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Let me be candid. As much as I admire you, Mr.
President, for your good fortune, and statesmanlike mien, and as much
as I am intrigued by the remarkable nature of your rise to the
Presidency, I am sometimes tempted to think the worst – that you don’t
have much to offer Nigeria. That nagging voice of doubt tells me that
you are only more of the same.

Struggling to be heard amidst the din of that
negative voice is another; a smaller, but more reasonable voice,
insisting that you can make a huge difference; that you can be to
Nigerians what Barack Obama was (and I daresay still is) to millions of
Americans: one more reason to believe in our country, at a time when
cynicism is the new enthusiasm.

I have made a decision to listen to the smaller voice, and am therefore more than willing to give you the benefit of doubt.

Tied to that ‘benefit’, however, are words of
advice, obviously unsolicited, but wholeheartedly and genuinely offered
– a ‘7-point agenda’ for you to aspire to live by:

1. Vacancy: Radical reformers! – One thing former
President Obasanjo will always be credited for is the vibrancy of
government agencies under his watch – NAFDAC, EFCC, NCC, BPE, CBN, etc.
Baba sought the finest talent, wherever they existed, employed them,
empowered them, and allowed them to shine. That’s how we came to know
of Dora Akunyili and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Oby Ezekwesili and Nuhu
Ribadu.

Stick to that winning formula. It paid off handsomely for Obasanjo; sadly,Yar’Adua somehow never quite managed to pull it off.

2. Surprise, surprise. The greatest failing of our
leaders is that they have lost the capacity to surprise us. They are so
damn predictable – throwing sirens and pot-bellies around, closing down
airports because they are VIPs, generally acting like they are doing
the electorate a favour, spending all their time fighting real and
imagined opponents, Surprise us Mr. Prez. Don’t take yourself too
seriously. Life is short. Power is transient. Transparency and
accessibility are key. How about a weekly unscripted 30-minute
television and radio address to Nigerians,to establish a visceral
connection between the governer and the governed. Every week tell us in
unambiguous, cliché-free English what concrete steps you have taken
over previous week to make Nigeria a better place. For our self-esteem
and our morale Nigerians need a President who’s not only performing,
but also seen to be performing.

3. Tame the Dame. Let your wife know that it’ll no
longer be business as usual. We don’t need another Turai or Maryam (or
‘Mariam’,for that matter!) in this country. Tell Patience not to bother
calling any meetings of Nigerian, or African, first ladies. Tell her to
jettison any plans to launch a pet project. We’ve had enough. Let her
use her clout to support already existing projects, especially private
sector ones. There are orphanages and women shelters and cancer
foundations all over the country. Let the first lady support them
wholeheartedly, not compete with them for attention!

4. And those gallivanting Governors. Politely but
very firmly put them in their place. It’s very annoying to see a bunch
of governors – emblems of unadulterated mediocrity – strutting the land
in the name of a ‘Governors’ Forum’ and portraying themselves as ‘power
brokers’. Let them know that their constitutional and moral
responsibility is to provide good governance in their states, not run a
purposeless Governors Forum or turn Abuja into a holiday resort. And
while you’re at it kindly put an end to those jamborees a.k.a ‘state
visits’ on which those same governors squander public funds to take you
on painstakingly packaged ‘sightseeing’ trips around their capitals,
and make you commission white elephant projects. Step away from the
sanitised, festooned paths. Pay unscheduled visits. Allow yourself to
come face to face with the poverty and want that have blighted the land.

5. Click ‘n flip. Obasanjo boasted that he never
did it (which is probably why he had not the slightest idea how much
his 3rd term agenda riled Nigerians). Yar’Adua may have had no energy
to do it (and Turai evidently didn’t). But you must. It is imperative
that you pay attention to what Nigerians are saying – online and in the
newspapers. We are a garrulous lot, in love with the sound of our own
voices, but you can’t afford to not listen to us. Never depend on aides
to feed you second-hand. (Need I ask you to make www.234next.com the
default homepage on the presidential Blackberry’s browser?)

6. Show us your friends…: the legacies of
Obasanjo and Yar’Adua will forever be tainted by the transparently
shady characters they surrounded themselves with – the Andy Ubas and
James Iboris and Michael Aondoakaas to name a few. Keeping those kind
of people around you is the fastest and surest way to self-destruct.

7. Tune the talk. I listened to your inaugural address as President, and was disappointed by the surfeit of platitudes therein.

I desperately hoped to see you break free from the prepared speech
and speak to Nigerians, ‘man to man and woman’. I want you to look us
in the face as a nation and tell us something inspiring. True, you are
no Obama,and will never be, but I think you can learn a lot from paying
attention to the American. Tired speeches are a hallmark of tired
thinking. Hire new speechwriters, try out a teleprompter; and endeavour
to speak more from the heart.

Recently
I travelled through a state capital and found in the middle of the
city, a huge wide billboard, which towered high above with the image of
one person sprawled across it. It was the picture of the state governor
so thickly decked in traditional attire, complete with a walking stick.
He looked more like a character out of a Nollywood movie, smiling down
at onlookers in that I have arrived manner of Nigerian big men, with a
bold inscription “Imagine another four years” taking up the remaining
space on the board.

