The ‘historic’ visit of President Muhammad Buhari to the United States of America has long come and gone. Mr President had returned to Nigeria, while his host, Barrack Obama had afterwards undertaken a tour of certain African countries, including his ancestral home, Kenya. The U.S. President’s visit to Africa immediately after Buhari’s sojourn had somewhat over shadowed the importance of meeting the president of the country once referred to as “Giant of Africa”.

Many informed observers of Delta State politics must find the current rumpus over the DESOPADEC Amendment Bill, initiated by Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, disturbing.

One can guess that the Nigerian Army is numerically better than Boko Haram, but as we have witnessed since 2009, the battle is still on and the number of internally displaced people is increasing. As at June 2015, there were 1,385,298 internally displaced persons (IDP) from Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Taraba and Yobe states and they are being supported by the Federal Government, host families and benevolent donors.

Please let me use this medium to sincerely commend President Muhammadu Buhari for giving a comprehensive bailout package worth N713.7 Billion to cash strapped states, to pay arrears of salaries and pension of pensioners who have not been paid for months.

There have been media comments on the Centenary City Project and we have deliberately refrained from responding to most of them. The reason is quite simple: Some are outrightly mischievous, uninformed or speculative, while others, in countering the mischief, sought to advance public discourse. With both sides of the debate out in the public domain, our view was that truth would emerge in the course of the exchanges.