The BBC Story on Nigerian Police

Adeola Aderounmu

The BBC yet again found another weak spot in Nigeria. The Police. It is up to the Nigerian Police to defend its integrity. How it goes about that is left to the authorities affected. I have done one or two pieces before on the Nigerian Police and I must confess that there was nothing new in that BBC story of December 8 2009.

There is a story that I always made reference to when it concerns how police kill innocent people in Nigeria. In 1995/ 96 while I was doing my youth service in Oyo State I lived on a street where Akinyele Local Government was/is situated. That is Moniya in Ibadan. At that time I was working at IITA in Ibadan as a youth corp member.

I lived directly opposite the local government and inside the premises of the local government was Moniya Police Station. It happened that in the middle of the night (almost every night) I usually hear loud noises that woke me up from my sleep. One day I had to ask my landlord’s son what the noise was all about.

He told me that I should ignore the sound and try to sleep because the police are doing their work-which is executing the robbers in the cell. He said they do that to avoid congestion in the cells. He told me that the bodies would be thrown into a famous river before day break. He told me this casually as if it was a normal thing. Going by its regularity, it was normal. I was shocked. From that day till the end of my service year I usually look closely at the police officers. As in they smile and go about like normal people but I actually thought they are crazy to be executing robbers at night.

That story plus all the other experiences about Police story that I’ve known before made me to dread the police like hell. I mean when I’m close to police officers with guns, I comply with whatever they say 100% because they can pull their triggers at anytime and you are dead. When I started driving in Lagos, every policeman was “Oga sir”! Many of them have red eyes and are invariably drunk. When a police man is pointing a loaded gun at you and ask you for 20 naira, I don’t think you want to mess around. Any dead citizen will be reported as armed robber to cover for atrocities. The BBC story is largely true.

But the Nigerian Police is just a product of a system that is decayed. The former inspector general of Police Tafa Balogun stole and looted police funds. Under Obasanjo billions of naira disappeared to his friends and family rather than the trust fund that was meant for the development of the police force. No one has been prosecuted, no one will be prosecuted. In Nigeria, you can loot and go. It’s your part of the so called National cake. A national tragedy as a matter of fact.

As mentioned above the police is just a product of a decayed system. Our politicians do not get anything fixed except their personal bank accounts and their homes/ future. They steal, they loot and they mismanage everything. Education, infrastructure, sports, health and so on. Just name anything, we have used nepotism, tribalism, corruption, and a form of madness called national character to destroy the fabrics and foundation of this (once upon a time) great nation.

The police have no modern gadgets and equipment to fight crime. They are usually overwhelmed by armed robbers who are more sophisticated. The Nigerian Police have inadequacies in everything! Patrol vehicles are probably too few and even the number of police / 000 citizens will shock anyone. I don’t know the statuses of the kinds of people employed by the police force. With Characters like Tafa Balogun, Mike Okiro and now one Onovo, the road is too long.

Police brutality and abnormalities are not peculiar to Nigeria but I’m a Nigerian blogger so I care less about the corrupt Russian police, the aggressive US Police or the lazy Scandinavian police. My attention is on Nigerian Police at this moment and I feel so sorry for them in a way. I mean their salaries are extremely poor and nothing to write home about. By setting up road blocks and begging for money instead of controlling, preventing or fighting crimes, Nigerian police is the apex of ridicule. They ask for money in the open and they tell you they have families at home.

This is the same country where one man will sit in his office and steal 12 billions dollars. A local government chairman will build houses and estate across the country. The senate president is a well known corrupt man, a thief in plain language. Name one prominent politician in Nigeria that is not a thief! So you see you can’t blame it all on the police, they see their bosses stealing. They see ordinary politicians amassing wealth overnight and with their poor salaries they set up road blocks to help their pockets. In fact, they give returns to their bosses who are sitting with their pot bellies in their office. How many police boss in Nigerian can chase a robber?

