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In a little over a
month, Nigerians will be going to the polls to elect politicians into
positions ranging from state lawmakers to the president of the country.
The process, starting with last year’s amendment to the electoral laws
and the constitution of a new leadership for the Independent National
Electoral Commission (INEC) has been long and exacting.

Along the way,
political parties have conducted their primaries and have picked their
candidates, although some are still bogged down in the mire of legal
challenges. On average, it would appear as if the quality of the
candidates is generally better than at the last general elections. In
any case, the presidential candidates are definitely more exciting.

Among the leading
candidates are the incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan and his deputy, Namadi
Sambo who, between them, have a PhD and a degree in Architecture; Nuhu
Ribadu and his vice, Fola Adeola, both consummate professionals in
fields of security and finance, respectively; Muhammadu Buhari and his
running mate, Tunde Bakare, combining experience in running a nation
and a church and Attahiru Barafawa and John Odigie Oyegun, both of whom
have experience of governing states.

But, somehow, a
casual visitor to Nigeria might not actually realise that a national
election is round the corner, unless, that is, he or she attends one of
the rallies being up by the ruling Peoples Democratic Party. By this
week, Messrs Jonathan and Sambo must have been round the country at
least twice since they launched their presidential campaign three weeks
ago. Their wives, leading a strategic campaign for female voters, have
been equally hard at work touring states and soliciting for votes for
their spouses.

Sadly, none of the
other presidential candidates has even left the starting block. The
Action Congress of Nigeria just this week agreed on a running mate for
its presidential candidate and the two men will then have to work out a
campaign schedule – most probably from next week at the earliest. The
All Nigeria Peoples Party is yet to agree on a committee to plan its
presidential campaign and it is still unclear when this will be done –
and how soon the party’s presidential campaign will actually roll out.

Things are not any
better with the Congress for Progressive Change where Messrs Buhari and
Bakare also appear locked in operational issues of when to launch their
campaign. It is worse with the other, smaller parties.

If any of these
opposition parties start their presidential campaign by next week, they
will already have been behind the PDP by close to three weeks. It is
possible that they could put up such professional shows that could
eclipse what the PDP candidates have done, but the signs are not good.

In sum the
opposition has by omission, presented the ruling party with the unfair
advantage of an early start with their tardiness, and playing catch-up
should be a hard trick to pull – especially as they are weaker than the
PDP anyway.

This is a major
disservice to the electoral process and the expectation of Nigerians
who expect a robust campaign going by the calibre of the candidates. It
also shows up the soft underbelly of Nigerian democracy – the weakness
and internal disarray of opposition parties.

All too soon,
these politicians will resort to name-calling to hide their lack of
preparedness and focus. There has been a bit of that already. Last
week, the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, a coalition of
small opposition parties accused the PDP of plotting to rig the April
elections. This might have some truth in it, but it would have been
helpful if Nigerians were to see the CNPP and its affiliate groups
actually going round the country to solicit for their votes.

Harrying opponents
is an accepted tactic in politics, but that could hardly be the raison
d’être for the existence of a political group.

Say what we may
about the PDP and its brand of its politics, its presidential
candidates have made a respectable show of campaigning for votes and
selling their candidacy to Nigerians. It is already looking as if they
are the only players on the field, save for occasional press statements
from their opponents. If we knew what the others had to offer, we could
then compare notes and vote according to our best judgment. We can only
do that if the opposition parties’ candidates start campaigning.

Yes, Libya is the rave right now, but I can’t get the people of Egypt out of my head.

I haven’t been to
many countries, but Egypt (make that Cairo) was one of my most
remarkable. It is not just a city of culture and history; it is a city
of breathless, relentless, liberating energy.

With elaborate
weddings on weekdays and hawkers ready to haggle you to a standstill,
Cairo is one of those poetic clichés – a sprawling, energetic mega city
with an aversion to sleep.

