The Real Enemies Of Nigeria

By Ochereome Nnanna

Last week Wednesday, the President of the Senate, Dr. Bukola Saraki, was forced, on behalf of his colleagues, to pronounce the Inspector-General of Police, Alhaji Ibrahim Idris as an “enemy of our democracy.” 

He declared him a persona non-grata and unfit to hold public office both within and outside Nigeria. This was after Idris refused on three occasions to honour the lawmakers’ summonses to answer critical questions bordering on the nation’s security challenges and the treatment the Police meted to one of their colleagues, Senator Dino Melaye.

*President Buhari 

 As often pointed out in this column, the National Assembly is not about the specific individuals elected into it or occupying its high offices at any given time. It is about an institution that represents the people of Nigeria who elected them to be in government on their behalf. They are there to make laws, supervise the ways the funds of the federation are spent, perform oversight functions on the ways the government is implementing the budget and the laws of the country and act as effective checks to ensure the Executive does not drag us back to dictatorship and impunity. 

APC’s Recent Congresses: Omen Of Impending Calamity

By Godwin Etakibuebu

At the last count, eight states of the federation have drawn up parallel Executives to counter what some people called “authentic Executives” of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, during the recently concluded congresses. One of the most unbelievable states where this happened is Lagos. That some people, albeit members of the APC in Lagos State, could challenge the supremacy of the de-facto Jagaban of the South-West politics would remain one of the wonders of modern Nigerian political history.

 

Emergence of the parallel Executives in the eight states came with re-introduction of politics of blood-spilling into the Nigerian polity and this is the most unfortunate dimension of the APC debacle. These eight  states of Lagos, Oyo, Ondo, Zamfara, Enugu, Ebonyi, Kwara and Delta, where parallel Executives emerged saw violence. A few people died in some of these states while in others, it was a day of bloodbath; like the case in Ondo State, where notable citizens were grossly humiliated as most of them were stripped naked. This is without mentioning Imo State where Rochas Okorocha, the APC governor, was completely demystified and dethroned by the  machinery of the APC itself.

Nigeria: Tales From The States

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

When former President Olusegun Obasanjo described state governors as emperors last year, the gibe at the messenger tended to dim the message . The riposte was not only from the supposedly traduced state governors, but also other citizens – he was not qualified to speak on such a matter because he equally operated as an emperor while he was a president. Again, continued the reprimand, why would he not consign his epistolary obsession to the federal level and avoid interfering with the goings-on in the states?

*Some Nigerian Governors 

But we must admit that Obasanjo was only reminding us that as citizens, we have not demonstrated enough diligence in monitoring how the states are run because we are preoccupied with the activities of the government at the centre. After all, it is the reports on these activities at the federal level that hug the headlines on the front pages of newspapers. And because we do not pay enough attention to them, these state governors easily pass as poster boys of good governance. This is the case as long as these states do not have opposition parties that can let the larger society know the poor governance that goes on there. Yet, the citizens live in states where their lives are impacted either positively or negatively by the performance of their state governments.

Thus, it is necessary for us to be troubled by the mismanagement and brazen theft of state resources that go on as governance in most of the states of the federation. In most cases, the governors set up the states to fail by not allowing council elections so that they can keep on appointing those who would do their bidding as caretakers and manipulate elections for them. These caretakers are then sustained by doling out part of their statutory allocations to them to spend as they like without any question from the state governors.

Where Are The Various Power Probe Report?

By Phillip Agbese

We are a nation of people that easily forget. We may, however, not be a nation that easily forgive. If it seems we forgive grievous sins of past, serving and future public office holders it is down to the collective amnesia that allows those who serially raped the country to get away with their crimes. Oftentimes we end up rewarding such persons with greater responsibilities because we simply cannot recall the enormity of their transgressions against the rest of us. 

We forget so we endure darkness when the power sectors has gulped billions of dollars without results.

We bemoan the high cost of lighting our homes as well as keep gadgets and equipment running irrespective of whether we are on post paid metering, pre-paid extortion or estimated robbery. But we forget that we are now being billed for the overpriced investment in electricity infrastructure, including the inflated value for components that were never bought. 

