Editorial

THE recovery of towns and villages from the rampaging Boko Haram insurgents and the return of many Nigerians to their homes are very comforting news indeed. And President Goodluck Jonathan’s belated morale-boosting visit to troops in the frontline may, after all, have played a part in instilling confidence in them towards containing the insurgency in the North East.

AS the controversy provoked by the six-week postponement of the country’s general elections by the electoral body INEC simmers down, Nigerians have returned to their preparations for Election 2015. Concerning the country’s long awaited but often elusive national development, this will be one of the most consequential elections yet in Nigeria’s democratic experience. The realistic choice facing the Nigerian electorate this time around appears to be rather stark: The one option is to re-elect Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP and have him continue with his policies for the next four years. The other option is for Nigeria to pass the baton to the APC’s Muhammadu Buhari and have him implement a different set of policies.

Integrity matters, doing what is good for the larger society and not just what you want to do for a narrow society to please yourself,” he reportedly told his select audience in a lecture titled, “Imperatives of a national security framework for the development and progress of Nigeria.

The truth is that most Nigerians are neither patriotic nor sincere. The fact on ground is that 50 per cent of oil revenue is not available and we want to pretend it would not affect us

It is not necessarily tribalistic. Because a tribalistic act would be one that insists the ethos of the tribe must command moral value above the standards of the larger society. Still, with or without such a command, simply on the very prospect of an ethnic union, many people feel obliged to withdraw all enthusiasm in favour of a supposedly detribalized ethic.

IT is extremely difficult to count your eggs before they are hatched. This statement is made to controvert the belief that two birds in the bush are better than one in hand. Elections are much like the theory of eggs and hatchery, riddled with disappointments, shocks and miscalculations.

THERE is nothing ISIS, the Taliban are doing today that has not been done before in Northern Nigeria long before Boko Haram emerged as a matter of fact. Only that the world wasn’t paying attention then.

You have been at parties - birthday parties, naming parties, burying parties, exhuming parties, all sorts of parties where materials are given to those present in the open. What you do not see openly are the gathering of the left over and uneaten food by mainly women and children. You would also see in these parties drummers and praise singers looking for people to praise through songs. And there are the pathetic beggars on skateboards seeking arms. Talking of beggars on skateboards, how do we live with skate boarded beggars positioned in the very centre of the highway? These are the ordinary people for whom attending a political rally would be so welcome along with some spending money. Do we blame these destitute people for taking money from political parties to be at their rallies? Who will they vote for? The party that pays them most?

While one concedes to the Oba his right of political choice, his high office in society dictates that he should not prefer one son to the other or one candidate to the other or even one party to the other, since he is father of all. In picking Akin Ambode, he has relegated Jimi Agbaje of the PDP to the background in the Lagos governorship campaigns and politics for the 2015 elections. In doing this, however, the Oba has directly created disaffection in his domain amongst his subjects as he has shown that the Lagos PDP Campaign team cannot even come to his palace at Iga Idunganran for his blessing. That again is not fair on the part of the royal father of Lagos.

I hope the station can be as independent as other international broadcast media to give us a bird’s eye view as well as a worm’s eye view of all issues. I hope its management also takes criticisms seriously with the view to firming up the Nigeria’s news media.

From claims and counter-claims, one fact was established: that the scarcity was not due to product unavailability but the general increase in the overall cost of importing the product, which affected marketers who were without the required capital amid complaints of unsettled previous loans by the banks. Fair enough, the government seemed to have concurred, as shown by its immediate payment of some outstanding sums and the promise to pay the interest rates and the forex differentials to marketers.

THE eruption of violence, with its trail of explosions, gunshots and intimidation that marred the All Progressives Congress (APC) gubernatorial campaign in Okrika, Rivers State, the other day, is a bitter reminder that elections are still a ‘do or die’ affair in many parts of the country.