by Okey Ndibe

In addition to sheer amazement, many of us following the argument that a comatose Umaru Yar’Adua is fit to run Nigeria must have a sense of déjà vu. Nigeria is not the only country that falls into the hands of inept, clueless leadership. But it may well be one of the rare countries where seemingly sane people argue that inept leaders are indispensable. Cast a backward glance at Nigeria’s woeful past and you’ll see examples galore of shameless apologists who told the world that Nigeria’s fate was bound up with that of some certified mediocrity in power. Yakubu Gowon trumpeted his own indispensability when he sought to persuade Nigerians that it wasn’t feasible for him to exit the political stage in 1976. Yet, Nigeria survived Gowon’s removal in a coup led by the late General Murtala Muhammed.

In 1983, the National Party of Nigeria deployed a variant of the argument to justify its rigging regatta to ensure that a confounded Shehu Shagari continued to preside over the affairs of Nigeria.

How about General Ibrahim Babangida? Even as the nation tottered under his watch, he and his coterie tried to package him as a genius of statecraft. Convinced by his own propaganda, Mr. Babangida set and then sabotaged successive timetables for his withdrawal. It took his June 12 misadventure to finally expose the insincerity of his transition program, and to precipitate his forced exit.

Then came Sani Abacha, one of the most puzzling and dangerous of Nigeria’s cast of visionless, greedy, and tragically mischievous rulers. A failure at everything else it takes to be a transformative leader, Abacha achieved mastery in the art and science of sustaining himself in power. Using a Machiavellian mix of carrots and sticks, he intimidated or bought off much of the political class.

Week after week, a retinue of traditional rulers (with little or no tradition) and politicians flocked to Abuja to venerate Abacha. In stunning assaults on language and logic, they proclaimed Abacha a “dynamic leader.” They told him that the nation would be hopeless without him to lead it. Speaking from rehearsed lines, they pleaded with Abacha to ignore his “disgruntled” critics and to go ahead and succeed himself.

In the midst of this absurd theatre of worship, Abacha slumped and died. The style and circumstances of his death were fitting: surrounded by prostitutes, some of them imported from abroad. For the first time in Nigeria’s history, the death of a head of state provoked spontaneous and widespread ululation, dancing and bingeing – a fiesta of celebration.

Olusegun Obasanjo, a victim of Abacha’s repression, was brought out of prison and – without psychiatric evaluation – installed as president. He spent his first term, of four years, on an endless junket to foreign countries. Then he spent the second term – which he achieved by dint of rigging – to display his vindictive and grasping tendencies. Nearing the end of his ruinous run as president, he and his cohorts concocted a depraved plan: to change the Nigerian constitution to enable him to run (and rig) a third term.

Those who championed that awful scheme told us that Nigeria could not afford to be Obasanjoless. They claimed that he had founded modern Nigeria – never mind that he built few roads, despite hundreds of billions voted each year, or that his guarantee, on his “honor,” of regular, uninterrupted power supply had turned into a $10 billion bad joke, or that he openly disdained the judiciary, meddled with the legislature, imposed candidates both on his party as well as voters, and enthroned a culture of primitive pocketing of public funds and brazen disregard for decency and ethics.

In an insult to a nation of 140 million, his stalwarts asked, “If not Obasanjo, who?” They contended that Obasanjo, and Obasanjo alone, was capable of husbanding the reforms they alleged that he’d initiated. That argument, stupid on the face of it, nevertheless found traction even with people who ought to know better. In exasperation, I asked one of them: “What if we allowed Obasanjo to steal a third term, is he going to guarantee us, on his honor, that he would never die? Otherwise, if he died, would Nigerians then send a strongly-worded petition to God to raise him from the dead to avert the very extinction of Nigeria?”

Once it dawned on Mr. Obasanjo that Nigerians were in no mood to gratify his illicit third term aspiration, he manufactured a vengeful, do-or-die response. First, he imposed a feeble Yar’Adua as the presidential candidate of the PDP, and then – in an act of supreme malice – foisted his anointed on the nation.