When it is election time the evil parties will connive with police to steal ballot boxes or to threaten voters so that elections can be rigged as planned. The Nigerian Police is at the mercy of the way the country is organised. Indeed all/ ordinary Nigerians are at the mercy of a certain evil force ruling the country. I have stated several times that in Nigeria we are in a dilemma: which problem/s do we solve first? How are we going to go about the rebuilding of this failed country?

For sure our politics and the corruption that have ruined the country will be an ideal suggestion. If we get it right politically, maybe we will succeed to elect the right people to lead us. Maybe we will be able to fight corruption for real and prosecute thieves and looters. Maybe our judiciary will work and then the police do not become the prosecutor, judge and executors? Just maybe!

Maybe when our politics is right, our education will pick up again, maybe our infrastructure will improve. Maybe we will build our roads, make our refineries work, create employment opportunities that will reduce the rising spate of armed robbery and assassinations. Maybe!

Maybe we will be proud as a people and eschew bitterness and hatred. One day I hope we will take out all the round pegs in square holes and chose the people who are upright, discipline and selfless to lead us.

Just maybe one day, the police and the rest of us will be doing what we are suppose to be doing and be really proud to be doing so. Until such a time when some of these dreams come true, no one should expect decrease in the number of unnecessary deaths from police miscarriage of judgement, from preventable diseases, from road accidents, from assassinations, from reckless driving and other man made atrocities in Nigeria. Imagine that we have lived 2 years with a fake president who is cooling off in a Saudi Arabian hospital while the rest of us including the police can go to hell! What a shameless man..!

reference: BBC on Nigerian Police

Nigeria’s Political Dilemma and Secession in the air

By Adeola Aderounmu

Nigeria has been without a ruler or leader for several days now. In my opinion Nigeria has never had a president since May 2007. The man who was illegally imposed on us is now very sick and lying in some hospital in far away Saudi Arabia. Call it the shame of Nigeria-the nation with the largest concentration of black people not been able to provide good health care for its own (fake) president! Imagine the fate of the man on the street who has to beg to be able to afford a pill for his headache! What a tragedy for our nation?

Before he was bundled away he didn’t hand over the reign of power to his deputy, the so called vice president Goodluck Jonathan. On several occasions in the past Mr. Yar Adua had left his ill-gotten post unceremoniously without handing over to the man next to him. But this time it appears he will be away for a long-long time. There are uncertainties if he would be able to stand on his feet again, let home forcefully and illegally govern a nation of 150m passive people. Yes, we are that many but almost stupidly passive!

If we are not too passive or fashion-ly resilient we should have taken back all the things that were stolen from us or we should have kicked away the things that we didn’t ask for. Nobody voted for Mr. Yar Adua in the first place, so it was a stupid passivity that we allowed him to reign, forcefully.

We have been left alone several times without a ruler or a leader we still sit down and adopt the wait and see approach. By now millions of Nigerians should be on the streets demanding an end to this useless dilemma. Our economy is bad and investment is uncertain, yet we sit at home or go to work pretending that all will be well. The national budget is unknown making the already bad economy even looking predictably worse in the days ahead.

The men and women who pretend to be in the national assembly are too busy with personal interests and political survival that they do not see or realise how USELESS they have become in their own existence. If they are not useless what are they still doing when Nigeria with a population of over 140m has no legal president? Their own personal individual emergence continues to haunt them and they know that trying to do anything “right” will jeopardise their political future. I dare any member of the Nigeria Senate or House of Rep to sanely move for the removal of Yar Adua! They are all birds of the same feather-wicked and evil in colour.

The junta who want to have a northern president at all cost or the removal of Goodluck Jonathan to pave away for a Northern President to replace Yar Adua have now sown new seeds of secession. If the North must be president at all cost or at any cost, it makes more sense that they should keep the north to themselves. The rest of the south can decide what to do with their regions.

If the constitution of the PDP takes pre-eminence over that of Nigeria, then there should not be a country called Nigeria. This definitely is not the best option for Nigeria but it appears sensible that if the north wants to always dominate power then the other regions have the opportunity and reason to say, NO MORE!
The South-South have already issued a warning that if Jonathan cannot be the president in the absence of Yar Adua then the rest of us should brace up to a secession. That is more than justified. I mean if the constitution is not followed then there is no country to belong to. Therefore the individual nationalities have a reason to carve out their own existence. No one knows if there will be civil rife and on what scale.

