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“But they were ready before you!” Snapped my father angrily,
early on March, 6, 1957.

I had innocently asked: “But Dad, why did the Gold Coast get
independence before us?” There are two tiny sovereign nations, Benin and Togo,
hanging like strips of spaghetti on the map between Ghana and Nigeria. Yet,
Nigerians feel their real neighbours are Ghana. A bonding factor of colonial
experience in the way we relate to other nationals is pervasive. So, we compare
and measure ourselves with Ghana all the time – in politics and economics,
football and highlife music, education and fashion, cocoa and now oil. Luckily,
it has been healthy rivalry tinged with mutual respect, unlike the state of
affairs with our brothers to the east. Nigeria and Cameroon nearly went to war
over the Bakassi peninsula, even though ethnographically, we are closer to
Cameroon than to Ghana.

I sometimes ask what matrix or criteria are used in measuring
the Ghana-Nigeria competition, but all I hear is a savage rebuke: “Go to Ghana
and see!” Clearly, we live in a comparative world. Physics, biology, geography
and many more subjects have their comparative modules. Every life process is
compared with the other. Yet, in most cases, there is no linearity, no
parameter applied in arriving at judgmental conclusions. Our world subsists on
subjectivity, parochialism, unnecessary competition and naked prejudice.

Meeting the Queen

James Robertson replaced John Macpherson at the Marina as the
ruler of Nigeria, and had the honour of welcoming Queen Elizabeth II to Lagos.
I’ve never seen a human with a head as massive as the new governor-general’s.
He looked like an ox, and I almost ran away in horror the day he visited our
school.

Queen Elizabeth II stepped out to be confronted by the
regimental band of the Nigerian Army that could not have looked smarter and
more professional. They smashed out God Save the Queen, before advancing
through a series of Prussian martial tunes on to the lilting Blue Bells of
Scotland and the melodious Old Calabar. It was a sunny day. A broad Union Jack,
one of the most beautiful flags in the world, fluttered gracefully in the sea
breeze of Lagos. The impressive Royal Yacht Britannia bobbed and bubbled on
anchor in the murky waters of Lagos harbour.

Elizabeth’s visit in 1956 was not the first by a royal to
Nigeria. Her uncle, Edward, the Prince of Wales, was here for a week in April,
1925. I heard stories about him from my parents that he was handsome. They did
not tell me about the king’s huge appetite for married women. There was genuine
fear in England that he was going to turn Buckingham Palace into a brothel.
Eventually, Edward VIII abdicated in 1936 after just one year on the throne,
when the British government objected to his marrying Wallis Simpson, an American
divorcee. She had two living ex-husbands! My mother thought it was great and
gallant for a king to leave his throne in order to marry the woman he loved. My
father just shrugged and withheld his opinion. I asked to know what a
“divorcee” was, but got slapped down by my parents.

What didn’t we see in the way of automobiles during the Queen’s
visit – Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Armstrong-Siddeley, Austin Princess and Daimler!
A Roll-Royce epitomises everything that imperial splendour and authority
represents – silence, reverence, dignity, austerity and quality. But of all the
cars I saw in colonial Nigeria, none impressed me more than the Humber Super
Snipe.

I’ve not seen one again since 1953. A shame the British car
industry doesn’t exist anymore! In her farewell speech, the embryonic Nigerian
Army was re-christened the Queens’s Own Nigeria Regiment by Elizabeth herself.
They were terrific when it came to ceremonial occasions; the soldiers all the
same height – slim, very dark, with slightly bowed legs. Each soldier looked
like the twin of the subaltern next to him. The regiment, in heavily-starched
Bermuda shorts, marched in step like mechanised toys. Not a single Nigerian
soldier at ceremonial parades in those days had a pot belly balanced on K-legs.

“Regiment,” which insinuates command subsidiarity or a component
of a larger unit, attracted criticism in Nigeria. The army of an independent
Nigeria was not going to be something like the Scottish or Welsh Regiment
within the UK armed forces. So, a change was effected to the Royal Nigeria Army
(RNA) under the last British commander, Major-General Welby-Everard.

I hear it said now and again that the most efficient black
soldier is the one commanded by a white officer? True or false, this naïve
belief could have contributed to the downfall of Nkrumah and Abubakar Tafawa
Balewa. One cardinal error the two men made was to retain their British chiefs
of staff, well into independence.

Despite open warnings from Tawia Adamafio in Ghana and Azikiwe
in Nigeria,

Major-Generals Alexander and Welby-Everard remained in charge of
the Ghana and Nigeria armies until 1961 and 1965 respectively. The two Britons
could not have done a good job. Once they left, the armies rebelled!