Only recently the Pharaoh of Benin Electricity Distribution Company, Mrs Olufunke Osibodu told Nigerians with glee that we have no right to expect stable electricity for another five years. We have forgotten why but we easily ignored and even immediately forgave the spewing of such poison. Afterall, this was a self styled undertaker of a commercial bank talking so we may not immediately become alarmed that Osibodu has a mandate to finally kill off a sector that years of theft has not seen off. 

The venue of Osibodu's dark prophecy is what should trigger the alarm bells for us. She spoke at the 11th Annual Founder’s Day event of the American University of Nigeria in Yola, which happens to be one of the many investments of a former Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abukakar. He happens to have been the one that oversaw the privatization exercise, which had rehabilitation of electricity infrastructure before their sale as a mantra that played so continuously that it sounded worse than a broken record. 

What happened under Atiku Abubakar's watch set the tone for whatever brigandage was to follow under subsequent administrations. This of course is not counting any other shady dealings that were explained away as former President Olusegun Obasanjo being heavy handed on his over ambitious deputy. 

Buhari And The Savaging Of The Poor

By Okey Ndibe

Before the 2015 presidential election, Candidate Muhammadu Buhari essentially advertised himself as a magician. Even though oil prices were tumbling, Mr. Buhari promised to pay N5,000 a month to unemployed youth, make the country more secure, fix the perennial electric power crisis, root out corruption, strengthen the naira against the dollar and reduce the price per litre of fuel.

*Buhari 

Once elected, Mr. Buhari began a serial retreat from his promises. Nigeria’s hapless youth have received no cash.  Boko Haram may have been weakened in the northeast, but heavily armed herdsmen have maimed and killed and ramped up Nigeria’s violence quotient. And – thanks to the administration’s hectoring tone and strong-arm tactics – the southeast and oil-rich Niger Delta have become highly volatile. Power outages are as bad as ever, and arguably worse.

The war against corruption has targeted some well-known persons, among them Senate President, Bukola Saraki, former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, and the spokesman of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Olisa Metuh. Even so, the war appears imperiled in several ways.

One is Mr. Buhari’s failure to devise a fresh, innovative approach to combating corruption. The cases currently in court are making plodding progress – and are likely to drag on. Given the sheer number of suspects out there, the lesson is that the prosecutorial route is not particularly promising.

Besides, as I suggested shortly after his inauguration, Mr. Buhari is mired in an ethical bind: As some of the financiers of his campaign are perceived as plunderers of public funds.

More troubling still is that the president has paid scant attention to ways of plugging the loopholes that permit public officials and their cohorts to loot funds. What we have, then, is a policy of patching a system that demands an overhaul.

Again, Chinua Achebe Rejects Nigerian National Honour

...President Jonathan Regrets Writer's Decision... Foremost Nigerian writer and author of the classic, Things Fall Apart, Professor Chinua Achebe, has turned down the National Honour awarded him by President Goodluck Jonathan. Achebe who was nominated for Nigeria's third highest Honour -- The Commander of the Federal Republic (CFR) would have been one of the 364 Nigerians to be conferred with various Honours on Monday, November 14, 2011.  Chinua Achebe In statement, Achebe who had rejected the same award given to him by President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2004, declared:  "The reasons for rejecting the offer when it was first made have not been addressed let alone solved. It is inappropriate to offer it again to me. I must therefore regretfully decline the offer again." Achebe who will be 81 on November 16 is David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, United States.  In a swift reaction on Sunday, November 13, President Jonathan regretted Achebe's decision to excuse himself from the Honour.   "Coming as it does, against the background of the widely acclaimed electoral reforms undertaken by the Jonathan Administration, the claim by Prof. Achebe clearly flies in the face of the reality of Nigeria’s current political situation,"  a statement from the Presidency said. "Politically," the statement continued,  "Nigeria cannot be said to be where it was in 2004 as the Jonathan Administration has embarked on extensive electoral reforms to institute a regime of electoral integrity that all Nigerians can be proud of, believing that governance will be greatly enhanced in the country if the will of the people prevails at elections. While President Jonathan acknowledges that there are still challenges in the path of Nigeria’s attainment of its full potentials as a nation, he believes that his Administration is moving the country in the right direction and therefore deserves the support, encouragement and cooperation of all citizen." President Goodluck Jonathan and VP Namadi Sambo During The Inauguration Party In Abuja  Concluding, the Presidency stated that despite his rejection of the award, "Prof. Achebe remains, in President Jonathan’s consideration, a national icon, a Nigerian of high attainments, indeed one of the greatest living Africans of our time." While rejecting the National Honour in 2004, Achebe in a letter to President Obasanjo had stated: “I write this letter with a very heavy heart. For some time now I have watched events in Nigeria with alarm and dismay. I have watched particularly the chaos in my own state of Anambra where a small clique of renegades, openly boasting its connections in high places, seems determined to turn my homeland into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom.  I am appalled by the brazenness of this clique and the silence, if not connivance, of the Presidency. “Forty three years ago, at the first anniversary of Nigeria's independence I was given the first Nigerian National Trophy for Literature. In 1979, I received two further honors – the Nigerian National Order of Merit and the Order of the Federal Republic – and in 1999 the first National Creativity Award. “I accepted all these honors fully aware that Nigeria was not perfect; but I had a strong belief that we would outgrow our shortcomings under leaders committed to uniting our diverse peoples.  Nigeria's condition today under your watch is, however, too dangerous for silence. I must register my disappointment and protest by declining to accept the high honor awarded me in the 2004 Honors List”. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo   A public affairs analyst observed in Lagos today that Nigerian National Honours appear to have been grievously debased and do not seem to represent any more those sterling ideals like distinction in character, industry  and exceptional accomplishment which they were original meant to celebrate, and so a man of impeccable honour like Achebe is perfectly justified to seek to disassociate himself from them. He wondered why Nigeria should be giving out National Honours at a time corruption is so rife in the country, insecurity of lives of property so pronounced, and quality of life badly devalued. "Such a preoccupation does not portray us as serious people before the outside world," he declared.

