Stowaway: A Reading of Daniel’s Mind before the Flight

How time flies! When Daniel (Ricky) Oikhena’s flight touched down in Lagos from Benin on August 24, 2013 at the end of what was possibly his first ‘air travel’ ever, some 160 million Nigerians were landed in a state of shock. He had, like ectopic pregnancy, coiled his frame into the cavity of the aircraft’s wheels and, at the end of some thirty minutes, defied what logic, science and technology, put together, would advise man against. His flight of adventure – if that phrase suffices – obviously disgusted public sensibility and subsequently provoked diverse dialectical orientations in the form of thoughts and impressions that ricocheted around our threadbare sociopolitical-cum-economic experiences. Despite our inflicted profundity at absorbing growing atrocities, more than a dozen reactions strongly suggested that Daniel took us too far, stretched our experiential limits, in another direction, into a different stratosphere. And when everything is considered, that was possibly his crime. Without a desire to betray this writer’s justifiable cynicism, certain killings and violence motivated by political and religious bigotry, like we witness with disturbing regularity, would be a more familiar, comfortable piece of news to our evolving sense of reality. Not surprisingly, when a certain group awarded Daniel a scholarship, a handful of individuals reacted in ways that were construed as an explicit and unwarranted approval of his act; the rest of us went on to reason that such gestures would encourage other teenagers to the same end and, if they succeed, draw the same accolades and benefits and scholarships upon themselves or bring such a teenager’s life to a fatal end if anything goes wrong in the skies. They contested that instead of a scholarship or any similar gesture, Daniel ought to have been fiercely reprimanded and severely dealt with, perhaps, publicly caned before thousands of his mates for ever daring to take juvenile delinquency to new heights. In various ways, they insisted that he should not be seen or presented as anyone’s hero or champion as his personality now exemplifies what any child should never dream to become or the child any parents should never pray to have. As the condemnation widened, Daniel’s parents were caught in the dragnet. They were blamed for their exceptional ‘failure’ in guiding their son, Daniel, on the road he should take and blamed for instilling in him the tendencies of building castles in the air. Those positions come with their strengths and weaknesses but such are not the purpose of this piece, for this writer has not set out to credit or discredit any views, notwithstanding that Daniel’s act possesses properties that bring to mind the complexities of societal and familial roles and responsibilities. As a whole, the views, comments, editorials and so on and so forth are united in the conclusion that the teenager’s act was the height of all imaginable dangers that anyone would willfully desire to be exposed to. That point admits no converse views. However, let us be generous if not lenient for a moment and dispense with all passionate considerations, or do away with the logical and technical mysteries of Daniel’s flight. When this is granted, we are likely to be left with what this writer has called ‘psycho-existential appraisals’ of that incident. It is a position that leaves us with three elements: Daniel, his mind and man-in-the-world complexities; thereby shutting out such concomitant concerns as security breaches, parental (ir)responsibility, collapse of moral and sociopolitical structures, conspiracy theories and such other accusations. From media reports, nothing implicating was found on Daniel: no drugs and no weapons, apart from the undeniable fact that his ectopic presence on the plane posed a primal danger to the safety of the aircraft and, by extension, lives of the passengers. This is acknowledged once again even though this writer had sought that such a line of argument be diminished. No drugs and no weapons were found on him, which basically meant that Daniel was, to this extent, a victim of his own life-threatening innocence. Obviously, Daniel did not ‘fly’ without a purpose or destination. He revealed that he desired to see and set foot on American soil. At 12, plus or minus, he is not too young to be struck and swept off his feet by the powerful force of a 20th century dream. Again, let us be generous to see the America of Daniel’s dream as the symbolic, concrete object of our or man’s daily dreams and aspirations. America, here, for the rest of us, or for a different Daniel could have been a Mephistophelean career in politics, not least as pursued in this clime; it could have been a meritorious career in the medical profession in which case it would be a choice that prides itself on saving lives. Let us further