Obasanjo’s recent effort to rewrite the history of his imposition of Yar’Adua was seen by many Nigerians for what it is: a bald fabrication.

Meanwhile, with Yar’Adua, Nigerians are back in familiar territory. Since leaving on November 23 – not on his feet, but on a stretcher – Yar’Adua seems to have fallen into a black hole. Abjectly incompetent even in his healthiest of days, the man cannot now maintain any semblance of being in charge.

That fact has not fazed his acolytes who are using his name to gorge fat on Nigeria’s treasury. Michael Aondoakaa, the inner circle’s most visible spokesman, has told us that Yar’Adua is governing Nigeria from his hospital bed in Saudi Arabia.

For the Aondoakaas of our world, it is okay to reduce Nigeria to Yar’Adua’s size. If Yar’Adua ends up spending six or more months in a foreign hospital, there’s nothing wrong – in Aondoakaa’s book – with letting Nigeria flounder, as long as Yar’Adua’s (and his proxies’) narrow interests are served. If Nigeria must die, so be it, but Turai Yar’Adua’s desire to reign on as “First Lady” must not be tampered with.

Where’s proof that Yar’Adua even recognizes that there’s an entity called Nigeria much less that he is governing? Ask Aondoakaa and he’s likely to tell you that the sick man signed a budget (a scam) or that he spoke with the British Broadcasting Corporation for – wait for this – fifty-one seconds!

Parts of Nigeria are still experiencing acute fuel shortages. What’s Yar’Adua’s antidote for that? The US recently added Nigeria on the list of nations to watch on matters of terrorism. Pray, how many times has Yar’Adua spoken to President Barack Obama to register his objection? Hundreds of Nigerians have perished in sectarian violence in Bauchi and Jos. What leadership has Yar’Adua provided to calm nerves, to commiserate with the bereaved, or to settle thousands of displaced citizens? Nigerians continue to lose jobs as a fall-out of the nation’s bleak economic climate. What answers has our bed-ridden Yar’Adua offered to arrest or ameliorate the situation?

Turai and Aondoakaa are by no means the exclusive villains in this sordid drama. Last week, I asked a Nigerian senator why they had not moved to impeach Yar’Adua. His confessional response disarmed and shocked in equal measure: a lot of money was being disbursed, he confided. He said that, when legislators raised their voices against Yar’Adua, it was often a ploy to jerk up their fees.

Sooner or later – sooner than later, my hunch tells me – this contemptible game at the expense of Nigerians will run its course.

(okeyndibe@gmail.com)

by Okey Ndibe

Nigerians received a bizarre Christmas gift Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, a 23-year old man from a privileged background, tried to pull off what could have been the bloodiest suicide bombing in the US since September 11, 2001. Umar Mutallab had planned to detonate explosives strapped to his body in order to bring down Northwest Airline Flight 253 as the jet neared its destination in Detroit, Michigan.

Had his gory plan succeeded, Umar – an engineering student at the University of London and son of Umaru Abdul Mutallab, the just-retired chairman of First Bank of Nigeria – would have unleashed mayhem and terror not only on Americans but the world as a whole. Thanks to vigilant passengers who wasted no time in pouncing on him the moment they heard popping sounds, this bone-chilling disaster was averted.

Even so, this sickening plot by a sick child of privilege has become an instant disaster for Nigerians everywhere, but especially those who live or frequently travel abroad. ??Fair or not (and there’s a lot of argument to be made on both sides), Nigeria is portrayed in the foreign media as one of the great centers of corruption and scams. Despite a well-established history of religious fanaticism that spills out, intermittently, into orgies of killing in Allah’s name, Nigeria somehow managed to escape being baptized a haven of religion-induced terrorism. ??Until, that is, last Friday when Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab imprinted the name of Nigeria on the global consciousness as an address where terrorists teem. Through his depraved bombing plot, this young man has smudged the image of millions of tolerant Nigerian Muslims in the eyes of the world. In fact, he’s given all Nigerians a notoriety they can ill afford. ??Nigerians who travel, or live abroad – especially in Europe, Asia and North America – will bear the brunt of this dangerous new perception. In a post 9/11 world where the lines between vigilance and hysteria are often blurred, to be identified as sharing citizenship with a young man who tried to incinerate a plane mid-air can mean great ordeal.

