Four years to the 2000 presidential elections in the United States, the contenders for all the political parties had been known. Declarations of intents and posturing had by the summer of 1996 seized the American landscape, and it was easy to know the gladiators to watch and for the electorate to make a timely, calculated debate on the way to go.

That had been the American tradition, made even more open in the last contest in 2008 that threw up Barack Obama as President.
In Nigeria, in spite of bearings to the prototype presidential system, aspirants often emerge in the dying minutes, complete with the drama and perennial obfuscations of the nation’s beleaguered party system.
It is in line with this established pattern that barely nine months into a crucial round of elections, the aspirants are yet to make their intentions publicly known. The new arrangement had not always been like this.
culled from the Sun Nigeria