IF, as widely expected across political circles, Governor Liyel imoke, seeks for and wins a second term in 2012, he would have been in the full swing of a charmed political career at age 50.

IN a democracy, the will of the people is the fundamental source of all power. The government is only an instrument created to serve the people. And as such, the governing power is primarily answerable to the citizens.

IF Patrick understood the foregoing, he would not have wasted time on quoting my earlier positive comments about him, even when in my subsequent pieces, I made it clear that at that time, I mistook him for an objective writer, not knowing he was actually an overzealous Ngige man.

President Goodluck Jonathan that the present federal legislators should be given a wild card to come back in 2011. Did he actually say so? I doubt! It would mean he is not paying sufficient attention to the work of the legislature. Members of the National Assembly have dramatically failed such that just a few should come close to the chambers after June 6 2011. A few deserve another opportunity: the Chukwumerijes, Momoras, Ozamgbachis, etc. But most should bid farewell to the ‘hallowed’ chambers and reengage their old lives as contractors and hustlers.

At that time, Patrick would not be allowed to make adverse comments, truthful or not, about a Governor. Such was the state of affairs on the 17th of January, 1800, when Napoleon Bonaparte ordered the suppression of 60 of the 63 newspapers published in France. By the end of the year, only two survived, none of them radically critical. “Three hostile newspapers,” he said, “are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.”