Throughout last week, I received calls from Nigerians living in the US, the UK, or Europe. In each caller’s tone was a touch of dread. Some wondered what Abdul Mutallab’s crazed design meant for the future of Nigeria, a country already prostrate. Others were more concerned about how the aborted drama of a bloody bombing would reshape their lives. ??One friend, a professor at a top American university, told me about the traveling trials of a colleague of his, a professor of Sudanese nationality. On numerous occasions, the Sudanese scholar has been taken off flights, or prevented from boarding one – all on account of the man’s “Islamic” name and the Sudan’s reputation as a grooming ground for al Qaeda terrorists. Another friend, a young executive at a major American financial services company, related the experience of a colleague of his, an Egyptian-American. He said that when he and his colleague traveled together, the Egyptian-American was frequently subjected to exacting, even intrusive, searches and exhaustive questioning.

Travelers who carry the Nigerian passport know that they can count on a certain level of scrutiny and hostility at foreign airports. Who needs the added aggravation of being regarded as a terrorist – until you prove otherwise?

In the 1990s, at the height of 419 scams and other forms of schemes targeted at banks and gullible individuals, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued alerts warning American financial institutions to be wary of hiring Nigerians. Such directives took a toll on the career aspirations of many highly qualified Nigerian professionals in the US who were turned back from jobs the moment their passport gave them away. Many Nigerians who were working for financial corporations were subjected to surveillance that presumed them to be criminals – or, at least, crime-minded.

All that travail would pale to insignificance compared to the price Nigerians resident abroad stand to pay if – God forbid – the impression takes root that their country is a fertile soil for rabid zealots willing to inflict mass-murder and other forms of mayhem on “infidels.”

How exactly did we get here?

One answer, of course, is that al Qaeda is a global scourge, with cells embedded not only in Islamic nations but also in such liberal democracies as Britain, Denmark, Canada and the United States of America. In that sense, then, there’s nothing really extraordinary that a Nigerian had stepped up to play his hideous part in a tragic plot.

But there’s also a sense in which Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab’s emergence is the culmination of years of official nonchalance towards the phenomenon of domestic religious violence. Tens of thousands of Nigerians have perished in outbreaks of sectarian violence often instigated by members of some fringe Islamic group or another. It’s depraved, but not altogether unexpected, that zealots would from sometimes arise in a frenzied spree, fueled by a hunger to massacre non-believers in the name of their deity.

But what’s even weirder is that the government – whose primary mandate ought to be the protection of lives and property – habitually indulges the slaughterers. On numerous occasions, the Nigerian police and army elected to snore away as fiends killed and destroyed in the name of “God.” Few, if any, of those murderers were ever prosecuted, much convicted.

The Nigerian state, in permitting sanctimonious fanatics to get away with their cruel sport, helped create Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab. In the end, the difference between domestic religious terrorism and its exportation is only a plane trip away.

Dora Akunyili, Umaru Yar’Adua’s “rebrand” guru, once disparaged Nigerians resident abroad for tarring their country’s image through excessive criticism. Akunyili should know better, but those were the early days of her commission – and she was, it seemed, desperate to convince her paymasters that she was equal to the magic, not of clearing out shit, but applying deodorant on it.

Akunyili’s barbs at foreign-based Nigerians sought to create a false dichotomy. She implied that some Nigerians – the homebound ones – view their country more positively than the disconnected “exiles.” The truth, and she knows it, is that there are indeed two groups of Nigerians, but not along the lines she suggested. There are those – the vast majority – who are dismayed by their country’s missed opportunities and derailed promises. And then, there are others – a tiny group – who profess to love Nigeria exactly the way it is.

Whether one is located abroad or at home has nothing to do with one’s response to Nigeria. Interest is everything. Nigerians are like people everywhere else: they want a decent country where they can live as humans, secure in their lives and property. But there are the few, leeches and parasites whose appetites are as huge as their minds and consciences are miniscule, who take callous pleasure in a dysfunctional Nigeria. For them, dysfunction is a necessary condition for the kind of primitive accumulation in which they thrive.