Champion of the world

“They said that Bassey has knocked him down! The commentator
said the man has got up! I’m not sure what they’re saying now. Eh-hem, now they
said the man is bleeding from the nose. I think the referee is stopping the
fight!” We didn’t wait for a confirmation, screaming, hugging one another, jumping
about like kangaroos. It had been a live commentary of the live commentary on
the night of June 24, 1957 at Uyo.

Our small, robust radio set was never loud enough. Someone, a
second commentator, had to stick an ear close enough to it for better audio,
and then translate the actual commentary to the rest of us. Over 50 people
crowded around this unreliable radio set on that night at the hall of the TTC,
the Teacher’s Training College.

Nigeria’s Hogan Bassey was fighting Cherif Hamia, the French
Algerian for the Featherweight Championship of the World in Paris. Tears still
well into my eyes today when I recall the Daily Times front-page headline of
the next morning that simply read, “Hogan Bassey, Champion of the World!” The
1950s were the golden period for black people in international sports. To my
generation of Nigerians, sports remain the ethos around which our lives are
built. When, in 1958, I returned from the interview for admission into Umuahia
Government College, my father was waiting anxiously, pacing about like a caged
lion on the platform at Aba Railway Station.

“So, how did it go? What questions did they ask you?” I told him
there were three white men:

the principal, Mr. Wareham; Mr. Wilson and Mr. Garrod. After
they confirmed my name, place and date of birth, Mr. Wareham began seriously,
that he had heard I played cricket, and did I know cricket was played at
Umuahia College? Would I continue to play if admitted? It was like a crown
counsel cross-examining a criminal. I answered the questions timidly, but in
the affirmative. The three men looked at each other, and then asked me to call
the next candidate. It had been such a brief encounter I thought something had
gone wrong, and these white men didn’t want to waste their time with me. On the
short train ride from Umuahia to Aba, I sat somewhat dejected.

“Ahhh,” concluded my father, “then you’ve passed!” How? It was
in 1952, when my father was at University College, London and he sent two
cricket bats, a ball and some linseed oil to condition the bats, through the
district officer of Owerri, Mr. Mann to my brother and me. It resulted from a
letter my mother wrote to him that we used the branches of coconut trees for a
bat, and old tennis balls to play cricket. My brother got into Umuahia in 1954 and
was regular in the first team by 1958. The news about a younger brother, still
in primary school, who could use a cricket bat, had filtered into the school.

I kept a scrap book in which sports clippings from the Daily
Times, the West African Pilot, the overseas Daily Mirror and Illustrated London
News were stuck. There is no doubt in my mind over who qualifies to be the most
celebrated Nigerian footballer of all time – Teslim Balogun! He was, simply,
Thunder Balogun to everyone and for a striker to bear such a frightening name
speaks volumes of his exploits, and how goal-keepers must have suffered.

Three important landmark records made the 1950s memorable for me: that West
Indian side with Frank Worrell, Everton Weekes and Clyde Walcott beat England
in a cricket test series, winning at Lords, the cricket citadel; Brazil won the
football Jules Rimet trophy ( the FIFA World Cup) in 1958. There were black
players in their team – Pele, Didi, Djalma Santos and Garrincha. In the same
year, the West Indian, Garry Sobers set a world batting record of 365 not out
against Pakistan. It was a wonderful decade!

For a certified
glutton, it is somewhat contradictory that I should have the ability to
happily live off three foods: I don’t have to eat red meat or bread. I
rarely ever eat chicken. If I were kidnapped at Ikot Ekpene and carried
off to some undisclosed location, like a friend of mine was, my captors
would only have to feed me small creamy yellow Yoruba bananas,
baby-gourd shaped avocadoes (with a little kosher salt) and gourmet
chocolate (with pepper, please). Some brown rice crackers would go well
with the avocado. I’m not at all fussy. Stewed stockfish is a new
passion for me. It took me over 35 years to befriend that terrifying
smell that lingers on your lips and fingers. Or to get used to the
strain stockfish puts on your teeth; the way the fish fills the space
between them until they feel like they are being pushed out of their
roots. This does not mean that I now like the smell of stockfish, only
that I have turned my attention to that graceful collapse of the
stockfish when it is left sitting in hot soup for a couple of hours. I
eat it out of the pot, so no one will ask me for some.

The idea of
cinnamon could only have come out of God’s mind. Fried plantain, in the
words of Amma Ogan’s father, is the food of the gods. A combination of
fried plantain and cinnamon is a sin. I love fresh cinnamon sticks, and
there is nothing like the big sweet warm woody spicy aroma of fresh
cinnamon. Like pepper, it goes in almost everything that I cook: in my
morning coffee with honey, used as a two-day-long marinade for chicken,
generously sprinkled over boiling meat, added to a lazy pot of plain
basmati rice with turmeric fennel and bay leaf…devoured just plain
like that. A seasoning for fresh catfish simmered in palm oil, and a
delicate highlight in porridge made with potatoes and cabbage.