But seriously what is wrong with Nigeria and Nigerians? I cannot stop looking at the intelligence question and the black race. Are we really stupid? Why is it so hard to follow the norm?

One man is sick and incapable, what is wrong with the deputy taking over as it is written in the constitution? Why should there be any rumour or allegation that a group from the north is putting pressure on the VP to resign? What sort of useless agreement could have been made between the VP and the North before the emergence of this unelected government? Are these the outcomes of Nigeria’s crazy democracy-one in which our votes are never counted? How long shall be continue with this nonsense? For how long shall we remain captives and slaves in our own country? For how long shall we bring shame and dishonour to ourselves and to Africa?

A time must come and maybe this is the best chance to redefine our mode of existence and the conditions for our co-existence or disintegration. What is of paramount significance and importance is the quality of lives that we want to live. We must be able to address the best avenues to attain our objectives for the nearest future.

To continue to live passively, doing nothing and encouraging these dictators-visible and invisible is a disservice to ourselves, our children and our children’s children. Just over the weekend Shakira said on Larry King Live: “we should be political, we must participate in the decisions that affect the future of our nations”

This statement must be directed to every Nigerian. We must participate-and we must start to do so positively-in the decisions that affect us now and our children in the future. Our political madness must stop and the way we do our elections must change. If nothing changes then we are confirming the fears of some group that as the black race we are not intelligent afterall. The prevalence of poverty and the fact that more than 90m live on less than 1 dollar per day despite the oil wealth of our country does not show that we are intelligent on our own soil. Maybe we are elsewhere.

The days ahead will shed more light on our intelligence especially in the political arena. The future of Nigeria is in our hands and whatever we decide to do or not do about it.

PDP Places Nigeria on a Keg of GunPowder

By Adeola Aderounmu

BBC reported that the continued ill-health of Nigeria’s ruler Mr. Yar Adua poses a problem for Nigeria’s constitution. If he were to step down or die, he would be replaced by Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan, who is from the country’s southern Niger Delta region.

But according to the ruling People’s Democratic Party’s own formula for sharing power among the country’s regions, the president must be a northerner. Herein lies the recipe for disaster. I have continued to mention that Nigeria has serious problems and the fact that a party like the PDP is in control is worrisome.

From the start I am not impressed that the farce committed in 2007 was used to imposed Yar Adua on Nigerians. The guy was fraudulently bundled into power by the machinery of the PDP majorly controlled by retired generals who have committed treason against the people of Nigeria. These military men and their civilian accomplices have continued to loot and plunder the Nigerian treasury. It is very disheartening also that these tropical gangsters think that they can decide (without elections / votes) who rules Nigeria at any given point in time.

That Nigerians are resilient and quiet gives an indication of our level of reasoning. Perhaps these events are connected to how our collective intelligence is viewed and it is easy to play down the IQ of our race.

What is happening in Nigerian Political space is absolute madness and idiocy. The kind of people parading themselves in our senate/ house of assembly and the interests that they serve are absolutely ridiculous. Nigerians have to stand up one day and say enough is enough.

Indeed, our constitution given by the military leaves spacious rooms for amendments. Despite the fact that I dislike the illegal regime currently parading itself in Nigeria I cannot help but wonder why a vice-president will not be able to take over IF in case the ruler takes his exit.

Nigeria cannot stop producing amusing dramas all over. It is only in our country that a known thief would be made the president of senate and all sorts of people lacking integrity would parade themselves as honorables. It is in Nigerian only that the Attorney General knows himself as a stupid liar and defender of corruption. Still, we do nothing about these anomalies. What a country..!

Election or no election, succession or no succession, Nigerians must know their silence means stupidity. Poverty will continue to spread like wild fire and the standard of living will be similar to pre-industrial revolution. That we lack electricity defines where we stand in the order of things. The Nigerian system needs an overhaul. 140m people cannot sleep and face the same direction. To do that is to leave our destiny to chance. It is better to take it in our hands for the sake of our children’s children.