Once the majority awakes to the fact of its numerical superiority – and, from the way things are shaping up in the country, that’s bound to happen sooner than later – then they will stand up and reclaim their country from the calloused hands of the few manufacturers of misery and death in our midst. That’s one way to ensure that the Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab and his ilk don’t define the rest of us.

By Okey Ndibe

Nigeria’s preeminent novelist Chinua Achebe is, in manner, soft-spoken and gentle. In fact, Achebe has been described as self-effacing. Seldom does his voice rise. But those who know him best recognize that, beneath that genteel exterior, there is a steely core to the man. Achebe is the master of economy in expression, a man who manages the magic – rare in our world – of not expending one careless or superfluous word when he speaks.

Given Achebe’s demure nature, it’s significant that a certain impatience, even stridency, has in recent years crept into his voice. In several recent interviews or statements, Achebe – who just accepted a prestigious position as the David and Mariana Fisher University Professor at Brown University – has not tried to mask a deep disappointment with the desultory way that his (nearly) fifty-year-old nation continues to carry on. Some two months ago, the author even used the word “revolution” in speaking about what it would take for Nigerians to reclaim their country.

In 2004, Achebe’s rejection of what was touted as a national honor – the bestowal of the Commander of the Federal Republic by the Olusegun Obasanjo administration – became a classic of conscientious censure. The Obasanjo government’s announcement of the award came at a time of the regime’s ill-veiled sponsorship of mayhem in Anambra, Achebe’s home state.

In a letter that was as brief as its moral force was stupendous, Achebe conveyed utter outrage. He wrote to Mr. Obasanjo: “For some time now I have watched events in Nigeria with alarm and dismay. I have watched particularly the chaos in my own state of Anambra where a small clique of renegades, openly boasting its connections in high places, seems determined to turn my homeland into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom. I am appalled by the brazenness of this clique and the silence, if not connivance, of the Presidency.”

In those few words, Achebe not only captured the remaking of his home state into a state of anarchy but also struck at a fundamental truth about the character of the Obasanjo presidency: a tragic investment, not in nation-building but nation-wrecking, and a willingness to be wedded to criminal elements and projects.

It was not, properly speaking, honor that Achebe rejected; a government that lacked honor could not confer on anybody what it didn’t have. A dishonorable regime such as Obasanjo’s was capable, in the final analysis, only of dispensing dishonor. That presidency, like the “leaders” before him, had emptied national honors of any real moral content or social prestige. I wrote a column that lauded the novelist for his principled rejection of impunity and iniquity. The column was appropriately titled “Achebe’s repudiation of horror.” For it was clear to me that, had Achebe accepted the tainted honorific, he would have left his admirers, in Nigeria and outside, horrified.

Achebe deserves more fame for what strikes me as a highly intuitive insight into his country’s political drama. The man’s antenna seem adept at detecting those moments when his nation is poised on the edge of a terrible chasm.

The publication (but not the writing) of his A Man of the People – a novel that ends with a coup d’etat and predicts a succession of other coups – almost coincided with Nigeria’s first military intervention. The closeness of the fictional “prediction” to the real coup earned Achebe the unwelcome attention of the soldiers who planned and executed a counter-coup at the end of July 1966.

In 1984, Achebe published The Trouble with Nigeria, a treatise that has since become arguably the most widely read social and political analysis of Nigeria. The book’s importance, in sheer volume of sales as well as the frequency with which it’s quoted, belies its critical reception. Some haughty social scientists, anxious to protect their professional turf, had sought to pooh-pooh Achebe’s insights. A few of them even charged him with a lack of analytic rigor.

Today, many scholars examining the factors that precipitated the collapse of the Shehu Shagari administration routinely acknowledge The Trouble with Nigeria as a vivid portrait of the time and an illuminating study of Nigeria’s enduring malady. In some way, the book x-rays the corruption, dearth of vision and depth of rot that spelt doom not only for Shagari and his cohorts, but also (on an even profounder level) for the Nigerian citizenry.