My favourite
cooking oil is coconut oil, never mind those naysayers who say it will
give you a cardiac arrest. I have a clandestine source in a West
African country where you go, sit under wise coconut trees and watch
the locals process the freshest, most incredible smelling coconut oil
under the sun. The aroma of coconut oil poured into a hot pan is a
revelation, a little cinnamon added and, yet again, one is sinning. My
stews, against my proffered advice to others, have become a dogmatic
affair. They must always be cooked in an oven. Cooking them is a
longwinded affair that frustrates those waiting to eat, but at the end,
it is so smooth on the palate that you can just drink it like soup.

Okra soup is my
ultimate comfort food, cut in large chunks and cooked briskly with hot
fragrant peppers, onions, shinenose fish belly and freshly harvested
ugwu. The face of my food must unfailingly have colour; palm oil red or
turmeric or brown, or green, never without specks of fennel or thyme or
pepper or something.

Blandness in food
equals queasiness. Garlic, ginger and onions are fundamental to most of
the meals I prepare. I cannot go one whole week without eating hot
peppers or else I become depressed. There is an exception to my love of
colour; fufu, with its excruciatingly beautiful, smooth texture. It is
a good thing that I don’t often stumble on fufu that doesn’t smell. I
would be as big as a house. Any ‘swallow’ that can be microwaved like
fufu can, in my opinion, deserves a national award.

Chocolate, and hot freshly fried puff puffs wrapped in the smell of
old newsprint, are my two greatest weaknesses. I can in fact resist
chocolate but never ever puff puffs. The near-perfect dessert is
chocolate mousse served with dashes of Tabasco. Our very own Milo mixed
with peppermint tea, Darifree, honey and a quarter teaspoon of hot
Cameroonian pepper is my beloved twist on a Starbucks beverage. I cook
every day; many days, six different meals. Every day, I resolve to
continue to cook my family fresh hot meals, and every day, I regret the
decision. If I could have any meal of my choosing right now, it would
be some sticky rice or ofada rice served with stewed smoked catfish and
a hot steaming moin moin with a whole egg in it. It is indisputable
that I love food.

In September 2010, John Campbell, the former
United States Ambassador to Nigeria, published a sensational article in
Foreign Affairs about the dire consequences of the elections failing.
He argued that “Logistical preparations for the 2011 elections have not
started. There is no voters roll, and despite the president’s signing
of an electoral reform bill, some of these reforms remain unimplemented
four months before the election. The election therefore will almost
certainly lack legitimacy, especially in the eyes of the losers. This
will further drive the country to the brink, especially if winners and
losers are defined by their religious and ethnic backgrounds.” The
response of most Nigerian commentators to Campbell was that the
elections would not be as bad as predicted and that Attahiru Jega and
his team have the capacity to organise an election that is
significantly better than what we have had previously. The day after,
what is our assessment of the elections that took place yesterday? The
three key words that have been repeated over and over again in relation
to the elections are free, fair and credible.

Writing a day before the elections, my feeling is
that in most parts of the country, the elections would be relatively
free. That is to say, most people would be able to go to their polling
unit and cast their vote without impediment. The situation of 2007 in
which, in so many states, voting did not take place and yet results
were declared, is most unlikely to happen. Nigeria, I believe, is on
the path to reclaiming the franchise for its citizens.

The fairness of the elections is maybe the most
problematic element. Fair elections are characterised by a level
playing field for all contestants. It has been clear that candidate
Goodluck Jonathan has had enormous resources to engage in a major media
blitz and run the most elaborate road show Nigeria has ever seen.
Obasanjo’s campaign, which was supported massively by resources raised
for the campaign by “Corporate Nigeria” pales into insignificance
compared to Jonathan’s. The President needs to explain to Nigerians,
the financial sources that are supporting his ongoing campaign.

The credibility of the elections is what we shall
be assessing as from today. In so doing, we are interested in knowing
whether the outcome of the various elections would correspond to the
choices made by a majority of Nigerians. In other words, has the
special procedure developed for the elections produced the desired
result?

To discourage electoral fraud, INEC has developed
a procedure in which accreditation takes place in the morning and
voting in the afternoon. Voters are allowed to stay at the polling
centres to observe the counting and posting of results. Civil society
has encouraged voters to stay, observe the counting, photograph the
results with their cell phones and share the results with their
neighbours to create widespread awareness of polling centre results. It
is unfortunate that the National Security Adviser to the President came
out openly to challenge the procedure. The constitution is clear that
the procedure for voting is determined by INEC. He should have played
the role of a responsible citizen, supporting the decision of the organ
that is constitutionally empowered to act.

