Nigeria, Nov. 1 -- Olawale Brymo sang it in Down, released in 2013, and thirteen years later the song sounds less like entertainment than a witness statement. The chief, the thief, their entangled households, the priest offering prayers while the powerful exchange favours: everyone knows something, everyone is implicated, and nobody is particularly anxious to put the house in order. The poor watch the drama on empty stomachs. Nigeria is not short of scandals. It is short of consequences. Our politics has become a marketplace where yesterday's outrage is tomorrow's coalition agreement.

Then consider the cartoon making the rounds: a man on crutches kisses another man's wife; the husband is blind; the witness is deaf and cannot speak. How ...