2007 Nigerian Elections: Why Maurice Iwu Failed

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye 

 

Last Saturday Prof Maurice Iwu and his “Independent” National Electoral Commission (INEC) went all out to shatter the expectations of Nigerians for orderly, free and fair elections in the country, by enthusiastically delivering to the nation a bundle of astounding failures and searing disappointments.


 Despite the revolting chest-beating presently going on in INEC quarters and the (unsurprising) vulgar commendations emanating from the dark covens of the People Democratic Party (PDP), everyone now knows that Iwu and his INEC were simply unprepared or unwilling (or both) to take Nigerians beyond the usual sad, discomforting stories that had attended the past elections in the country, especially, in 1999 and 2003.  
Indeed, last Saturday’s elections have been described as the worst in the history of the nation.  The open and transparent rigging was simply unprecedented. 







Prof Maurice Iwu


Obviously, INEC had another agenda, which it did not even attempt to hide. What Nigerians are therefore seeing as devastating failure is, in the skewed thinking of Iwu and his motley crowd at INEC, “an assignment well executed”. And if you look around you, you will see that those they unambiguously worked for are smothering them with superfluous praises, even in the face boundless failure, horrible malpractices and overwhelming gloom across the nation.   


Iwu’s abysmal failure should come as a surprise to no one who had keenly observed the untoward path INEC had treaded with unqualified glee. For several months, the commission left its own job and preoccupied itself with what should not be its business. It allocated an unfair share of its time and resources to ensuring that candidates whose faces were not liked in Aso Rock were roughly shoved aside, so the anointed ones could smile home with unearned victory. At one point, (I think at it was at the Appellate Court), the presiding judge had to ask INEC what its business was in a case of disqualification of candidates. 



Olusegun Obasanjo


Yet, the commission remained undeterred. Its loyalty, clearly, was not to the Nigerian people, but to a tiny cabal of unpatriotic characters who derive peculiar animation from seeing Nigeria remaining backward and chaotic. 
Despite several court rulings stating clearly that INEC had no powers to disqualify candidates, Iwu had continued to speak and act as if disqualification of candidates was the only job INEC was set up to perform. In fact, the commission got itself so distracted with this thankless, extraneous job that little or no time was left for it to prepare for the elections. 


 Perhaps, that was part of the script, to deliberately make the elections to fail, so that the crises that might possibly follow would create an enabling environment for the resuscitation of the obnoxious Third Term agenda. But, unfortunately, as has become clear, the Third Term stuff will never find a fertile ground in Nigeria again. It is dead and buried, and so Iwu is left alone now in the quadrangle of shame, to grapple with the failure caused by lack of preparations and insincerity of purpose, and be soaked with all the bashings and public odium for the massive charade that took place last Saturday.