The point is that Achebe’s instincts about his troubled, troubling country are so excellent. Achebe’s decision, then, to convene an international colloquium on Nigerian elections resonated both with many Nigerians as well as Nigerianists – my term for those deeply focused on Nigeria, whether they are diplomats or scholars. The colloquium took place last Friday, December 11, at the Westin Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island – a shout away from Achebe’s new academic address.

A throng of Nigerians attended the colloquium. The familiar faces included Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, Achebe, Dim Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, Governor Peter Obi, Professor A.B.C. Nwosu, Professor Abiola Irele, Senator Ken Nnamani, Senator Ben Obi, Mr. Emeka Izeze (a top executive of The Guardian), Mr. Sonala Olumhense (a columnist at The Guardian), and Sowore Omoyele (of Saharareporters.com). The team of Nigerianists included three former US ambassadors to Nigeria, Walter Carrington, John Campbell, and Princeton Lyman. Nigerians will remember Carrington for his clashes with the Sani Abacha dictatorship, often triggered by the ambassador’s identification with Nigeria’s democratic forces in their war against the bespectacled military ruler.

The colloquium achieved consensus on two linked questions. One: that the February 6, 2010 governorship election in Anambra will serve as a preview and dress rehearsal for the 2011 general elections. Two: that Nigeria may be hard put to it to survive another fraudulent polls, and certainly not one rigged on the scale of the 2007 “elections,” notoriously named as one of the worst in history.

Considering that so much rides on the Anambra governorship election, it’s nothing short of scandalous that Maurice Iwu will be permitted to conduct it. As chairman of the (misnamed) Independent National Electoral Commission, Mr. Iwu has established a distinction for incompetence, perfidy, and shamelessness. Here’s an electoral umpire who seems to think it’s up to him to award offices, to divest voters of their constitutional right to determine the outcome of polls.

The signs are there – writ large – that Iwu’s INEC is set to turn Anambra into its latest site for a tragic miscarriage of an election. Iwu has been on a media blitz lately; he’s up to his usual game of exhibiting a contrived tone of earnestness in insisting that his commission will deliver a credible election. Perhaps, he manages to believe himself. Nigerians know better. They know that he has a candidate in the race, and that candidate’s name is Nnamdi (Andy) Uba. Besides, Nigerians have seen the same empty strutting and grandstanding by Iwu just before the electoral heists in Adamawa and Ekiti. Nigerians realize that the real Iwu is not the one who makes high-minded speeches, but the one who operates crudely, in secret, only to emerge with bizarre electoral results.

Most of the men and women gathered at Achebe’s colloquium in Providence were in no doubt that the INEC headed by Iwu has an insurmountable credibility deficit. But they also realized that the time is ripe to mount a multi-pronged assault on the culture of fraud that keeps Nigeria in the grips of its least enlightened, morally bankrupt elements. Anambra will be a testing ground.

A politically naïve and confused Atiku Abubakar let INEC and the ruling party to get away with the Adamawa rig fest. The electoral umpire in Ekiti found a way to silence her conscience, and made another questionable call. Still, the mood in Nigeria and among the participants in the colloquium suggests that the days of unchallenged electoral impunity may be numbered.

Here’s my prediction: if INEC screws up the Anambra election, it’s likely to be the last election Iwu misconducts.

by Okey Ndibe

At the slightest provocation – in fact, often at no provocation at all – Nigerians invoke God’s name. In today’s column, I imagine a letter God has written to Nigerians titled “You’re on your own.” Here goes.

Beloved Nigerians (yes, I call you beloved even though many of you are among the world’s most unrepentant sinners), I’m going to be blunt.

I am getting impatient with what you call prayers. Many of you let out deafening screams and shrieks in the name of praying. It’s as if you think I’m deaf – that I won’t hear you unless you shout, punch the air like bad boxers, and contort your faces into strange expressions, like unseasoned Nollywood over-actors.

