We journalists are notoriously remiss in following up on the news that we usually report with such breathless excitement. All too often, we get caught up in the foam of events. Like bees in search of pollen, we hop from one event to another, oblivious of what had gone before. We rarely follow through.

It is therefore by way of personal atonement that I return to three major issues that have all but vanished from the news horizon.

Whatever happened to the government of Bayelsa State's audacious programme to extirpate the epidemic of rumour-mongering that has been sweeping the riverine terrain and threatening to plunge all its glittering achievements right back into the swamps?

The last we heard of the project, a high-powered committee comprising representatives of the secret service, the police, the Nigeria Union of Journalists (ha!), civil society and other relevant groups–I almost wrote "stakeholders" — was at work to produce a tough remedy that Governor Seriake Dickson would move the State Assembly to enact into law.

The outlines are still hazy, but some hot lines and web sites would be dedicated to the project. Anyone who is not sure whether what he has heard is the gospel truth or just malicious gossip – which is often nothing but stark rumour – has only to call the hot line or consult the web sites to get the authentic facts from certified officials operating round the clock.

Those who fail to avail themselves of this unique service and end up wittingly or unwittingly peddling rumours, however benign, will have only themselves to blame when the law comes into effect.

Are the verification centres up and running?

I ask because I would like to check out some rumour that has been gusting in Bayelsa lately.

It concerns a mighty personage who wears, among other hats, that of permanent secretary-at-large in the state's civil service. I hear that senior officials who have been murmuring that she is not qualified for the distinction and that her appointment was in every sense arbitrary have decided, under the aegis of Bayelsa Civil Servants for Due Process and Transparency, to take the matter to the next level.

According to sources, who have asked me not to identify them lest they be persecuted, members of the organisation passed a unanimous resolution at a recent meeting declaring that the way the personage aforementioned has been carrying on is "incompatible with the ethos of the public service, and is capable of bringing the Bayelsa State civil service into disrepute if it has not already done so."

The resolution, they tell me, is only the first step to securing through the courts a cease and desist order that would, without prejudice to any other positions she may occupy or assign herself, have the effect of restraining the personage from parading herself as a permanent secretary in the Bayelsa State Civil Service in any guise or disguise, and from enjoying the benefits pertaining thereunto.

Surely, you too must have heard the rumour, ladies and gentlemen of the Bayelsa Task Force on Rumour-mongering. For the benefit of the people of Bayelsa and indeed the teeming readers of this newspaper in Nigeria and abroad, I respectfully request that you confirm or dispel it at your earliest convenience.

I have my own views on the matter, but they cannot be a substitute for the definitive verdict that only The Task Force can issue.

Second, whatever happened to the National Good Governance Tour that Information Minister (and now acting Minister of Defence) Labaran Maku has been staging to showcase to all those who are too obtuse to notice and appreciate the great transformation the Goodluck Jonathan Administration has wrought across the land.

The last time I wrote on the subject, Maku had just concluded a controversial tour of Edo State. I was definitely in error in stating that he was hopping from one site to another in an executive jet, and I hereby offer my remorseful apologies.

I have since learned that he rides nothing more opulent than those passenger buses purchased for the public under the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P), and that the only reason he has not availed himself and his touring party of rail travel is that a good many of the sites are not accessible by train.

When will he take his good governance gospel to Yobe, or Borno?

Boko Haram or no Boko Haram, there are in those states shining examples of the irreversible Transformation the Jonathan Administration has wrought. Are they not worth showcasing, if only to give the lie to those who claim that underdevelopment is the cause of the insurgency roiling those cities, and to confound the insurgents themselves?

The insurgents, knowing that he has the armed might of the Federal Government at his call as acting Minister of Defence, will be on their best behaviour while the tour lasts. The Honourable Minster may even succeed in charming them with his winning ways and his elegant tailoring into signing a permanent truce.

Your move, then, Honourable Minister.

In Bukola Saraki's time as governor, wonderful things were said and written about how he had quietly transformed Kwara State into Nigeria's breadbasket with his far-sighted agricultural policy and technocratic acumen.

The vehicle for the revolution was the Shonga Farms, operated by 15 white farmers, who had lost out in the land redistribution programme through which President Robert Mugabe sought to empower his dispossessed people. With generous provisions of land and vital infrastructure and cash, the farmers were four years later producing lakes of milk, mountains of butter, and pyramids of rice and maize and sorghum and guinea corn, among other items.

But there was one big problem. These products were available only in up-scale supermarkets in Abuja, so that, if Kwara was at al a breadbasket, it was a breadbasket only to the opulent denizens of the federal capital. Over time, the products vanished even from the shelves and cold stores of the up-scale supermarkets.

What happened to Saraki's revolution?

It was over before it began. But the media took Saraki's word for it that an agricultural revolution characterised by superabundance had indeed occurred in Kwara. Today, according to persons familiar with the place, Shonga Farm looks like an abandoned junkyard littered with the debris of broken machinery and structures, a monument to mass deception.

Unlike the media, Saraki's handpicked successor, Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed was not fooled. Months after taking office, he was already laying the groundwork for his own agricultural revolution, this time through a partnership with Cornell University in Ithaca, in the sub-arctic clime of up-state New York

Surely, the attentive audience is entitled to ask: How many agricultural revolutions can you have within five years in the same location?