Nigerians, free yourselves from Bondage, Seek Change Now!

By Adeola Aderounmu

Nigeria’s illegal president Mr. Yar Adua has gone (again) to Saudi Arabia for another medical check up. The man is extremely sick and very weak. His physical appearance speaks volumes. He is not fit for the post of a councillor how much more the (illegal) president of Nigeria. He was fraudulently imposed on Nigerians by the machinery of the evil PDP government largely assisted by Mr. Obasanjo and the fraudster called Maurice Iwu who is still the head of the useless Electoral Commission in Nigeria.

Mr. Yar Adua since his illegal ascension to Nigeria’s top post has visited hospitals in Germany, Brazil and more recently and frequently Saudi Arabia. This is the shame of Africa and Nigeria. For 8 years this man ruled over Katsina State and could not build any hospital that would be able to manage his health and that of the citizens of Katsina. For an additional 2 years of recklessness, absolute waste and meaningless governance he has been unable to design or build or update any hospital in Nigeria to take care of his failing health. And his health is failing rapidly! Not to my joy but to our collective shame that this is the type of nonentity that rules the most populous black nation on earth.

There are so many problems in Nigeria and an incapable leader is the last thing we desire at this point of our history. We are already battling with many issues including fraudulent elections, poverty, lack of infrastructure, decay in education, low standard of living, internal rife, high cost of living, hopelessness, crime, kidnapping, environmental pollution, lack of electricity and extreme lack of both social and national orientation. We are also battling with politicians who continue to loot the treasury and persistently remain neck deep in the deep rooted corruption. We are becoming a failed country.

Some fools are suggesting a second term for Mr. Yar Adua. In the 2 years of his first term, he has spent more time in health institutions than in the office. He has done almost nothing and he is extremely weak and probably depressed. There is a huge doubt he will make any impact in the 2 years remaining of his illegal reign. The present government in Nigeria needs total FLUSHING. They have to be bundled out one way or the other. With the likes of Aondoakaa, Ibori and Iwu, Nigeria remains in a deep mess. Ogbulafor the PDP chairman heads a network of undemocratic hell angels who will for eternity suppress the will of the people. Under the PDP state of affairs, Nigeria will not rise. It is doomed for calamity.

Nigeria and Nigerians need public institutions that will bring back the glory that is long lost. We must be able to choose and remove public officers as the situation or conditions demand. We must be able to account for our positions in public. All the corrupt people and politicians since 1999 and before remain free. The prosecution of Bode George is 0.0001% of the job that should be done in the fight against corruption.

The 2010 and 2011 elections are already reaping casualties with assassinations. This is the madness of Nigerian politics. This is where social and national orientation is a missing gap. The spirit of live and let’s live is completely absence as successive governments have made jungle of our existence. We live like it’s a rat race.

Nigerians must begin to reflect on recents developments in the country. Bode George was prosecuted-no condition is permanent. Mariam Babangida is terminally ill in an American hospital-her husband could have build hospitals in Nigeria instead of the mansions he built in Minna. The Babangidas could have done more for the good of all. Babangida cancelled the most peaceful and the fairest election in the history of Nigeria and he is reputed to have stolen more than 12 billions dollars of Nigeria’s oil money. Nothing last forever you see. 12 billion dollars cannot buy life.

In one of my articles, I have written that life is a passage. It will always be. The best way to go through life is to live and let others live. What is the outcome of evil acquisition? It is absolute vanity.

Yar Adua squandered 8 years as a governor and 2 years as an illegal president. That he lacks the mentality required to build a state of the art hospital in Nigeria speaks volume about his fate. The good and evil that men do now follows them and live with them.

To all those who are waiting in line for their turn to loot the treasury in Nigeria and to those who are shielding corrupt politicians and other evil people systematically destroying the country, look around you and seek wisdom. Good life is good, but it is evil and wicked to gain that status at the expense of millions of others. More than 70m Nigerians are living on less than 1 dollar per day whereas someone has the guts to steal 12 billions dollars and nothing has been done about that.