However, even as I
have romanticised the city, I cannot ever forget the plunging sense of
despair I sensed. I cannot claim to know the soul of a people based on
a 4-day trip, but, such as I could see, the Egyptian society had broken
down – people living in debilitating poverty, an absence of civic life,
a lack of shared values, a choking sense of every man for himself.

So when the people
of Egypt came out in their thousands, pitched their tents – literally –
against their leaders, and didn’t move until something gave, I
understood.

Many of the
circumstances that led to that explosion are exactly present in
Nigeria: widespread neglect, corruption in everything from police to
politics, stagnancy despite widespread resources, a lack of true
democracy, disrespect for the people, and almost 80 per cent of the
population poor.

But the tinderbox was Hosni Mubarak, the one symbol of all that was wrong.

Nigerians haven’t
had such a villain. Each time our anger is about to boil over like it
did in Egypt, a band-aid is put on it – an IBB ‘steps aside’, an Abacha
dies, an Abdulsalami hands over, an Obasanjo loses grip, a Yar’Adua
dies. You see, our politicians are much wiser than you think – rather
than disrupt the balance of power, they consistently offer an expiation
to quench our blood thirst, and we are soon back to our jolly lives.
Why, they even seduced Tunde Bakare to join their political rat race.

Because our anger
is so frequently evened out we never get to that boiling hot rage that
should bring big change – we have been duped with small, very small,
changes that make no real difference.

But, no matter how
much we intellectualise it, nothing ever really changes incrementally.
This is where I think writers like Okey Ndibe miss the point when they
turn up their noses at suggestions for radical – even violent – change
and believe small, steady changes in civil service bureaucracy,
electoral reform and anti-corruption laws will solve the problem.

The problem with
Nigeria is a culture that believes nothing can change and nothing will
change. Because no one believes Nigeria will make the bend, everyone is
just looking for a piece of the large pie. It’s a culture – and people
drive the culture. And no, the people will not change – you have to
remove them from the system.

The change has to be big, it has to be bold and it has to be drastic.

The Jerry Rawlings
example is a worn cliché, but it exactly mirrors the kind of change we
need – maybe not bloodshed, but something so radical, so fundamentally
disruptive, that it irrevocably changes the balance of power – in
favour of the people.

We should stop
comparing ourselves to America. Barrack Obama might have come in by the
ballot box, but this in a society already founded on fundamental,
disruptive change. To even compare their solutions to ours is
intellectual laziness – its society is not as fundamentally flawed
(politically and economically) and the work had already been long done.

We need to stop
allowing ourselves to be done in by an army of duplicitous motivational
speakers, pastors, conflict resolution experts and other
“change-workers” who insist that real change can come without real
sacrifice. All we need is a “Nigerian Dream” they say. Oh please. Is
there a “Ghanaian Dream”?

I suspect that in
our hearts we know that April 2011 will not give us the change we
really need. But we focus all our attention on it – media, civil
society, government – because we are not yet ready for the heavy
lifting.

And that is what
scares me senseless. It took Egypt three decades; the people of
Tunisia, one decade; the people of Libya, four.

Do we have to wait
that long? Are we going to wait until one man rules us for decades
before we say enough? Or will we get angry now like the American Tea
Party, and stop the government in its tracks, before it all gets really
bad?

Can we find our anger? Can we?

I’m in Thelma
Bello’s kitchen learning to cook Ntutulikpo. My teacher is a quick
elderly lady called Mrs. Ekpata. Her mother taught the soup to Aunty
Thelma, now she is teaching it to me.

I can tell from the
way she sometimes looks at me that she is wondering what planet I
dropped from. I have never heard of Oziza leaf (!)? I don’t like
crayfish (!)? I don’t know that old Ogbono seeds are more valued than
the new ones (!)?

I feel compelled to remind her that I am Yoruba. She is not moved.

Ntutulikpo belongs
to the Ekoi people. It is difficult to describe who the Ekoi are
because wherever you find the magnificent Oyono, the Cross River, you
will find them. The Oyono begins as Manyu in Cameroon, flows deep and
wide, turning like a heavy cloak in a storm through the Cross River
lands named after its waters, owns a mouth in the Atlantic Ocean and is
joined to the Aloma River in Benue State by a tributary.