Observers and political party agents have been
encouraged to follow the results to the ward, local government and all
other levels of collation of results, so that people know that the
results announced reflect actual results counted at the polling
stations. The day after is the time for reflections and assessment on
the use of the special procedure.

It has been clear since 2003 that the integrity of
Nigeria’s elections would only improve if more and more citizens
protect their mandate. The outcome of this election would depend on
Nigerians taking the opportunity offered by the special procedure to
defend their mandate. This is the path to preventing the fall over the
precipice that Campbell has spoken about.

So, about a month
or two ago, a coalition of musicians led by D’banj, who had sung for
the Goodluck Jonathan campaign; and Psquare, who had sung for the
Ibrahim Babangida campaign; gathered the press to a briefing in Ikeja,
Lagos and announced that they were committed to a series of free
rallies across the geopolitical zones of Nigeria to encourage young
people to register and vote.

Something wasn’t
quite right about it – and not just because, as someone who has been
part of civil society working on elections and youth participation over
the past year, the leading lights for this sudden campaign had been the
most reluctant to engage in any non-partisan process to get young
Nigerians involved.

The response across
social networks shared my surprise when the news hit. “We know those
who will do free shows,” one popular name tweeted. “And they have not
yet been born.”

I agreed – a
little. We know those who can do free shows – and they have been born,
they just weren’t the guys who were now involved in this free show. And
conspiracy theorists soon emerged – who swore that the presidential
candidate with the deepest pocket was using this supposedly
non-partisan platform to drive a deeply partisan agenda.

Nothing was heard about the concerts for weeks after.

In that period, a
group of young people (including me, for purposes of full disclosure)
began to work on the country’s first youth-centred political debate –
fixed for March 25. A debate that President Jonathan (you know, the big
pocket candidate) and Muhammadu Buhari had telegraphed a refusal to
attend.

Then, suddenly, on
the eve of the now famous NN24 national presidential debate, whispers
turned to frenzy: D’banj was going to be interviewing President
Jonathan on Silverbird Television. There’s no need to recount the
‘Dbanjing’ (a new word for nodding mumu-ly) that followed, or the
opprobrium that attended D’banj immediately after the interview – as
well as his cohort and boss, Don Jazzy, who made the mistake of trying
to defend the action on Twitter, against a band of angry young people.

As it is, and
obviously as a post-interview fallout, D’banj has not been seen
anywhere near the president. He is said to now have security due to
threats to his life, and his credibility as a youth advocate is
terribly impaired.

What was the
annoyance? Yes, there were some who would get angry anyway just because
D’banj exercised his constitutional right to endorse Mr. Jonathan – a
point which is really, er, pointless, as there is absolutely nothing so
terrible about the Jonathan candidacy that makes it impossible for him
to have true believers.

The anger was,
first, that D’banj positioned himself – wrongly and inappropriately –
as representing the youth. That was weird. Of course, he was buoyed by
his UN Youth ambassadorship, his The Future Awards for Young Person of
the Year and other such laurels, which he mentioned disingenuously
during the interview. But worse for him, was the advertorial that
followed – announcing one of those suspicious “It’s our time” free
concerts, to hold on the same day as the youth debate! Ah, the danger
of free shows.

The battle line was
drawn. Did D’banj and his sponsors really think young people are so
vacuous that they would choose music over a conversation about their
future?

There and then the concert’s buzz died.

Young celebrities
should be paying attention. Last year, when a host of singers and
actors began to gyrate for the candidates, while they denied that money
change hands, antennae were raised. But, of course, it is alright to
endorse a candidate or even do your job as a singer by entertaining at
his event.

The problem is when you get high on your own supply.

D’banj will yet
recover from this – but the elasticity of that recovery will lie in
whether this kind of, well, mistake becomes a pattern with him or
whether it is a one-off; a mistake to which he is entitled.

The choice he makes
will determine if his image goes the way of Onyeka Onwenu – who has now
sung for and ‘endorsed’ three consecutive PDP presidents, in addition
to that pesky concert for Sani Abacha in 1996 – or whether he will
build a powerful, activist brand, like his colleagues Banky W (who
shunned the concert) and MI, (who promptly returned the performance
fee, according to reports).

You see, folks might like it when you sing about the koko, but when push comes to shove, they know what the real koko is.

Are you
election-weary? Welcome to the club; you are in excellent company!
Surely, by now, you will have voted for your new (perhaps improved?)
members of the National Assembly? How did it go in your neighbourhood?
Did all the relevant agencies involved in the process keep faith with
all those clichéd promises we got? Of course, as the days roll by, we
will learn about the good, the bad, the absurd and the totally daft!
One can’t wait for the gist to start rolling in.