explore a chasm of pathological ignorance if not innocence in Daniel’s behaviour. He had thought the flight was bound for America, whereas it is common knowledge that Benin airport does not operate a direct flight to God’s own country. If he was aided to fly in the ‘wheel-cavity class’, this writer argues, would the plot have been initiated from Benin airport, thereby adding some thirty minutes of life-threatening risk as against taking off from Lagos? What satisfaction would his accomplices, if there were any, have derived from such a mission which, from investigation, was devoid of any deliberate or premeditated plot to cause the death of several passengers or any intention to use Daniel as an instrument of drug trafficking? From the evil experiences in our society today, there are numerous ‘cost-effective’, ‘lucrative’ ways of wasting the life of a young boy. Furthermore, all dreams and the roads to them present herculean and daunting challenges. Daniel is not too young to know this. Without the financial means of flying legally or the professional capacity of gaining legal entry into America, Daniel could feel his dreams disintegrating and atrophying without help or attention. He must have been scared to death every day of his pre-stowaway life that he could go through this life without ever seeing America or, metaphorically speaking, without realizing his dreams or anybody ever being aware of what he ever dreamt of; he must have been scared to death in ‘the unreasonable silence of the world’. Daniel’s, like the average man’s mind, was fraught with existential anxieties. He was smitten by the propelling force of ‘authentic existence’ and driven to the lengths of his human capabilities. He discovered the tensile quality of human strength and stretched it to global attention. His should not be construed as a young mind’s condemnation of anything Nigerian. Rather, Daniel lent weird wings to our human belief, optimism and determination. He pulled out all the stops; confronted and conquered the feebleness of the human spirit; stretched our consciousness to a new form of reality from which it instantly recovered the moment we stood with mouth agape at this rarest pursuit of a burning desire. ‘Stowaway’ Daniel only demonstrated that it is not enough to dream and desire; it’s not enough, until the world knows that we, as individuals, have tried. He embarked on a raw, scary, dangerous, journey in externalizing his inner desires. He never intended to endanger other people’s lives. He never imagined that his presence on the plane posed a plain, basic risk to the lives of others. The only life he thought he placed on the line was his own; sometimes, too, that may not be true. He was just blatantly oblivious of the other side of it all. His attempt reveals how much of what we suppress or hide in our daily quests and how much closer our dreams could be with just a notch more. The gestures, which have been interpreted as baneful encouragements, do not serve to reward Daniel’s ‘crime’, but – it has to be said – his foray into the uncharted recesses of human exertions. By the way, who would attempt same for a million dollar? The ‘accolades’ merely serve to salute the ‘temper’ that otherwise lies unleashed in the rest of us. Generally speaking, we seem to have arrived at the present time too impaired to attempt the extraordinary, not least, in the context of Daniel’s flight. No case is being made here for a repeat incident even though there have been similar attempts since. Yes, Daniel’s life might have taken a different trajectory for we hear he has been moved to the best public school in his Edo State. That could be considered a great gesture by those on the positive divide of the incident; but this writer considers it inconclusive to Daniel’s ‘flying’ ambition or ‘rehabilitation’. He should have been put on board a US-bound flight and conducted through the processes of embarking on a ‘normal’ trip of such a distance to such a country; he should have been taken there for his education or told more about America in order to remove the creases or stretch marks left on his psychological make-up. All this, it is feared, cannot survive in this clime where life is too preoccupied with embracing and celebrating falsities and other ironies. Except Daniel is satisfied with his post-stowaway life, the slipshod handling of it reaffirms the same socio-spiritual degeneracy that inspired the young boy’s eerie flight. If we were too shocked to believe what he attempted, his rehabilitation programme should equally shock us into the understanding that the human spirit, once stretched, cannot return to its original state and should never be the same again. In all frankness, Daniel ‘Ricky’ Oikhena’s life should not remain the same again for on that day in August, 2013, he rose above all obstacles, which the life he did not choose had placed upon him.

