Nigeria, July 7 -- Politics is a game of difference. Two differences, in fact. There is the implied difference between the aggregated interest groups (political parties?) that contend for the popular vote during elections. Most often, this dissimilitude is a question of degree - of where the contending parties are situated on a continuum that favours the state, at one end, and the private sector at the other end, or of how best to capture the state in the aggrandisement of narrow interests. Then, there is the other difference. The difference that once in office, political parties are expected (and often times party manifestos advert to this) to bring about in the lives of their constituents.

The catalogue of achievements of the Tinubu ad...