legislature to commence this probe, because by law, the legislative arm of government, that is the National Assembly, specifically the senate, is the arm empowered, through its various committees, to investigate the activities of the government, following which the president may be compelled to establish or initiate, through the Attorney-General, prosecutorial remediation.