In fact, if I weren’t indestructible, I would since have lost my hearing for all the noise many of you make while praying. If I appeared before you in physical form, I’m afraid some of you would long have poked out my eye for all the jabbing you do when you pray. Please take note: my perceptual faculties are sound; they’re so flawless that even the word “perfect” is too imperfect to describe them. My hearing, for instance, is so good that I even hear the heart’s silent murmur. Please quit this rude habit of howling you mistake for prayer.

Irritating as I find your style of supplication, you have other habits that really, really gall me. One is how you bother me, day and night, to give you the things I’ve already granted you in prodigious quantities. Another is your ceaseless pleas that I do for you what you should be doing for yourselves.

What great gifts haven’t I bestowed on you Nigerians? I gave you a huge supply of rich arable land that should make you the envy of other nations. You can grow all kinds of food on this land – yam, cocoyam, groundnuts, rice, potatoes and more. Yet, a few among you bask in greed and wallow in conspicuous consumption while the majority goes hungry. Then I buried massive reserves of some of the most treasured natural resources in your land, among them tin, coal, and oil – the 20th century’s black gold.

Again, you have allowed a gluttonous few among you to steal the wealth that should belong to all. Look around you, how many of your African neighbors can boast even a fraction of the resources I have blessed you with? For that matter, how many countries in the world are as richly endowed as you?

What has all that wealth done for you? Nothing!

No roads. Each year, your politicians and rulers pocket hundreds of billions of naira that should be spent on roads. Instead of sending them off to jail, what do you do? You garland them with empty titles and include their names on your roll of national honor. Instead of calling them criminals, you celebrate them. Instead of covering your noses in their presence, many of you grovel before them. You flatter them with the names of “Leader,” “stakeholder,” “prominent Nigerian,” or “Mr. Fix-it.” You baptize them as chieftains when you ought to address them properly, as thieftains.

Each year, thousands of you perish in horrible accidents on the country’s ill-paved or neglected roads. In other countries, these avoidable deaths would trigger outrage at the rapacious politicians who did away with the budget for roads. Not in Nigeria. Instead, you raise your over-loud voices to heaven, as if I decreed that the roads be in ghastly condition. You call down “holy ghost fire” on the faceless witches and wizards you blame for these road casualties.

Such demons exist only in the deceptive imagination of your imams and pastors. The simple reality is that bad roads and deplorable driving habits cause accidents.

Yes, when you should hold your politicians accountable, you embrace the abracadabra of some so-called “men of God” who preach that accidents are caused by marine spirits. Such superstitious nonsense sometimes fills me with pity, other times with holy rage.

The culture of mediocrity extends to every sector of your national life. As I write, the man you call your president is lying in a Saudi hospital. Ask yourselves a few simple questions. Why do your leaders always fly to other countries for medical treatment? Are there no qualified Nigerian physicians to treat their ailments? Why are most of these experts living and working abroad? How do the leaders treat the Nigerian doctors who are home-based? Are they encouraged with funds to do their research? Does the government provide equipment to enable them to serve the rest of you when you fall sick?

Why do you put up with fake leaders who travel abroad at your expense, but who do nothing to ensure you have access to decent health care when you fall sick? Why can’t you insist that, unless they meet one condition, they can no longer use your funds to fly abroad? That condition is this: if they can’t, or won’t, fix the country’s health care delivery system, then they must first budget funds for each and every sick Nigerian to be flown abroad as well. You must refuse to underwrite their treatment in countries other men and women have organized well.

Today, hundreds of thousands of you die yearly from malaria and other easily manageable diseases. Far too many women die giving birth – a rarity in most other countries. Again, why don’t you rise and chase off the wreckers of your lives, the despoilers of your present and future, the looters of your treasury? Why, instead, do you turn to pastors and imams to intercede on your behalf for divine healing?

A few years ago, your former president flew in an American pastor to come and deliver miraculous healings. Did any of you wonder why the same president, when he’s sick, consults a foreign doctor instead of a foreign pastor?