Umar Musa Yar'Adua


INEC’s obsession with the disqualification of candidates that stood in the way of Aso Rock’s anointed candidates was most pronounced in Anambra State, aside the obvious (prominent) Atiku case, which was pursued to a most ridiculous extent. While the commission eagerly accepted a court order it claimed was quietly served it by the Chekwas Okorie faction of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) to not accord recognition to the Victor Umeh-led faction of APGA (which had fielded the incumbent governor, Peter Obi, as its candidate), it blatantly refused to honour another court ruling which held that Dr. Chris Ngige, the former Governor of Anambra State, whose tenure Anambra people still remember with immense relish and refreshing nostalgia, is eligible to contest the gubernatorial elections. 


By preferring one court ruling to the other, INEC was only betraying its desperation and doggedness to execute what looks like an unambiguous mandate from Aso Rock to ensure that all formidable oppositions in the race are shoved aside in order for “Dr” Andy Ubah, Aso Rock’s own candidate, to be imposed on Anambra people. 


 And now, that Igbo leaders of thought, under a better-focused and independent-minded Ohaneze-Ndigbo have made it clear that no election took place in Anambra, let’s see whether Iwu and his masters can afford to ignore them, or dream up another strategy to weather the challenge.   



PDP Logo




It does seem that Iwu’s troubles are increasing as his task becomes more complicated. Last Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that INEC lacks the power to disqualify candidates, and that Vice President Atiku Abubakar, whom the commission has deployed every energy and resources to hound out of the presidential race is eligible to contest. 
Who now will  Iwu obey? The Supreme Court or his “Supreme leader” in Aso Rock? What is the implication of this ruling to the case of other candidates, which INEC stopped from contesting last Saturday’s elections? Is there nothing that could be legally done to redress the injustice meted out to them, by an electoral commission that cared less if unwanted and unworthy candidates are imposed on the people? 


I think that further interpretation should be sought from the Supreme Court on the fate of these candidates. The Supreme Court must realize that the judiciary is fast acquitting itself as the only credible arm of government in Nigeria today, and so must save the people from the trauma of being governed by those they did not elect. By this ruling, the Supreme Court has endorsed the popular sentiment that the issue of disqualification candidates is so profound and strategic a matter to be left to the whims of an administrative body like INEC. Or else, we will continue to witness this kind of very repulsive abuse to which such a provision was subjected by the Obasanjo/Iwu mob! 
By the way, I thought this was supposed to be a “computerized” election?


So, why was the whole exercise dominated by papers, as of old? Why did it turn out that several people whose names had been fed into Iwu’s magic computers could not find their names in the badly arranged registers on election day?  The names were not even arranged in alphabetical order. What kind of computers were incapable of doing something as simple as that? Sometimes, it took the poorly trained INEC officials a lot of time to find the names of voters. This caused so much frustrations.  


In many places voting could not take place. Election materials in several cases arrived so late or did not at all. Many Nigerians were disenfranchised including Ikemba Nnewi, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Senate President, Ken Nnamani, Governor Peter Obi of Anambra State, Action Congress (AC) Vice Presidential Candidate, Edwin Umeh-Ezeoke, President-General of Ohaneze-Ndigbo, Dr. Dozie Ikedife, Emmanuel Ibeshi, AC Gubernatorial Candidate in Cross River State, and many others, because voting did not take place in their wards. INEC would have to look for better liars to try to convince us that this was not deliberate, to put some candidates at a disadvantage. So, in spite of  all the noise about INEC’s state of preparedness, this was what Nigerians got after all. So unfortunate. 
Again, despite all the stern-looking, gun-wielding soldiers unleashed into the streets to intimidate everyone, ballot boxes were still stolen, and stuffed with already thumped ballot papers. Were these perpetrated by privileged hoodlums?


By the way, I thought Iwu had promised us that his computers would detect multiple-voting?  How many of such were detected last Saturday? We surely would like to know, because so much time and energy was wasted on this Data Capture machine stuff (or whatever they called it), and Iwu had stubbornly insisted on using them despite the position of many Nigerians and the National Assembly on it. He must be willing to tell us the advantage that has accrued to the process as a result of their usage. 