After all that has
been said and done by every candidate in these elections, one really
wonders if they ALL truly believed that they would win. And one is only
trying to be realistic here. The whole process is not as
straightforward as the election for prefect you participated in at
school; you each wrote the name of the person you wanted as prefect on
a piece of paper and placed it in a box or school beret (as the case
may be).

The names were then
compiled from the ‘ballot’ papers and the person whose name cropped up
the most was elected. Sounds so simple; you then wonder why, with a
process so straightforward, we insist on complicating matters.

If any school today
wants a particular person elected as prefect, who may not be the most
popular kid in school, they have enough styles to choose from. The
students may want a non-conformist prefect who will not succumb to the
whims of the school’s management. So the first thing is for the school
to make sure that the popular kid can never, will never and does not,
under any circumstances whatsoever, emerge as a prefect, so that there
will be no one voting for him. How? Simple!

What are the things
the popular kid is good at? Outlaw them; and make ONLY those things he
is bad at, the criteria for participating in the election. And make
these rules with a straight face, never minding how the perceived
unfairness and alleged injustice is viewed by anyone in the school.

There are many
reasons to proffer: “we are the owners of our school and we reserve the
right to decide who will fly the flag of the school. If anyone does not
like our criteria for deciding who is eligible to be a prefect, they
can go to another school and try their luck there. After all, where
were they when we were struggling to build the school to this level,
for them to just come from nowhere and want to be prefect, just like
that?”

Push it further:
“we are the owners of our school and we know the dream of our founding
fathers. We have decided that zoning exists in our school; as a result,
Master/Miss Popularity is hereby declared ineligible because he/she
comes from the wrong zone. It is important that ALL our students feel a
sense of belonging in this school to enhance the unity of our nation
from these formative years; they must feel that it is possible for
their own ethnic group to eventually become prefect one day. If anyone
does not like our zoning policy, they can move to another school that
does not zone students’ leadership positions, please!”

The idea is to work
from answer to question, and do it legally. Follow due process, then
you have no problem. You can add to and/or subtract from the criteria
at will; you own your school, so who is to stop you?

If Miss Popularity
has long hair, outlaw long hair as discriminating against female
students who are ‘blessed’ with short, thin, scanty or just bad hair;
if Master Popularity is athletic, outlaw ‘hunks’ as discriminating
against nerds. In fact, insist on ‘seriousness’, not sports, as the
MAIN consideration of the school’s electoral panel.

Is Miss Popularity
pretty? Outlaw beauty because it discriminates against those not
considered beautiful! Is the popular guy handsome? Outlaw good looks,
and justify it on the ground that not all world leaders are handsome
anyway; after all, handsomeness or beauty is no guarantee of a person’s
performance.

Remember you are
not saying anything new; you and everybody else have heard it all
before! Be prepared, however, for troublesome parents who know too
much. Call their bluff and tell them to meet you in court; or quickly
appoint their popular kid to a position with a great title: “Swagger
Prefect” in charge of all males getting the school swagger right or
“Beauty Prefect” in charge of all females aspiring to some level of
beauty. LOL!