The life of all men is not different from those of the flowers that boom at one time and are weak or dead at another time. Everybody deserves a good life especially in a country like Nigeria where the oil wealth from the Niger Delta can cater for the needs of all Africans. Why is poverty so widespread in Nigeria? it boils down to not only corruption but the greed of the leadership/rulership.

WHAT IS THE WAY FORWARD FOR NIGERIA?

Nigeria must go through a new period of genuine transition. Honestly I don’t have the formula but I think there is a need to recall all the thieves who called themselves senators or lawmakers. There is a need to send home all the ministers and public officers who are there just to loot and serve their personal interests. Nigeria needs a period of say 6 months to one year to build up fundamental institutions especially the electoral commission and the anticorruption agencies.

A new reawakening is needed in Nigeria whereby a sense of collective social responsibility is created in the mainstream but starting with responsible leadership. We need a few men and women of honour to steer Nigeria under this transitional period so that we can achieve concrete goals and development in the nearest future.
As mentioned above it is difficult but it requires a great deal of sense and sacrifice. Some people must give way especially as they got into our lives through questionable means. The damage is far too extensive and the earlier we make this needed transition the better. I am no longer worried about my generation, I’m 37 and I can see the
absurd mentality pervading my generation. It appears we have been indoctrinated or absorbed into the wasted generation of Soyinka and Obasanjo. My worries are now towards my children, our children and the future of this blessed nation.

We must set out now, it is no longer dawn, but it is not too late. We can start by sending Mr. Yar Adua back to Katsina when he returns from Saudi Arabia. To do nothing now will confine the largest concentration of black people on earth into the doldrums, FOREVER!

Obama’s Victory: Provoking African Politicians to Positive Actions

By Adeola Aderounmu

In Africa the things that should unite us have been used to divide us and the outcomes are hunger, poverty, impoverishment, penury and wars.

At this moment (Nov the 5th 2008) in the United States, history has been made. Barack Obama born of a Kenyan father and an American mother became the 44th President-elect of the United States of America. American democracy is not perfect. It has its short comings and pitfalls. The rigging of votes by George Bush in Florida in 2000 and the dirty campaign mastered by his father will remain as some of the most shameful highlights of American democracy.

Nevertheless the peaceful transition of power from one democratically elected president to another is a trait that is worth emphasising when it comes to American politics and democracy. As Barack Obama waits in the wings as the president-elect of the United States, it is time to take up some provocative issues with some African countries and their leaders. This moment of Obama’s glory and triumph of people power must not be wasted without reminding Africans about their backwardness. This is the best time to provoke those extremely bad leaders and looters who are spreading poverty as a way of life for millions of Africans.

Americans have voted and Obama has been declared the winner. McCain was very quick to send his congratulatory message to Obama. If Obama had lost, he would have done the same to Senator McCain-send him a congratulatory message. McCain and Obama campaigned and sometimes one spoke ill of the other but that is the nature of politics. They did not however send assassins after each other and they did not wish each other dead. The crux of the matter was the United States as a country and how best the country can make progress. In Nigeria, many politicians have been killed under mysterious circumstances and no one has been held responsible for the killings.

Recently in Zimbabwe and Kenya the instrument of governance and violence was used to send many innocent people to their graves. Mugabe killed as many people as he could in 2008 just to silent the opposition and remain in power. In some African countries, the urge to remain in power or to acquire the power is with evil intention and revenge. Will there come a time in the history of Kenya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe when elections will be held without violence?

McCain is not talking about power sharing and he has not told his supporters to go on the rampage. No one has complained about rigging of elections or the minor irregularities. The country comes first and personal interests stay in the background. Kenya and Zimbabwe are today practising a useless form of democracy called power-sharing government. The implication is that one corrupt leader coerce with another potential corrupt leader to destroy the mandate of the people. This scenario also implicates the opposition in these countries as agents of evil. A man who is seeking the good of his country will under no circumstances participate in an evil regime or a regime that is strangulating democratic principles.