the distance yesterday

Let's, here,
rummage the rubble and
walk through shards of hopes smashed
on the threshold, or trudge through
wilted canisters of countless stillbirths.

Years ago!

Now that the putrid fumes of withered dreams
whirl and curl like Cain's smoke in the forgotten
distance,
now that the chequered rhythms of our common quests
are futile thunderclaps in the cloudbanks
of the distant past –
let's sit, friend,
in this vast nest and look back to the
distance…yesterday! Ω

Get well soon

Recently, a colleague of mine fell ill. I was immediately informed by a common friend who doubles as his neighbour.  Together, much later in the day, we drove to hospital where I was somewhat disappointed to learn that our common friend, Mosley, had succumbed to ordinary malaria. When he sensed my cynicism, he broadened his narration to justify his journey to his sick bed. His defense failed at once to abate my sarcastic resolve but, in another breath, he feebly underscored the helplessness of his condition as he reminded that a prominent politician had been to Europe recently for a similar medical attention.

I smiled and killed the matter for I perceived that my ailing friend was scheming to politicize the exchange. Beyond that, I quietly convinced myself that the place and time were not right to give Mosley the chance to vent his habitual disenchantment at people and institutions. By the next day, I had planned to offset part of his now climbing medical bill by procuring some of the recommended drugs and other related items that anyone in his condition, or Mosley, by his lifestyle, would find quite handy.

As I prepared, a ripple of dull excitement swept through my sprawling neighbourhood. That was NEPA! – after a week or two of disheartening service. It was only when I switched on my television, which came on as though convalescing, that I realized – or should I say remembered? – that a public holiday had been declared. It was May 29! As expected, Eagle Square and such other venues across the country, as I scanned through some local channels, were agog with celebration apparently stage-managed by respective state governments in spurious celebrations of their dividends of democracy. Not surprisingly, the light flickered and, like human life here, was gone!

On my way to Mosley, many thoughts crossed my listless mind in batches. I remembered him and his negative capability for denigrating the achievement of ordinary mortals. He is not a great achiever in the strict sense of the word, but he has this indescribable desire to see every man, in private or public life, live up to common expectations. As these thoughts flitted through, I drove past hordes of Nigerians going about their activities with nothing to suggest a nation in celebration. On some narrow and squalid streets, some teenagers helped their respective families with some domestic necessities that included the fetching of water at private outlets. Others too just walked the streets as though under some futile influence. 

I was jolted out of that state of mind by the manic, earsplitting horning from the vehicle behind me. The driver was in a hurry and in a flash he sped past my car. He only narrowly missed brushing some Okada men who had ringed a newspaper stand exchanging their own conjectures about the oppressive headlines of the day. In another ten minutes, I walked into the hospital with the items I had bought for my friend, Mosley. Within me, I knew it was a wrong day for him to be hospitalized for he would have taken the day as an exciting opportunity to castigate people and satirize institutions that had made it to his black book in the past one year.

Nevertheless, I met him trashing out some topical issues with some close friends of ours and another fellow who had come to see his next bed neighbour! Mosely, in good or bad times wields an uncanny ability of pulling a bystander into the whirlpool of his beliefs. His country, as always, was his problem! He squirmed unwittingly with every sore point he made about Nigeria’s misguided democratic experience. It only then dawned on me, from his string of disappointed expectations, that Nigeria, on such a day, could be joined as a co-recipient of the get-well card I had bought for him. And this was how I arrived at that conviction…

Nigeria’s return to democratic rule was earned after years of struggle that culminated in the May 29, 1999 swearing-in of Olusegun Obasanjo as president. By the character of all historical events, that date is thus marked as a national holiday in celebration of our democratic acquisition. Though like most historical dates, May 29 is not without a ring of controversy, for a growing section of Nigerians has strong reasons to take June 12 as the anniversary of our democratic accomplishment.  The event of that date in 1993 is well within living memory to require retelling.

Democracy is now in its ninth year in Nigeria, and its complex mechanism has, without doubt, engendered a myriad of experience for both people and institutions. Its basic dependence on the people as raw material simply presupposes that in a nation with over one hundred and forty million population, democracy would enjoy the prospect of reaffirming itself as one of the noblest forms of government available to human experience. We have only to cast our minds to the past nine years to appreciate the enormous investment of people who have participated in one capacity or another in the complex operations of this system.

