Point One

If you seek hard evidence that the character content of a country’s political culture derives in a large measure from its leadership elite at any given point in time, you only need look at the United States now. At the last count, the world’s epitome of democratic decency had slipped into riotous political behaviour that typifies backwater democracies. On Wednesday, last week, some two dozens Republican lawmakers stormed a secure meeting room for US Congress committees in Washington to disrupt Democratic-led impeachment inquiry on President Donald Trump. The current American leader, as is well known by now, came under scrutiny for possible impeachment liability after a whistleblower alleged that he and top officials of his administration had pressured some foreign leaders, most notably Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, to dig up dirt on his political rivals as would help his re-election bid in that country’s 2020 poll. Mr. Trump and his supporters have insist...

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Sabo Nanono must be having sardonic fun from his job brief for that ministerial portfolio. He laughs, obviously derisively, when people talk about hunger in Nigeria under the present dispensation – and that is using his own words. The minister last week foreclosed the possibility there is hunger in the land. (What better state of affairs could make his job in government sinecure, if not altogether an idling leisure trip!) Considering universal indicators of hunger being malnutrition and undernourishment, among others, he said rather than hunger there is indeed pervasive obesity among citizens. That is to say Nigerians are mostly overfed. Nanono spoke at a news conference in Abuja as part of activities marking the World Food Day, which is yearly celebrated internationally on October 16. According to him, Nigeria is currently food sufficient and any suggestion of hunger in the country is misdirected. He conceded though that there were ‘i...