They always argue for the government of National Unity in the name of peace. That is blatant lie. Who created the chaos in the first place? What these corrupt African leaders do is to sow distrust and hatred in the population and then capitalise on these misdemeanours to accomplish their own selfish ambitions which is primarily self-enrichment. In Nigeria, there has not been any peaceful election since 1959 except in 1993 and the results of that peaceful election were annulled by a military gangster called Ibrahim Babangida. The winner of that presidential election was imprisoned by another military dictator called Abacha. MKO Abiola the man presumed to have won the only peaceful and fair presidential election in Nigerian history was killed under the leadership of a dictator called Abdulsalami. Interestingly though the United States government was implicated in the assassination of MKO Abiola. This is because he died when an entourage sent from the White House was visiting him in a Nigerian Prison!

I have stated earlier that the United States is not a perfect country. Still the democratic principles in a way offer a lot of exemplary approaches that could be borrowed. In the just concluded presidential election in the US, the world didn’t even have to wait for all the results to be announced or counted. The winner of the presidential election-Barack Obama, was known even before the counting was concluded. This is impossible in Nigeria or Kenya. It will be an abomination in Zimbabwe for a winner to emerge when the final vote has not been counted. It will be a recipe for violence and disaster. As a matter of fact, votes have never been counted in Nigerian elections. Since 1959 this country that pride itself as the giant of Africa has continued to waste billions of naira on conducting elections that never matters. Nigeria is severely corrupt and unbelievably incapable of conducting a decent election 48 years after it became independent. This is very shameful indeed.

In April 2007, Mr. Obasanjo who was the outgoing president in Nigeria single-handedly installed Mr. Umar Yar Adua as Nigerian’s new illegal president. He was able to do this by conspiring with the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) whose Chairman is a man of questionable character. Obasanjo himself employed Mr. Iwu as the chairman of the INEC. But there is nothing independent about the INEC. It was manipulated and controlled by the ruling party in Nigeria. Mr. Obasanjo it must be noted had ruled for 8 years (1999-2007) using the power of force rather than votes. The votes were rigged and manipulated twice to allow him win the elections. The story of Nigerian Politics continues to be a very bad example to other countries in Africa. It is both devastating and disheartening.

I was particularly taken aback by the massive support that Obama received from Nigerian politicians and law makers. But have these lazy and corrupt Nigerian politicians sat down to ask themselves this question: Are we (Nigerian Politicians and leaders) stupid? They should ask themselves more questions:

• Why can’t we conduct peaceful elections in Nigeria?
• Why do we kill ourselves during election time in Nigeria?
• Why are issues and policies never discussed since the collapse of the second republic in Nigeria?
• Why do we rule the country by looting public treasuries and spreading poverty like wild fires?
• Do we need psychiatric tests before we are allowed to run for public offices in Nigeria?

Agreed that the incursion of the foolish military into governance in Nigeria (and other countries as well in Africa) landed a negative blow to our sense of purpose and direction as a nation: still that is not enough excuse to practise the kind of crude democracies that are seen in Nigeria, Kenya and Zimbabwe.

In some African countries like Somalia, there is complete absence of a government. In 2008 Congo, a genocide war is brewing intensely because of the fight for the nation’s wealth. In Africa the things that should unite us have been used to divide us and the outcomes are hunger, poverty, impoverishment, penury and wars.

Some people blame the western world for most of the suffering, pains and political instability in Africa and even in parts of Asia. I beg to disagree on this generalized concept. In our modern world every nation has the means and possibilities to steer the wheels of its progress independent of its colonial masters or former oppressors. What is needed is the proper diplomatic dispensation that pursues mutuality rather than supremacy or vengeance as we saw in Zimbabwe. At this stage and age of globalization, I strongly believed that each nation is shaped not only by foreign influences but also by the thoughtfulness, soundness and sanity of its leaders and politicians. The sense of belonging instilled in the citizenry also plays a key role in nation building.

The question of public service in relation to intelligence, reasoning, accountability, probity and sanity therefore becomes very important in the analyses of the woes of sub-Saharan African especially. What is wrong with sub-Saharan Africa? Why does the attention of the world have to remain fixated on poverty, diseases, corruption and the gross incompetence of the leaders, politicians and warlords of sub-Saharan Africa?