The impending collapse of Laurent Gbagbo’s regime marks not just the end of that country’s nightmare: it has signalled the return of Nigeria as a voice and a leader of Africa.
When Gbagbo and his cronies declined last November to accept the results of an election in which he was beaten by eight percentage points, the Goodluck Jonathan administration took a principled stand and has been out in front ever since.
Foreign Minister, Odein Ajumogobia, has worked assiduously behind the scenes and publicly to shape the diplomatic environment, to isolate Gbagbo, to impose sanctions, and to point him in the direction of the exit.
This is no small matter. In the world of international diplomacy, no censure of a state or a leader is possible without the assent of the region. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), under the Chairmanship of President Jonathan, recognised Allasane Ouattara on December 8, and called on Gbagbo to honour the outcome of the electorate.
In early March, after months of doomed mediation and wrangling as it battled to speak with one voice, the African Union recognised Ouattara as the legitimate winner of the election and endorsed a plan for him to set up a national unity government.
On March 14, Ouatarra stopped in Abuja to meet with Mr. Jonathan, the one leader on the continent he chose to consult before heading back to Abidjan for the home stretch.
On Wednesday night, the United Nations Security Council voted for Gbagbo’s removal and for a freeze of all Gbagbo’s foreign assets. As in the other initiatives, this was driven by Nigeria, this time in concert with France.
While the military push from the reconstituted Republican forces was critical, the economic and financial sanctions and steadily growing isolation – in the teeth of vicious propaganda from the Gbagbo side – made the downfall inevitable.
At the end of the day, this has been a huge victory for democrats in Africa – and a boost to the continent’s democratic credentials.
It contrasts and counteracts places like Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe has lost election after election and deployed horrific violence against his opponents, but remains firmly in power.
The South African Development Community (SADC) has pussy footed around Mugabe’s abuses for years. Apart from never resolving the crisis, this sets a poor example. Every bad loser of an election that gets away with using violence and the instruments of state to stay in power encourages the next one. The line in the sand that was drawn under Gbagbo is of importance to more than Ivory Coast.
The firm leadership and deft diplomacy that Nigeria has shown is desperately needed in a continent that is crying out for leadership.
The AU represents a number of often conflicting and competing states, and is at its best as a mediator but it can no more take the lead than the European Union can. As has been shown recently in Libya, it is only states like France or the United Kingdom that can take the decisive steps, for better or worse, that actually make a difference.
There was a time when, for all their sins, Thabo Mbeki and Olusegun Obasanjo had a broader vision for Africa and were taken seriously in the councils of the world. But during the last four years there has been a vacuum in pan-African leadership – unless one would use that word to describe Muammar Gaddafi who as Chair of the African Union spent his time fantasising about a United States of Africa (with its capital in Libya).
Nigeria has a long and respectable reputation for peace keeping in Africa. But as everyone knows, the brand has been tarnished by military rule, corruption and the debacle of the 2007 election.
Nigeria under Umaru Yar ‘Adua took a backseat. A country of 150 million, a model and a challenge of Muslim and Christian co-existence, a holder of great strategic natural resources, the most populous country in Africa, was not afforded a lot of respect.
Since taking office last year, Mr Jonathan has turned that around – not with grand gestures but rather by showing Nigeria as a responsible citizen of the global community. Nigeria is building a case for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
It was, for instance, one of the OPEC members that stepped up to the plate to increase oil production to meet the shortfall when Libya exploded, easing the pain of billions of consumers around the world.
As a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, Nigeria voted to authorise the action that potentially prevented the slaughter of thousands of people in Libya. There are many who disagree with that position, and the armed intervention that followed, but at least it was a position. Nigeria stood up and was counted.
This is not to say that Nigeria’s prominence in global forums should be dependent on its remaining a reliable ally of the West. The country has to be judged on its strategic and human importance, and its ability to give voice to a billion Africans, especially on those issues that touch the continent.
To do that, Nigeria needs to put its own house in order. The economic growth that is forecast for the next few years, and that is forging a new and surging middle class, must be accompanied by social provision for the poor and the underclass. Nigeria cannot afford to be near the bottom of every social indicator.
And an election that is at the very least a marked improvement on 2007 is essential for Nigeria to be able to defend democracy on the continent, as it has in Ivory Coast.

Phillip van Niekerk is the former editor of South Africa’s Mail & Guardian newspaper

As Nigerians await the legislative election which
was postponed on Saturday and is due to take place tomorrow, it is
important to remind ourselves of the role of the legislature in the
democratic process.

The 1999 Constitution says that “the National
Assembly shall have power to make laws for the peace, order and good
government of the Federation or any part thereof with respect to any
matter included in the Exclusive Legislative List…” Without laws, a
democratic society, or any other society for that matter, is doomed.
The 17th century English philosopher, Hobbes, reminds us that without
laws, there can be no justice, and the only life available to citizens
will be a “nasty, brutish, and short” one.

We have in recent weeks been treated to a
semblance of activity from our National Assembly– the passing of the
Freedom of Information Bill, an Anti-Terrorism Bill, and the National
Tobacco Control Bill. We have no idea what spurred this seeming
awakening from a legislature that for most of its tenure has made the
headlines, not for its accomplishments, but instead for how much it has
cost the nation, and how obsessed it has been with self-gratification.

Perhaps the lawmakers realised that time was no
longer on their side, and that if they wanted to be judged kindly by
posterity then they had to start passing laws, which is what they were
elected to do in the first place. If that is the case, then they need
to be told that the realisation (of history’s looming judgement) has
come a little too late.

If only they had shown a dedication to duty from
the beginning. A look at some of the headlines and comments that have
accompanied our stories on the National Assembly in the last two years
will give a better idea of the kind of legislators Nigeria has been
burdened with since 2007 (not that their predecessors were any better):

‘An Assembly for looting’; ‘The luxury cars of our
lawmakers’; ‘National Assembly, the most expensive on earth’; ‘Our
National Assembly is not producing any laws’. In ‘An Assembly for
Looting’ (2009), our correspondents wrote: “If the citizens were to
dismiss the entire membership of the National Assembly and find other
uses for their money, our treasury will have nearly enough money to
fund the N88.5billion that President Umaru Yar’Adua plans to spend this
year on building power plants, so that children can do home work under
electrical lamps and not paraffin.”