It is though common to human experience to commemorate events, the anniversary of democracy in Nigeria commands a weighty dimension. Every anniversary affords Nigerians the salient opportunity to evaluate their experience against the background of their general expectations.  That opportunity came once again as we marked the ninth anniversary or, better still, the first year of Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s administration. Unfortunately, once again, the general feeling is that the ailment of the years past is still being stitched up in future tenses; in the same manner that the immediate past government eventually bequeathed us a nation without refineries and electricity just like it had met it and, as before, with mind-boggling tales of wasted public funds.

We still remember how lofty Nigeria’s hope was in the wake of the elections of 1999. Aside from the strong prospect of the return to democratic governance after decades of militarism, Nigerians had assessed Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, from a combination of factors, as a man who had taken the fingerprints of nearly all our national problems and was poised to assume leadership for the routine purpose of delivering a well-rehearsed, people-oriented economic blueprint. However, that expectation was short-lived when too early in his tenure his best chances were predicated on a regular upward review of the prices of petroleum products; an act that soon became a nursery rhyme for his government and a source of deathly concern for the rest of us.

In many ways, in today’s Nigeria, Obasanjo’s name reeks of economic disintegration from his nine years in power. And it stands to reason that Nigerians who still possess the vile courage to take to politics as a profession led the rest of us into this and we followed rather unsuspectingly, for it was originally intended for the common good considering the emphatic importance that the proverbial definition of democracy bestows on the people. As it is, it is heart-breaking to witness democracy being so mauled and abused to the extent that it calls up uncanny images in our collective consciousness and that, worse still, the unscrupulous agents who propagate this sorry experience grow in number and depravity on a daily basis.

Following a failed attempt at a third term, the critical part of Obasanjo’s swan song was a devoted, personalized search for a successor whose political aura had no trace of corruption in comparative terms. The then president stopped his search at the doorstep of the present president and of course the rest of us felt, given the circumstance and available evidence, that some other overriding competencies had been gravely undermined. But as had happened in 1999, Nigerians acquiesced that the best to be done was to give the new leadership a chance amid the howling skepticism that enveloped the polity.

Nigeria is a rather curious if not perplexing country. Today, it is still a debatable question whether the first eight years moved Nigeria forward or backward or merely left it how or where it was in the pre-1999 years. It is thought-provoking that the provision of electricity, good roads, pipe borne water, quality affordable education and so on and so forth still form an active part of our politicians’ electioneering razzmatazz. And when one looks at it, there are sickening reasons to grant them such inclusions. Nigerians have never experienced such amenities in their civilized availability. Obasanjo and his 36 governors gave such promises and after eight years, Yar’Adua and his governors campaigned same to legitimate effect.

Yet, on May 29 we celebrated even when everyone is asking everyone whether Obasanjo’s government should be probed in the face of mounting evidence of how our nation was run aground during his time as president. The salient question to ask is what would it really cost the nation or anyone for that matter to carry out a postmortem on Obasanjo’s government? A probe, let us reflect, is not alien to governance for it serves the purpose, amongst others, of vindicating an ex office holder or holding him liable for wrongs committed against the common good; it is an intrinsic part of the enormous sense of responsibility that accompanies an individual’s acceptance of a public office.

We celebrated though we are caught up in a genealogy of corruption whereby huge corrupt practices that have either sunk or endangered the hopes of this nation are traced with living evidence to members of the same family. Or when we are living witnesses to the strategic arrogation of elective offices by members of the same political family or gang; an arrangement that further exposes the nation to the devastating eruption of the lava of corruption in the years to come.

We commemorated the ninth anniversary of our home-grown democracy though the Elumelu-led committee is still grappling with the Herculean responsibility of determining how some 19 billion dollars failed to brighten up our languid expectations for an improved energy sector; we celebrated even when Ribadu is coping with the realities of an enforced career course as the rest of us look forward to an etiolated EFCC. We celebrated even as Madam Etteh and her political synonyms are still members of the national assembly; when she still makes a living out of a grand system that naturally determines the intellectual, socio-political comportment of a people. Her presence in the NASS is a defilement of our quest for political purity.