This is a mere
sketch of the river’s physical boundaries. If we wanted to commit to a
geographical location, the Ekoi are an extreme south eastern Nigerian
people, coastal people, not only in Biase, in Akampka and in Bahumono
local government areas in Cross River, but also in Cameroon and in Igbo
coastal lands.

The thing about
melon, or Egusi is that most of the time, we underestimate it, and for
the remaining time, we argue about who really, really owns the
methodology for cooking it in a particular way. Egusi is as universal
and as diversified as the Nigerian yam. We grow over three hundred
different species, and the Egusi vine is belligerent, covering miles of
sandy ground in a matter of days.

Mrs. Ekpata
describes at least three novel ways of cooking melon seeds: I like the
sound of the melon cake, a savoury snack made from ground melon seeds
pounded in a mortar, moulded and steamed on plantain leaves in a
covered pot, then roasted on an open fire until it is crumbly like a
biscuit.

Then there is melon
moinmoin made out of the same ground, lightly pounded seeds mixed with
whatever one desires, a little water, wrapped in leaves and steamed.
The moinmoin must be finished in an oven to get the best aromatics.

The Ntutulikpo is
made from similarly ground melon seeds. The original traditional seeds
used were a green specie. For the average pot of soup, one needs two
cups of melon seeds. After the seeds are ground, they are put in a
wooden mortar with some chopped onion, some freshly ground pepper, salt
and a tiny amount of water. The ground seeds are pounded with a pestle
until melon oil separates from the seed and the mixture holds together
and is pliable. This takes about twenty minutes of hard work.

The oil is drained
and can be used for frying or cooking some other dish. The mixture is
divided and molded into small balls and they are carefully placed in a
pot of boiling water that is salted and sprinkled with a few slivers of
onion. Depending on the size of the Egusi balls, the boiling can take
up to three hours. They are cooked when they are a uniform white colour
on the inside of the balls.

The Ntutulikpo is
usually cooked for festive occasions, for weddings and funerals and at
Christmas, so traditionally one would have boiled a great big pot of
every type of available meat. At Aunty Thelma’s we had stockfish,
smoked fish (Inara), beef, pomo and shaki that had been prepared ahead
of time.

The melon seed
balls took about an hour and a quarter to cook. By this time, the water
in which they were cooked had reduced considerably, so the Egusi and
its water, was added to the meat and its stock and everything left to
simmer for a while. Half a cup of ground crayfish was added and a
little palm oil: Enough to colour the soup nicely, but not enough to
make it oily.

The Ntutulikpo can
be thickened with either Ogbono or with Ewedu leaf. Apparently, Ewedu
(Jute plant leaves) grows well on the banks of the Cross River. The
thickener is required because the molded melon no longer has the
ability to hold the soup together. The soup is finished with chopped
Oziza leaf. For a soup with no “draw”, yam can be used as a thickener
instead of Ogbono.

The Ntutulikpo is a
velvety soup. The Ogbono does not so much give it the “draw” quality as
much as smoothness on the palate. The palm oil adds to the aromatics as
well as reddening the soup’s face appropriately. For me meat was
completely superfluous because the Egusi balls have a meaty texture
from the pounding and long boiling.

Ntutulikpo is customarily served with pounded yam, but I was happy
to eat it on its own. Texturally, it is an extremely sophisticated
soup, not to talk of the aromatics; nutty Egusi, heated palm oil,
sweetish, earthy Ogbono, underlying onion and the mint/basil smack of
the Oziza leaf…

I was at a dinner
party in Kathmandu when a journalist friend looked at her cell phone
and made a joyous announcement: “Mubarak’s gone!”

“Really?”

“He left Cairo for
Sharm el-Sheikh. The army’s taken charge,” she said. No one at that
Feb. 11 party, neither the foreign-educated Nepalis nor the expatriates
who call Nepal home, had any connection to Egypt. Yet the victory felt
personal. A bottle of wine appeared and we toasted Egypt.