With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that
the choice Nigeria made was to keep the profligate legislators and
instead dismiss our vision of a transformed power situation. Late 2010,
the Central Bank Governor disclosed that the National Assembly – made
up of less than 500 elected officials– was taking up 25 per cent of
“total government overhead.” Even for hardworking legislators, that
figure would be unjustifiable.

In June 2009, two years into their tenure, we
reported that the Senate had succeeded in passing only 15 of the 284
bills that came before it. At the state level, the situation is not
much better. Many State Assemblies are either firmly in the pockets of
the state governors, and thus employed for nothing more than
rubber-stamping of the governors’ decisions; or embroiled in a
cat-and-mouse relationship with the executive. There is the tragicomic
case of Ogun State, where the House has been split into two since 2010.
We watched as a minority group of nine senators (sympathetic to the
governor) met and announced the suspension of 15 members. They then
went ahead to elect, from amongst themselves, a new Speaker, who was
immediately recognised by the governor.

We hope that the incoming batch of legislators, at
federal and state levels, will make a clean break with the past. If the
federal legislators want to convince us that they are serious about the
wellbeing of our country, they will have to start by doing something
about the N63 million (senators) and N45 million (representatives) that
they will be ‘entitled to’ per quarter as “constituency allowances”,
and for which they do not have to give account.

Legislators have no business awarding contracts
and managing project funds. Nigerians also have a duty to hold their
legislators accountable. We cannot continue to just complain about
dismal performance. Hopefully there will be an election tomorrow and
the votes cast will prove to be a just verdict on the performance of
the lawmakers. Until politicians get punished – with outright rejection
– by the electorate, there will be no incentive for them to shun
mediocrity and greed.

The youth of Nigeria are too often the tools of
those who seek power and this becomes increasingly obvious as we
approach the elections. These youth are led with false promises and
hopes for a future that will improve their lives and their families’.
Greasing the wheels of violence with a little money to enslave these
youth to the power lust of their godfathers is akin to throwing grain
on the ground to feed chickens.

If the candidates whom these youth support are
elected, then we can expect these same youth to be cut loose after the
elections for their masters have no further use of them. Many of these
youth will be armed, disillusioned and then continue down the road that
leads to a life of crime and violence.

In this context we are seeing more groups than
ever before urging the public to shun violence in the run-up to the
elections. The National Association of Nigeria Students, the Christian
Association of Nigeria and Jama’atu Nasir Islam have each joined the
chorus of public bodies calling on youth not to join in any violent
actions or be unwitting tools of corrupt politicians.

The Sultan of Sokoto has called on all Muslims toa
be on guard against politicians seeking to mislead them. “We should
respect each other in Nigeria. No one should infringe on the religious
rights of the other, in the spirit of unity and respect for one
another.”

Amidst these calls against violence comes what I
can only describe as a thoughtless, foolish and attention-seeking
statement by a person claiming to be a pastor. A “pastor” of a church
in Enugu has declared to reporters that God has told him the elections
will be “bloody”. I do not dismiss the position that God may choose to
interact with us in a variety of ways and provide direction for our
daily lives, nor that we may seek His intervention. But this sort of
comment from the Enugu pastor must be dismissed for the reckless and
misleading statement that it is. It is an encouragement to violence
that it would have been prudent not to have reported.

The leaders of the major Christian denominations
are disappointingly invisible when it comes to dealing with this sort
of situation. In fact, with so many bodies publicly calling for a
peaceful election process and urging youth to shun violence, these same
church leaders are almost undetectable. They must take a lead in such
debate. The Sultan of Sokoto provides an example that the leaders of
the Christian church might care to note.

My comments are not intended to ignore the
potential for violence. Rather they are a plea not to overestimate or
inflate the potential for unrest and election related conflict.

This point was made this week by the National
Security Adviser (NSA) Owoye Azazi, a retired General, when, in a clear
and welcome break with past security practices, he invited local and
international media to a very full and frank security briefing in which
he underscored the need for collaboration between the media and
security agencies to ensure free, fair and credible elections. “The
media have frequently reported pre-election activities in bad light
leading to unnecessary violence and reprisals by the electorates who
feel that their political sympathy has been threatened,” he said.

The NSA acknowledged that, although the conduct of
the elections next week will be an improvement over previous elections,
the nation should strive to ensure that future elections “will even be
better”. “We have a responsibility to show all Nigerians and the
international community that we are capable of conducting free, fair
and credible elections in a secure environment,” he said.

But what weight do we give to the seeming resurgence of MEND and the ongoing even if sporadic attacks of Boko Haram?

