Nigeria, March 5 -- David Alechenu Bonaventure Mark, remember him? This man was the military governor of Niger state between 1984 and 1986 (straddling the military juntas of Muhammadu Buhari and Ibrahim Babangida). He, therefore, must have been a prominent member of the group that staged the coup that ousted the country's first (though, fraudulently?) elected civilian president, Shehu Shagari, thereby truncating democracy in Nigeria.

It is a measure of the forgetfulness of Nigerians, their I-don't-care attitude to public probity and rectitude, and the fact that there is no consequence for bad behaviour here, that the same man, after pulling off his uniform, was not only elected a senator of the Federal Republic, representing Benue South...