Four years of what I asked myself?

I took a look
around me, at the people who daily walked past this giant billboard,
who without options look up at the smiling face on the billboard as
they walk past, the people whose imaginations the governor is so bent
on tickling.

The people didn’t
seem to be smiling back. Not the little girl of school age with a bowl
of pure water on her head who was timing the flow of traffic in order
to cross over to the other side of the road in good time to appeal to
the people getting off the bus:

Not the young lady
holding out a long strip of yellow, green and blue cards from under an
umbrella few yards away beckoning me to recharge my phone. All I could
see was a struggling young girl trying to pinch out a living, her
beauty concealed by years of sitting out at the mercy of the elements:

Not the lady
traffic warden who was having a tough time directing the traffic. Her
face showed tiredness, her shoes too. Her yellow uniform was now
tending towards pale. She was cursing and showing her five fingers to
the bus drivers who showed her theirs too as they sped away, coughing
out thick black smoke, like chimneys:

Not the two boys,
no more than thirteen who were exchanging punches right under the
billboard of the smiling governor. All that clawing and bickering meant
some issue of survival had led to the fight.

I looked back at the huge billboard and I asked my self again, another four years of what?

Perhaps if the
governor had spent the last four years doing his best to translate the
billions accruing to the state into schools to take the children off
the streets; into jobs that ensured their parents wouldn’t have to send
them out to the streets; into traffic lights to ease the work of the
lady warden; into well tarred roads that wouldn’t create such herd of
noisy smoky cars and impatient uncultured drivers. Perhaps if the
governor had done all this already, the next four years wouldn’t have
been so difficult to imagine.

But he didn’t. He
spends more time in Abuja than in the state capital. He goes off to the
ends of the earth, flying first class with a large delegation, which
includes his girlfriends, chasing what he calls foreign investment.
When he is around, he speeds past in his noisy convoy. When the workers
ask for more pay, he complains about dwindling fortunes and the global
economic melt down.

And while we
seemingly recline and resign to fate, with the opposition joining him
in Government House to drink sparkling wine in fine glasses, he doesn’t
leave us alone in peace. He follows us around, right to the streets to
rob pepper into the festering injury, to mock us and tickle our
imagination, requesting of us the use for his own benefit the very last
article we own, our thought.

“Imagine another four years!” I refuse to imagine sir.

These are the kind
of billboards, such damning symbols of government, erected from our
common wealth that I believe Wole Soyinka once called on us to throw
food morsels at every morning religiously before going out to find a
living. Perhaps it is apt to resound that call today. A call to act out
our denouncement of non performing governments, to voice out our
frustrations which we’ve held up for too long in our hearts, to reject
the perpetuation of our misery, to say no to another four years: to say
enough is enough.

We have today, a
window of opportunity to decide what happens in the next four years.
Maurice Iwu who superintended the last electoral hoax that gave us the
likes of the governor on the billboard has been removed. The electoral
reforms or at least some of what is left of the Uwais panel report
seems to be heading into our law books and most importantly the new
President Goodluck Jonathan has promised on more than one occasion to
organise an election in which votes will count and will be counted. Its
now up to us to take the right decisions the very first of which is to
ensure we are registered to vote. INEC says it’s an ongoing process at
every Local Government office nationwide.

Let’s equip ourselves to rephrase the line on the billboard. Let’s
ask the governor and his like across the country “Imagine life outside
Government House”. Yes we can.

When last week I was confronted with a litany of deaths – the
death of a brother-in-law, the death of a friend 12 days after his wedding, the
death of a poet-friend Esiaba Irobi, and then the death of a president – I
thought of the myth of how death entered the world and became “homeless.” Amos
Tutuola’s version of the myth in The Palm-wine Drinkard tells us that the
palm-wine drinkard went to Death’s house, captured and brought him to the
world, an assignment he had to carry out in order to get information from an
old man (also identified as a “god”) concerning the whereabouts of his dead
tapster.

If one were as adventurous as Tutuola’s palm-wine drinkard, one
would have set out for “Dead’s town” in search of these dead Nigerians,
especially the poet, Esiaba Irobi, whose friendship and professional
interaction one had enjoyed over many years. Searching for a dead poet in
“Dead’s town” may appear the craziest of all expeditions but perhaps it would
help one to be cured of the fear of being called upon suddenly to remove the
garment of flesh and move into another realm of intelligence.

Searching for the dead, one must acknowledge, is indeed part of
the traditional Igbo performance at funerals. Usually, it is the peers of the
deceased, or more specifically members of the deceased’s age-group, that lead
the search team to locations such as the marketplace, the village square, or
the stream. These are considered the most likely places where the spirits of
the dead also visit to conduct their business.

The ritual performance of looking for the dead relative or
friend is merely a way of demonstrating to the dead how much they are missed.
Certainly those looking for their deceased relatives in the market place,
chanting “Iwe, Iwe di anyi n’obi,” would break into a run if they should catch
a glimpse of the spiritual or physical forms of those they are searching for
buying and selling.