The MEND public profile which operates through
media releases lacks the credibility it enjoyed particularly in 2008
and 2009, not least because there are multiple email addresses used by
persons claiming to be the MEND spokesperson. This lack of public
credibility causes the group to try to mount operations to prove that
they continue to exist as a viable militant group capable of causing
destruction and therefore should be taken seriously. But the community
support that MEND enjoyed in past years is now noticeably lacking. The
past MEND agenda of agitating for an improved quality of life for Niger
Deltans seems to have faded. Maybe it will be unnecessary if the next
government aggressively addresses deficiencies in the Niger Delta.

Boko Haram may have its gripes about a secular
government but it is substantially a different dimension of violence
that is not election related and must be addressed in a manner
different to that which seeks to curb political godfathers and their
aspirants recruiting youth to violence for the purpose of influencing
the elections.

The seed of MEND was sown by politicians seeking to retain power by
recruiting Nigeria’s youth to violent behaviour. Every effort must be
made to stand against such action that perverts the youths, the
electoral process and ultimately the nation.

As we wait for the
final results of the first round of voting in our general election
cycle, there’s one trend I’m looking out for.

No, not whether –
if the Peoples Democratic Party returns the majority of legislators
again – that automatically means that their presidential candidate,
Goodluck Jonathan, is going to win. No serious contestant for executive
office (and after he has invested so much of our time, money and other
resources towards being elected, I think we can agree that Jonathan is
a serious candidate) ought to have their own electoral fortunes tied to
a group held in such thorough disregard as the nation’s legislators.

Even their own
party is anxious to get rid of them, having given its flag to only a
third of legislators to return to the National Assembly in June 2011.
That’s an improvement on the 80 per cent that it sacked in 2007, but if
this time the electorate happens to apply a ‘three strikes’ rule and,
deciding that after three attempts (in 1999, 2003 and 2007) that they
really can’t trust the PDP to pick good lawmakers, turn to other
parties to populate the Senate and House of Representatives, it won’t
necessarily mean that they won’t vote for the PDP’s presidential
candidate.

It’s also entirely
possible – even though doing the same thing time after time and
expecting a different result is the classic definition of madness –
that the electorate will again choose PDP candidates, perhaps consoling
themselves that the problem isn’t with the party, but with the people
it presented in past elections.

No, the trend I’ll
be watching for is whether one group that has been loud about its
entitlement (but short on everything else) will have any discernible
impact on the vote. ‘De yoot’ (not to be confused with their English
counterparts, ‘va yoof’) were on the lips of every candidate this
election. Perhaps, having seen what young people claim as their
achievement in the ‘Arab Spring’, our politicians thought that they had
better appear deeply concerned about the condition of our own ‘yoot’.

Even if they
hadn’t, ‘de yoot’ themselves have been insisting that since they are
over 60 per cent of the population, they are entitled. The National
Population Commission classifies only those between 18 and 24 as youth,
but assuming that they are including the under 18s: the 2006 Census
puts the 0-24 years population at 64 per cent of the total.

That’s a bigger
percentage than, for example, Nigerian women, who scraped in with an
anomalous 49.2 per cent of the total population, but who, thanks to the
Beijing Declaration and Platform of action, are supposed to have 35 per
cent of all appointments.

What is more, Mr.
President himself (at the end of a ‘debate’ in which the only woman
participating was the timekeeper whom he resolutely ignored) has
undertaken to keep the promise made at Beijing in 1995. True, he didn’t
explain what stopped him from achieving 35 per cent in the year that
he’s been in power so far, but the all-male panel didn’t ask him.

And his Congress
for Progressive Change challenger, whose military dictatorship started
the ball rolling by insisting that each state must appoint at least one
woman as a commissioner, wasn’t there to trumpet his own credentials …

In an election
when even middle-aged ‘uncles’ of 50 are touting themselves as ‘de yoot
candidate’, it isn’t surprising that young people tried to make
themselves a big story in the ongoing elections. Though it wasn’t quite
clear what they felt their numbers entitled them to.

If as long ago as
1991, the Population Commission recorded that 59 per cent of household
members searching for work were the children of the heads of those
households, the woeful failings in education and employment that have
characterised the intervening 20 years must be at least as worrying to
their parents as they are to ‘de yoot’.

Had numbers alone
justified special recognition, the status of the ‘giant of Africa’ with
its claim to house one fifth of the world’s black population ought to
reflect that. But it doesn’t. Worse still for ‘de yoot’, if the group
classified by the NPC as ‘children’ – the under-18s – are stripped
away, they shrink back to a much less impressive 13 per cent, with the
remaining 51 per cent left to whistle Eddie Cochran’s old Summertime
Blues song: ‘I’d like to help you son, but you’re too young to vote’.

Still, de yoot’s
insistence on their own importance seems to have won at least one
convert: at the end of last month an old-timer who started his own
(unsuccessful) campaign with the flat assertion that young people are
not qualified to run Nigeria, apparently discovered that they are
exactly what the country needs. But will the vote reflect that?