Well, I have heard it mentioned here and there that the only consolation for the very disappointing elections held last Saturday is the realization that no matter the outcome of the overly fraudulent exercise, President Olusegun Obasanjo would certainly show Nigerians his back on May 29. The belief is that foundations for a new and progressive Nigeria can only be successfully laid at his back. 


Indeed, there is an ever growing consensus that the most outstanding legacy of the outgoing regime in Abuja, apart from institutionalization of corruption, glamorization of incompetence and failure, and extreme lawlessness, is, perhaps, our gradual graduation from massive rigging of elections to no elections at all. It is most unfortunate, and what Nigerians must insist on is that such a satanic practice must go with the regime that instituted it. 
After massively rigging the elections, Obasanjo has flooded the streets with gun-wielding, stern-faced soldiers to intimidate everyone into silence and suppress and crush any form of dissent. Nigeria today looks like a typical coup day, and everyone lives in fear. That is Obasanjo democracy. Democracy of fear and intimidation. 


Well, the main loser in the whole charade they are calling elections would of course  be Prof Maurice Iwu who would always be remembered on the wrong side of history as the man who sought to gratify the narrow interests of a tiny, unpatriotic few at the expense of the national expectation for progress and democratic stability. Whatever ugly incidents that these elections are throwing up will surely be blamed on him. 


In Imo State, for instance, the Governorship election was cancelled because of alleged eruptions of violence, yet in some states where worse things happened, the elections have been announced and applauded by the PDP/INEC. And mark you, the elections into the State House of Assembly in Imo State in which the PDP achieved a “fraudslide” victory was not also cancelled. INEC is yet to tell us how it determined that the violence was only perpetrated in respect of the governorship polls, even though the two elections ran simultaneously. 


But what everyone knows is that INEC/PDP cancelled the Gubernatorial election in Imo State and fixed a run-off election on April 28, so that the PDP which had expelled its Governorship candidate can now have the opportunity to field another candidate and equally rig him in. Nothing can be so outrageous. Iwu does not even pretend at all about where his loyalty lies in this election. 


 Well, after the all this mess, Iwu would certainly sit down to count his losses, just as the nation is doing now, and determine where the rain began to beat him. For instance, the way he had gone about his present job had led some people to probe his past, and some questions marks now accompany his academic reputation. When the clouds have cleared, and this strange PDP/INEC assignment is over, he would have to grapple with this, and the fact that he shattered the hope of his people. 


Indeed, this INEC Chairman would be remembered as the man who was given an opportunity to advance his nation’s progress but he chose to conspire with a tiny congregation of retrogressive and dishonourable characters to abort the prized dream of his nation. Most unfortunate, indeed.
 ——————————————————–
scruples2006@yahoo.com

Nigeria: Campaigns In Troublous Times

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

As I see the reports of the numerous rallies the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is addressing in several parts of the country, I am always forced to ask: what really is the PDP telling these people? Somebody should, please, help me, because, I have not attended any of their rallies, and sometimes, I am too sickened to read the boring, exasperating, empty and incoherent speeches the newspapers say they made at those rallies.

There is nothing I hate like listening to or reading speeches, everyone knows, including the speaker himself, are full of lies and empty promises, and only meant to deceive the hearer, or show that the speaker thinks his listeners are a bunch of fools. In such an instance, the fellow just feels he needs to tell his hearers something, and so, he opens his mouth and vomits even what he himself does not believe.

Nigeria is facing the worst kind of energy crises at this very moment, and President Olusegun Obasanjo, the PDP Chief Campaigner, whose regime has dragged Nigerians through a most excruciating eight years of boundless decay, deterioration and unspeakable pain and hardship, is out there telling Nigerians to forgive the PDP for fielding some governors, whose performance in their states may even had brought some tiny bits of succour to the people unlike Obasanjo’s at the federal level, but whose only offence today is that they had decamped from the PDP.

In the nation today, under Obasanjo’s effective management, power supply has become the people’s greatest source pain and torment. People attempt to sleep in their houses in a pool of their own sweat, and wake up the next morning so tired and drained of strength, and probably nursing a headache, that the thought of being productive that day becomes a distant dream. Severe damage is being inflicting on several eardrums by the tormenting noise of different forms of generators, which conspire with the oppressive heat to make Nigerians have a juicy taste of hell here on earth. Nigeria is fast becoming a dangerous gas chamber because of the dangerous fumes the countless generators are emitting into the atmosphere.