I should think that it is in our hearts that we have to search
for and talk with our dead relatives and friends, to deal with the
“homelessness” of death, instead of running away from “him” like the old man
who set the palm-wine drunkard on the difficult task of binding and bringing
death to him.

Culturally, not many people would want to discuss their own
impending deaths, or their desire to interact with the dead. We normally
postpone such thoughts, or banish them from our minds entirely. Many of us
believe that it is better for our death to just happen. There is no need to
think about it or prepare for it.

Tell members of your family that you will die next year and some
break into tears, others filled with rage scold you and warn you to stop
thinking such an “evil” thought. Some may also try to exorcise the devil that
is making such “evil” suggestions to you, introducing the power of logos: “I
reject it in Jesus’ name!” Such expressions of anger and fear are perfectly in
line with the discovery by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (in her On Death and Dying)
that individuals facing death (their relatives inclusive) normally exhibit five
phases of reconciliation with their circumstances, in the following order:

(1) The stage of DENIAL and ISOLATION, as demonstrated in the
expression “No, it cannot be true,” or “it cannot be me!” (2) The stage of
ANGER, as manifested in “Why me?” responses; (3) The stage of BARGAINING, in
which we try to see if death could be postponed, at least on the basis of good
behaviour, or for some unfinished business; (4) The stage of DEPRESSION, for
instance for impending losses; and (5) The stage of ACCEPTANCE, the stage of
resignation, often expressed in “I cannot fight it any longer” or when the
dying person calls a friend or relative to whisper, “This body is no longer
mine; I have to go.” The search for a dead friend or peer, as performed in
traditional Igbo funerals, is perhaps a manifestation of that human resistance
to the reality of death and dying. We, as searchers, are angry that such a
death should occur, angry that we should be the ones affected and not other
people.

Along with John Donne the poet we proclaim, “Death, thou shall
die,” as part of the expression of anger and depression. It appears we find it
difficult to reconcile with our reality that we must move on. I suspect that if
I should meet the deceased that I am searching for, he would likely laugh and
point out to me that he is free now, and that the real tragedy is that of my
forgetting that I would, one day, and at any time, continue the journey out of
the flesh.

Death, indeed, is a lonely business. One dies alone, even in the
midst of a multitude.

One goes with nothing, not even one’s skin. One does not even
remember one’s name, I guess. So, that means that one does not even go with
one’s name. Esiaba has just beaten me to it. Someday, it will be my turn and I
will go alone.

Nigeria’s
preparation for the FIFA World Cup has never been anything to rave
about. From beginning to end it was characterised by lapses, which for
the most part were avoidable.

The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), the
country’s football governing body, which normally ought to drive the
process to ensure that Nigeria puts up a decent showing at the global
tournament, somehow manages to make simple things like appointing a
coach for the squad and organising friendly matches to enable the
technical crew assess the form and fitness of players, look incredibly
difficult.

While the build-up to our three previous
appearances in 1994, 1998 and 2002 were chaotic to say the least, they
appear hi-tech and extremely organised compared to what we are
witnessing now with regard to our preparations for this year’s World
Cup in South Africa, which begins in exactly one month’s time.

The 2002 edition of the Mundial, which is on
record as being the shoddiest in terms of organisation, has come out
smelling like roses. When then Eagles coach Amodu Shuaibu was fired
with five months to the tournament and Adegboye Onigbinde was handed
the reins and Nigerians despaired, the leadership of the NFF (then NFA)
managed to arrange a number of friendly matches before the squad
departed for the tournament, which was held in Korea/Japan.

A similar scenario plays out today. By a quirk of
fate Amodu, who returned as coach of the squad in 2008 following the
exit of German Bert Vogts, was relieved of his appointment after
guiding the team to qualify for the World Cup. Former Sweden coach,
Lars Lagerback was appointed in his stead.

The process that threw up the Swede was
exasperatingly convoluting to the football faithful who wanted the
process speeded up to afford the new coach time to shake up the squad,
which many Nigerians agree appeared listless during both the qualifiers
for the World Cup and the 2010 Nation Cup in Angola in January.

As it turns out, we are paying for that delay. The
time wasted in naming the new coach and the seeming inability of the
leadership of the football federation to arrange even one quality
friendly match for the Eagles mean that with thirty days to the World
Cup, Nigerians do not believe that their national team can square up to
their opponents.

And they can hardly be blamed. While Nigeria’s
group opponents, Argentina, Greece and South Korea, named their
provisional squads weeks ago, Nigeria’s tentative squad for the
tournament was released only last night.

How Lagerback arrived at the list will continue to
exercise the imagination of football fans who know that unlike other
coaches going to the World Cup, the Swede has not had any personal or
professional interaction with the players since he took on the job in
late February.

Now, that this list is out and the major football
leagues where our players ply their trade in Europe have either ended
or will end this weekend, Lagerback needs to force the issue of
friendly matches with the NFF. He must extract a commitment from them
to keep faith with already proposed friendly games with Saudi Arabia,
North Korea and Colombia to enable him get a feel of his squad or watch
them get battered in South Africa.