Let me spell it out again: the pastors who tell you that some invisible dark forces and principalities are behind the senseless deaths of sick Nigerians are plain liars. Hear me well: they are unscrupulous scam artists who exploit you with superstitious tales. These deaths occur because of two related reasons: one, that most of your so-called leaders are simply unconscionable robbers, and, two, that many of you – out of moral cowardice, ignorance or some parochial principle – allow the contemptible usurpers to get away with carting off public funds.

Oh, how you Nigerians sometimes test my patience! You rig elections, and you say it’s God’s doing. You steal power, and you say – knowing it’s a lie – that only God gives power. You embezzle billions from the public treasury, and you say – again, knowing it’s a lie – that God has blessed you. Some of you then pay ten percent of your loot to a sham pastor – as if it’s possible to bribe God. Other ruthless thieves among you take up knighthoods in one denomination or another, or make a fetish of going to Mecca, or build a private chapel or mosque. Do you think that God is an accessory to fraud, or will ever be impressed by a robber’s gestures, however seemingly grand in the eyes of mere mortals?

It irks me to hear Nigerians say that only God can solve your problems – when the solution is well within your grasp? Did God manufacture your problems? Your leaders (who are actually rulers, for they can’t lead) buy up swanky real estate in South Africa, Dubai, England, Europe, the US, even in neighboring Ghana. Do you not know that true leaders, not I, built up these countries and their infrastructures?

Do you not remember how you once regarded Ghana as a basket case? How that country’s citizens flooded the streets of Nigeria in search of any menial job that was to be had? Today, Ghanaians leaders and followers, working together, are revamping their nation. Some of your former heads of state have fatter bank accounts than Ghana. Yet, Ghanaians have husbanded their resources and are achieving a nation they can be proud of, and others commend. Ghana’s cities and many rural areas now enjoy virtually uninterrupted power supply. How about Nigeria? It’s a narrative of failure. After squandering billions of dollars on fictional power projects, your leaders can’t guarantee 2,000 megawatts on a good day! No wonder your leaders, shameless as ever, now flock with their mistresses to Accra and other Ghanaian cities for weekend romps and revelries. But I wonder: Why do you accept this decrepit existence?

Here’s the bottom line: I’ve given Nigerians more than their fair share in natural and human endowments. It’s up to you to achieve the change you want – or else remain captive to woes. Begin today – not tomorrow – by committing to moral conversion. You’re world champions in praying. It’s time to start acting. Work for the change you desire. If you believe in God, then let it show. True believers don’t engage in corrupt acts. They don’t steal elections, nor do they rest until hijackers of elective office are swept out.

Know this, ye Nigerians. It’s not God’s job to build your roads and hospitals, to sweep your dirty streets, to do the work of your doctors, to drag your corrupt leaders before a magistrate, or to kill those you permit to destroy your collective lives. Listen to Fela: Don’t shuffer and shmile. And to Bob Marley: stand up for your rights!

by Okey Ndibe

Last week, Attorney General Michael Aondoakaa went out of his way to establish his closeness to Aso Rock resident, Umaru Yar’Adua. With Nigeria gripped by widespread rumors of Mr. Yar’Adua’s death in a hospital in Saudi Arabia, Aondoakaa set out to squelch the whispered falsehood. In a statement, he told Nigerian, in effect, to relax. In Nigerianese, the statement was akin to declaring, “Nothing spoil!”

Aondoakaa wanted Nigerians and – why not – the world as well to know that he’d been on the phone to Yar’Adua, and Umaru was, as one newspaper reported, “hale and hearty.” Well, good for Mr. Yar’Adua, but how about millions of Nigerians who can’t afford to fly abroad for the succor of Saudi or German doctors?

A day after Aondoakaa’s upbeat, “nothing spoil” report, Yar’Adua’s personal physician finally owned up, in a statement released by Segun Adeniyi, that the former Katsina governor has been diagnosed with “acute pericarditis,” described as an inflammation of the covering of the heart.

Nigerian clerics, Christian and Moslem alike, weighed in with prayers for Mr. Yar’Adua’s quick and complete recovery. Moved, no doubt, by Christian and Islamic sense of charity, these ecclesiastical authorities urged adherents of their religions to storm heaven with petitions for Yar’Adua’s physical mending.