Many have already died as a result of the fumes they had inhaled and many more dying gradually as they inhale these killer fumes daily. Business outfits are folding up due to the high cost of doing business in Nigeria, caused by the perennial energy crises, and this has greatly compounded the already terrible unemployment situation, and shot the prices of goods and services far beyond the reach of the ordinary man.

Fuel scarcity is still very much with us. So, while the nation is plunged in thick, blinding, suffocating darkness because of the abysmal failure of NEPA/PHCN, despite the billions of naira the government claims it had poured into the power sector since 1999, those who have generators are not able to get the fuel needed to power them. Last Sunday’s night in Lagos here, because I needed some fuel to power my generator, I had to burn the little fuel I had in the car, to go very far from where I live, before I could find fuel to buy.

After nearly eight years of “great achievements” by the regime of the “Father Of Modern Nigeria”, the PDP Presidential Candidate, Mr. Umaru Yar’Adua, had to be flown to a German hospital for the treatment of catahrr, on the orders of the President, because, according to the president, they did not want to take chances. So, in essence, those other Nigerians who attend Nigerian hospitals are taking chances with their lives? Did you hear that?

 Also, Vice President Atiku Abubakar, had to go to the UK for a minor knee surgery. After eight years of wonder-working “reforms”, our rulers do not trust our hospitals enough to patronize it. They know too well that these government-forsaken and dilapidated “hospitals” are nothing but high roads to the grave, and so, they would always jet out to well-managed climes to treat catahrr! In a decent society, the PDP would not have even bothered to present any candidates for the coming elections, because no one would cast any votes for them, given that the bold signs of its eight years of resounding failure rudely stare everyone in the face.

 But this is a strange country where strange and bizarre things are normal, daily occurrences. Moreover, the “Largest Party In Africa”, headed by the “Father Of Modern Nigeria”, with its various fearsome garrison commanders, must have perfected its winning strategies in these “do-or-die” elections.

The votes, we know, would not count, or else, what were some of Prof Maurice Iwu’s data-capture machines doing in the lair of Chief Lamidi Adedibu in Molete? And we are talking about the Adedibu case because they were discovered. What of the other ones that were not discovered? What is the guarantee that what would be declared at the polling stations would not have been earlier fed into the systems by well-appointed “foot soldiers” at the various joints of the less-prominent, but more savagely zealous and dare-devil “garrison commanders”? Common, a failed regime cannot be oozing out such confidence for nothing.

Maybe, the people are really listening to the PDP at those rallies, because, I am sure some tiny crumbs of the “national cake” do fall out on or before the days for those rallies. I have met some fellows in the villages, who, though over-stretched and shriveled by the harsh and punitive economic conditions, are still able to announce boldly to me that they are members of the PDP! And what is the source of their motivation? At least once in every three months, some crumpled five hundred naira note would fall to them when they attend those nocturnal party meetings in the house of the “local organizer”, plus some beer and cups of rice. And with that, they mortgage their future, and consign themselves to many more years of unspeakable suffering, slavery and impoverishment.

Nigeria! This is the only country I know where people would have no qualms hailing the very fellow who had brutally murdered their parents and made them sudden orphans, just because of what they hoped to get from the person at that particular point in time. Indeed, this is the only country I know where people would be eating and drinking poison with every relish, and yet wishing to live.

Many Nigerians would readily murder and bury their tomorrow, or cheer on the person doing that, only to wake up early the very next day to yearn and search for it. This is indeed a strange country inhabited by a strange people.

The man who before you yesterday had cursed the leaders for enslaving and impoverishing him will file behind those same leaders tomorrow should such failed leaders offer themselves for re-election, so long as the leaders concerned would be willing to part with some tiny bits of the billions of the commonwealth they had stolen.

That is the Nigeria you and I have found ourselves in, and so, when you see many Nigerians thronging the rallies being addressed by those same people who are known to have stolen the nation blind, you can now understand what is driving them. A nation whose larger population is stuck with this kind of mindset may never be saved.

That’s the truth.

                                 ———————————————–

scruples2006@yahoo.com
www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com
www.ugochukwu.blog.com

Thursday, March 15, 2007