Obasanjo might have formulated the best policies or fielded the most result-oriented cabinet or hired an unusually formidable advisory team and personal assistants, but the reality that confronts Nigerians today is that his two terms have brought more woes to the life of this nation than anyone had ever anticipated. This thinking is highly justified by the sense of urgency that has gripped the present administration. And it stands to reason that Obasanjo’s own admission of incontrovertible failure came in his inordinate quest for a third term. Apart from a grisly desire for continued personal enrichment, what else could have been a weightier motive?

The search for a replacement for the chair of the EFCC saw the senate, like in most other situations, playing to the gallery. In truth, the removal of Nuhu Ribadu was generally perceived as a regrettable disservice to the spirit of winning the war against corruption. Yet, the president told the nation, as he marked his first anniversary, that the ex-chairman’s proclaimed achievement should not confer on him the prerogative to head the commission for a long period as though he were the only one who possessed the sterling qualities that such a position required. In some way, the president was right but his rationalization is weakened by the growing feeling that there are others who should be relieved of their appointment on account of the spreading evidence across the land against their competence or achievement.

Regrettably, Nigeria still comes across as a pathologically ailing nation. After nearly fifty years of independence! Year after year, we have lived up to the morbid description given of Constaguana in Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo where it is described as “a great land of …people, suffering and mute, waiting for the future in a pathetic immobility of patience”. Our reprehensible capacity to wait for a better tomorrow has calcified our collective enthusiasm and urgency for a nation whose economic buoyancy should of necessity be commensurate with the abundant resources available and accessible to this potentially great country.

It is quite clear to those who want to admit it that a certain dubious intent was preserved in the administrative outlook of the last government, for if it meant well the issue of the non-existence of a functional refinery should not remain with us yet. And this aspect of our national life is particularly ugly that our successive governments should speak of economic policies when none of such has zeroed in on a lasting solution to our moribund energy sector. 

I have strayed into the disappointed expectations of the first eight years for good reasons. If nothing else, it provided the dark-room in which the gloomy picture that democracy has cast on this nation today was developed. The first eight years were the years that corruption became a popularized experience and our hard-earned democracy turned out to be a highly prized acquisition for which reason those who had no business being leaders flooded the territory. It was the period in which political gangsterism was brazenly cultivated through the mushrooming of godfatherism; the period that democracy exerted hysterical influences on Nigerians to the effect that its traditional meaning and association continued to proliferate regrettable antonyms in our political lexicon.

Whether Nigerians take May 29 or June 12 as the date that brings them the sweet memories or the bitter taste of democracy, our hopes and aspirations, in the final analysis, have detonated in our hands. In this period of democratic commemoration, it is criminal to imagine that we have reaped the best that this noble system of government can offer a people; we have failed – dismally – against the magnificent beauty of democracy.  Many apologies if by some stretch of the imagination the title of this piece betrays an active sense of pessimism on my part; but in all fairness, I cringe to confess that it was the fairest of the possibilities that crossed my cynical mind as I checked our political temperature for some intangible hope in my poorly lit room.

As we continue to enjoy Yar’Adua’s gratuitous moratorium on another increase in the prices of petroleum products, and continue to keep our dreary vigil on some exciting times ahead, as he has promised, I honestly wish Nigeria well on its path of checkered destiny. And in all seriousness, may the sincere invocation preserved in the title of this piece materialize in its entirety in our life time. My friend has since regained his health but the pains of our ailing nation lives in his heart yet!

10th Anniversary: A four-four-two that failed

Nigerians and indeed football lovers across the world were enthusiastic beneficiaries of the efficient ordering of European football and, by implication, society on May 27, when the two finalists of this year’s European Champions League reaffirmed that football is perhaps the greatest entertaining event available to mankind today. While the ardent followers of the two finalists ruminated on the huge chances of their teams, the rest of us wore an attitude of critical detachment and basked in the excitement of being living witnesses to yet another wholesome game of football.

