Point One

With the way game-planning by Nigeria’s political actors towards the 2019 general election is getting heated up, we must wait to see if the business of governance in the country will stay open until the poll. For instance, the legislative space for much of last week was dominated by mass defection of lawmakers at the national and state levels, and as well the sacking of principal officers in some state assemblies – in particular, Benue. The Senate chamber of the National Assembly early in the week shelved plenary sitting as members proceeded on an annual vacation from which they aren’t expected back until September 26. The catch is: before making that call, the chamber willy-nilly hung up on processing some crucial legislations, among them the supplementary budget proposal of N242billion for the 2019 poll. At the laggard’s pace with which the NASS notoriously processes appropriation bills, there is genuine cause for worry that the impending elections for which fund...

We are at this point of our national life in the thick of electioneering for the 2019 general election and a couple of off-season elections scheduled before then. Hence you would find politicians going for broke to jack partisan capital even from the most flimsy tacks, for whatever electoral advantage they hoped to gain. One ready consequence of this culture is that substance gets backstaged, while trivia and sloganeering are elevated to the foreground. But experience shows that once elections are done with and a winner emerges, the business of governance inevitably comes round to substance for the most part. And that is when politicians’ fidelity to campaign promises and commitments becomes a matter. One-time New York Governor Mario Cuomo articulated this political reality fancifully in his famous saying that you campaign in poetry, but govern in prose. The ultimate test of every elected politician is how well he or she had prepared – before and during electioneer...