Point One

Lately trending on the social media was an audiovisual clip from the 2018 National Prayer Day in Kenya. Perhaps you’ve come across it. In the short clip, President Uhuru Kenyatta and his arc political rival, Raila Odinga, did the unprecedented: they large-heartedly embraced each other in a rare gesture of mutual rapprochement, along with their deputy candidates for the East African country’s highly contentious presidential election in August 2017. They also mutually tendered unreserved apology for their past political hostilities and asked each other’s forgiveness. The significance of that gesture at the national prayer event lay in the long history of political rivalry between Kenyatta and Odinga, which had accounted for the viral violence that trailed the December 2007 poll in their country and left more than 1,000 persons dead, with hundreds of thousands more displaced from their homes. Even the 2017 election that was essentially a two-way race between these pol...

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...