As protests spread
in Bahrain, Yemen, Iran and Libya, what is emerging as the “Arab
Spring” continues to resonate here. Just five years ago, the world was
watching Nepal as it now watches the Middle East and we had our dreams
of democracy.

“I don’t know why,
but I love to see people revolting against their leaders,” Jhalak
Subedi, a magazine editor, wrote on Facebook.

“We Nepalis, we
grew up with political movements,” he explained over a cup of coffee.
He had came of age amid student politics, was even jailed in 1990 for
his activism. “Despite all our movements, we still haven’t been able to
have the kind of change our hearts are set on,” he said. “I think
that’s why we feel so happy when we see change taking place elsewhere.”

We also approach
world events seeking correspondences between our history and that of
others. India’s struggle for freedom from British rule inspired Nepal’s
first democratic movement in 1950. Forty years later, our second
democratic movement was energized by events farther off: the fall of
the Berlin Wall and the end of communism in Eastern Europe.

Our third and most
recent movement took place in 2006, when democratic political parties
and Maoist rebels united against King Gyanendra Shah, ending a 10-year
civil war. Millions of Nepalis participated in nonviolent
demonstrations in a show of support. Nineteen days after that, the king
relinquished power; two years later, a newly elected Constituent
Assembly abolished the 240-year-old monarchy with a near-unanimous
vote. With the democratic political parties and the Maoists vowing to
work together peacefully, a “new Nepal” felt attainable.

Five years later, it still has not taken shape.

Instead, we have
learned that it is easier to start a revolution than to finish one.
Overthrowing the monarchy was difficult, but institutionalising
democracy is harder still.

Our democratic
parties are inexperienced, deferring to “big brother” India on all
matters political. But India has backed an inflexible policy of
containing the Maoists. And the Maoists have also been unwilling to
compromise, holding on to their 19,000-troop army and their
paramilitary group, the Young Communist League, and refusing to turn
into just another political party.

The result has been a bitter polarisation between hard-liners of democratic and Maoist persuasion.

The May deadline
set for finishing our new constitution is less than 100 days away, but
the document remains in rough draft. The will to complete it – among
the democratic political parties and the Maoists, as well as in India –
appears to be wholly lacking.

And now Kathmandu
is rife with rumours that the Constituent Assembly – the country’s only
elected body – will be dissolved through a military-backed “democratic
coup.” Equally dismal scenarios in the public imagination are a return
to civil war, the escalation of localised conflicts or the rise of the
criminal underworld.

Whether or not the
worst comes to pass, it is clear by now that the democratic political
parties and the Maoists prefer to prioritise their own struggle for
power. They have left it to us to find our place in the world.

This, we
increasingly do by leaving. Unable to earn a living wage at home, up to
1,000 Nepalis are estimated to leave the country every day to work as
migrant labourers in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and elsewhere in the
Middle East and the Far East, often under very exploitative conditions.
As many as 6 million Nepalis live in India, and hundreds of thousands
more have migrated to the developed world. In London and New York and
Toronto, Nepali is now spoken on the streets.

“Those who could lead a new movement – you could call it the Facebook generation – have left the country,” says Subedi.

And there is no single tyrant against whom to direct a movement. What we have in Nepal is a “ganjaagol,” a mire.

“The thing about
movements,” Subedi says, “is that at a certain point, the ordinary
person experiences power. Beforehand and afterwards, nobody pays him
any attention. But at a certain point, the ordinary person feels his
own power.

‘’That feeling,” he says, narrowing his eyes. “That feeling … .“

He does not
complete his sentence, but we both know what he means. So many Nepalis
have experienced this giddy sense that change is possible.

For now, we watch
others in the Arab world feel their power. We wish them well, and worry
for their safety, and share in their victories.

They inspire us. They make us feel wistful, and also a bit envious.

Manjushree Thapa is the author, most recently, of the novel ‘’Seasons of Flight.

© 2011 The New York Times