Traffic control on most routes in Lagos told more than a typical Lagos story; traffic had collapsed and, for one moment, one thought it was Christmas Eve or that a road rehabilitation site, considering the huge on-going development efforts in the state, was just some meters ahead as traffic deteriorated. In twos and threes or sometimes more, football fans made their way to filling stations for fuel in their pathetic resort to private generation of electricity. There was excitement in the air such that possibly no event in Nigeria in the last ten years had promised.

Every football fan was dead certain that the match would commence at the time it was billed: the world was, of course, going to be hosted by Europe! Earlier in the day, many football enthusiasts had ensured that they were fully prepared with the appropriate positioning of their satellite dishes while commercial viewing centers, at almost every corner of town, intensified arrangements, providing more seats and creating their own glamour with fresh football posters and other soccer memorabilia as they waited, without apprehension, for the excitement that was to sweep across the globe from Europe.

Ninety minutes later, the score line had been expected for some while for others it was a deeply felt rude shock whose effect is still perceived in football circles anywhere. Post-match analyses proliferated in different quarters as self-styled football analysts argued that the formation of the defeated team was a mismatch for the technical presence of the victorious side. While they faulted the formation of the defeated team they, with the benefit of hindsight, reeled out and permuted several formations that would have worked to earn the defending champions the coveted honour of being back-to-back champions of European club football.

As these strands of views and counter-views weaved into one another, however, Nigeria’s tenth anniversary, as a democracy, was just twenty-four hours away. And that, indeed, was the singular object that filled my mind as I struggled to locate any achievements Nigeria had made and would be proud to celebrate in the last ten years here distributed as the first and second four years of Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration and now Yar’ Adua’s two years, which altogether form our own 4-4-2 political matrix similar to the formation that is considered a strong tactics in the game of football.

In 1999, Nigerians did not doubt Obasanjo’s capability to deliver great leadership and turn Nigeria around in every sphere of life because the opportunity of a democracy was what Nigerians had hoped and waited for as the elusive prerequisite for a transformed Nigeria after years of Kafkaesque disorientation. The prevailing notion was that the military were not disposed to people-oriented initiatives because they had accessed power through the barrel of the gun. A complex combination of Nigeria’s years of disappointed expectations had thus equipped Nigerians with the ready knowledge and intricacies of the problem with Nigeria, and so they enthusiastically offered Obasanjo the fingerprints of our collective problems as a nation and supported him with a strong national will to succeed.

His first four years was expected to provide the grounds for the people’s familiarization with the humane pulse of democratic experience which naturally lent credence and currency to “democratic dividend”, coined by our politicians as a concise description of the beauty of democracy to Nigerians. As Obasanjo’s first term progressed, he struggled with orienting Nigerians to the presence of democratic dividends when he perceived that the people were skeptical of anything that went by that description in their environment. A media tour of the nation, headed by Jerry Gana, forced it down the throat of Nigerians that everything they had expected of the government had been conjured right in their backyard. Nigerians did not see anything and so remained bemused!

In quiet disbelief, they continued to hope for further crystallization of the intricacies of understanding the benefits of a democracy, though they remained convinced that at least the two problems of uncivilized generation of electricity and the sad realities of our refineries were active items on their report card for Obasanjo’s administration. By languid degrees, Obasanjo’s first term came to an end but the problems he had promised to solve survived. It became obvious that we had acquired a feeble and corrupt foundation for our democracy especially when policies that placed the masses on the receiving end consistently tumbled out of Aso Rock though Nigerians persistently raised the flag and clamoured for a different experience.

In retrospect, the first four years which could have established for us a solid foundation for democracy was as weak as the defensive line-up of a poorly built football team. Obasanjo’s first term conceded numerous opportunities for both failure and corruption and never recovered from a general insensitivity to the basic problems of our common existence. Corruption became institutionalized and the politicians’ capacity to trivialize the sanctity of democratic governance assumed disgusting dimensions.