Some people also argued that it took the US and the British over 200 years to accomplish their stable democracies. This is simply lame excuse and idle talk to allow African leaders to spread their shallow intelligence in a jet-age world. What is clear is that the parameters to measure progress over the last 2 centuries have been dramatically transformed. We are now living in a technologically advanced world.

This is the age of computer advancement and no silly excuse can be offered to support retrogression and redundant Cognitivism. What took months or years to achieve 200 years ago can now be done in micro-seconds. Even when I was a little boy, I wrote letters and waited for weeks and months before getting responses. Do African leaders and their uninformed supporters have any idea how long it takes now to get a response for my electronic messages or chats? Give me a break! The global world is now a leveled playing field and one part of the world cannot continue to refer to the prehistoric timeline of countries like the US and Britain in order to ascertain when to achieve true greatness. With the kinds and nature of resources in Africa, it should be the wealthiest continent in theory and practice.

There is corruption everywhere in the world but the nature of the corruption in Nigeria and some other countries in Africa for example is unparallel. There are probably more than 90m people representing more than 50% of the population in Nigeria who are living on less than 1 dollar a day. This is the difference between corruption in Africa and other places. The effects are profound in Africa.

It amazes me when people compare corruption or its impact in my country Nigeria with other places. The institutions of governance are heavily compromised in Nigeria. What is expected is that people move in and out of institutions that are functioning and regulated. For example whether George Bush likes it or not he would vacate the White House in January 2009. Bill Clinton before him did the same without any bitterness. It has never been like that in Nigeria. It is always a case of someone forcing himself in and other people forcing him out. This is the failure of institutions and a serious questioning of our collective intelligence is always brought to the front when these anomalies come to play on the world stage.

But the anomalies are not unexpected. For instance there is absolute disorganization and disorientation in our attitudes in Nigeria. In the US election it is possible to see exactly how many people voted, their race, their gender and their ages. This is an impossible mission in Nigeria. From the scratch, the voters register lists are falsified and ghost names are on the lists. Underage voting is common practice in Nigeria. Above all, it just doesn’t matter about the irregularities because a caucus of people would eventually sit down and verbally decide who wins and who lost in Nigerian elections. In several cases, the political godfathers determine the case of the contestants and the amount of money that can be spent during the bargaining plays a key role. We have seen in Nigeria where someone who is not a contestant or a candidate won an election!!!

Nigeria is presently seeking political reforms while Kenya and Zimbabwe are making do with unified corrupt governments. It is time to have intelligent inputs and outputs in the governments of these countries. Their progresses or failures will continue to inspire the rest of Africa. But there is an urgent need for re-awakening in Africa. From Congo, to Uganda, to Nigeria, to South Africa, to Kenya, to Zimbabwe, to Angola, to Rwanda, to Somali, to Eritrea, to Ethiopia, to Togo, to Ivory Coast, to Senegal, to Gambia, to Niger and to the rest of Africa. It is time to wake up. The victory of Barack Obama should henceforth be used as a new yardstick for the election processes for Africa.

No one should see this as an impossible mission unless we want to tell ourselves and the rest of the world that Africans are not intelligent. Do we want to tell the world that we are incapable of running smooth democracies? How much time does Africans need to be able to ascertain their independent which they fought for? Some diligent leaders fought and earned independence for Africa. Haven’t we allowed their labours to be in vain?

Africa cannot copy the exact form of democracy that we see in America but what is wrong with conducting peaceful elections? What is wrong with transferring power peacefully from one democratically elected president to another? What is wrong in building institutions that will stand for all time while allowing people and leaders to pass through them? What is wrong with trying for once to end the reign and spread of tyranny in Africa? What is wrong if African countries like Nigeria start to use the power of governance to create and spread wealth among the people? What is wrong with ending the wars and poverty across Africa?

Hopefully the presence of Obama in the White House and on the world stage will inspire Africa positively. Time will tell.