Of course, the power of incumbency earned Obasanjo a second term much against the better judgment of the generality of the people. He campaigned ‘continuity’ and told Nigerians that a second term would enable him and his party consolidate on the ‘gains’ of our ‘hard-earned’, ‘home-grown’ democracy! Ordinarily, in the life of a vibrant, people-oriented democracy managed by scrupulous men and women, a second term should have been a sheer consolidation of a people’s democratic fortunes, but Obasanjo had proven not to be the human being to oblige Nigerians with the basics of all democratic expectations because his first term was an inexcusable shame. The second term, like the first, was a political wasteland that promised nothing but the futile harvest of a deceptively cultivated phenomenon. Again, with football as metaphor, Obasanjo’s second term was a midfield that dismally connected with the unspeakable deficiencies of its own foundation. In a pathetic immobility of our collective dreams, we waited to see whether Obasanjo was saving the best for last but what came was worse!

The campaign for an unconstitutional third term, unknown to Obasanjo and his cohorts, was an explicit admission of the huge waste they had made of the two terms. When the third term bid failed, the PDP in its continued demonstration of perverted wisdom, presented Yar’ Adua as Nigeria’s next president. In their assessment, Yar’ Adua was the best man for the job because he was the least corrupt governor. At that point in their disorientation, it was obvious that the search for a competent leader was as critical as the search for a leader without a brazen record of corruption. Nigerians had their honest doubts about the man who the PDP forced on them. Yar’ Adua came, one might argue, as a cursed imposition on Nigerians in retaliation of their massive disapprobation of Obasanjo’s third term bid.

Nothing happened to convince Nigerians that they were on the road to a different destination than the one Obasanjo had taken them. Out of sheer political grandstanding, Yar’ Adua on assuming power in 2007, programmed the nation’s recovery on a seven-point agenda! Sadly enough, his second year was celebrated without any of the seven points registered on the credit side of his administration. So far, in Yar’ Adua’s own wisdom, there exist only nostalgic vestiges of Obasanjo’s policies and indeed, it is instructive that only the PDP has given Nigeria the ten years leadership we bemoan today. A gradual phase out of Obasanjo’s policies does not in effect mean that Yar’ Adua has demonstrated a superior competence because his lethargic disposition to governance has invariably complicated our national malaise. If the last two years could further be likened to the formation of a football team, in the attacking position, Yar’ Adua’s performance has not scored any table-changing goals; his ‘great policies’ seem benched for vision 20-2020. Altogether, it is safe to assume that the unpopular leadership imposed on Nigerians both at the national and state levels in the last decade is a regrettable party-specific heritage.

Not surprisingly, the kernel of Yar’ Adua’s anniversary speech for our ten years was that we had successfully transited from one civilian administration to another! That had been our problem! Of course, there was nothing more important to write a speech about other than an uninterrupted transition, yet Nigeria is not short of problems that have terminally bedeviled our existence since independence. On October 1st 2010, when the PDP will have been in power for eleven years and some five months, Nigeria will be fifty years as an independent nation. It is not likely, at the soporific rate of the present administration, that the quality of Yar’ Adua’s speech on that occasion will be any different from what it was on May 29, 2009. The provision of civilized power supply which has been juggled from Obasanjo’s wasted years will still be a problem, since our emergence from decades of darkness has been programmed for 2011!

Because we are Nigerians by birth and inclination, we are irrevocably committed to the hope and aspiration that Nigeria would one day be a great nation much to the magnitude it had been destined by its available natural resources. This prevailing ugliness cannot be our destiny for much longer! Our present description as one of the globally recognized corrupt nations cannot qualify us to play in the champions’ league of nations by whatever timeline gratuitously set by our leaders. Nigeria’s fitness and readiness for this standard of governance and development will inevitably compel our brothers and sisters and non-Nigerians alike from over the world to come home, like we rushed home for UEFA Champions’ League finals, for the beauty of our democracy. The possibility is from within each of us in our respective obligations to the greatness of our country. Ω