I’m not one to argue against praying for any ailing person. In fact, I wish Mr. Yar’Adua nothing less than vibrant, exuberant health. Even so, each time I made to pray for the man, I stumbled. A voice within me kept protesting, “How about the millions of sick Nigerians dying silently, slowly, in excruciating pain in Nigerian hospitals laid waste by the avarice, greed, idiocy of so-called Nigerian leaders?” Since assuming – I’d say usurping – the Nigerian presidency in 2007, has Mr. Yar’Adua taken any significant step to improve the quality of health care in the country.

My answer was there – it was easy – No! There’s no question that many Moslems and Christians heeded their leaders’ entreaties to storm God with petitions for Mr. Yar’Adua’s well being. I hope the Aso Rock resident recovers well enough to answer a simple question: What have you ever done to give ailing Nigerians a praying chance at revamped health?

Mr. Yar’Adua was enthroned on Nigerians on May 29, 2007 – thanks to a combination of Olusegun Obasanjo’s colossal malice, Maurice Iwu’s shameless mischief, and (later) the Supreme Court’s tragic misjudgment. Since his investiture in office, Yar’Adua has made several trips abroad – specifically to Germany and Saudi Arabia – on account of his sickness.

These frequent medical trips have proved costly for Nigerians. Nigeria is in woeful shape, and demands a full-time, energetic and visionary leader to devote himself to the generation and execution of sound policies to rescue the country. Yet, Yar’Adua has been far from focused on Nigeria and its myriad crises. Quite simply, the hardest thing the man does in a typical day, it seems, is to nurse himself to sleep.

In a moment of comical diversion during his “run” for the presidency, Yar’Adua had challenged those doubting his superb physical conditioning to step into an arena and face him in several rounds of squash. That sad attempt at swagger has since earned a spot as one of the theatrical interludes in Obasanjo’s “do-and-die” campaign against a people who had the effrontery to deny him an unconstitutional third term in office. Since his investiture in office in May 2007, Yar’Adua has cut the image less of a swashbuckling squash player than of a man who, on many a day, would be incapable of sitting up to watch one round of squash.

Rumors have swirled in Nigeria that Yar’Adua has cancelled numerous state functions because he was in no shape to sit through them, or to stand up for a few minutes to make a speech. Nigerians wasted billions of naira on an election to choose a leader, and ended up with a man that must rank as one of the costliest liabilities in the history of leadership. Again, Nigerians must be in no hurry to forget that Yar’Adua is a product of vengeance. Even so, Yar’Adua deserves scolding – he’s grown up, after all – for consenting to be a pawn in Obasanjo’s diseased game of vindictiveness. Yar’Adua knew full well that he was a feeble man, that his body could not withstand the sheer physical tax of being a president. For his own sake, for the sake of his family, and in the interest of the Nigerian collectivity, he should have had the courage to tell Obasanjo: “Sorry, but I can’t serve as the instrument with which you whip Nigerians.”

Aondoakaa wants to toast what he alleges to be Yar’Adua’s strong health. It’s fine if Saudi doctors nurse Yar’Adua to health, or even a semblance of it. The trouble is that, in a perverse way, Yar’Adua’s health care translates a health scare for most Nigerians. Let me explain.

The record is that Yar’Adua has been seriously sick for a long time, even spanning the eight years he operated as Katsina governor. Yet, the man didn’t see fit to build and equip one hospital in his state that would cater to other residents facing similar health issues. He was apparently like most Nigerian “leaders,” content to take care of himself – by flying abroad for treatment. It never occurs to these so-called leaders to use their offices to improve the quality of health care in Nigeria and for Nigerians.

Last week, a young man contacted me from Lagos to report his shock at the dismal state of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital. “The place is not even fit for pigs to be treated there,” the man said, pleading that I write about the issue.

LUTH is no isolated case. Nigerian hospitals, almost without exception, are a ghastly sight. In the 1970s, Nigeria boasted a number of teaching hospitals that were well equipped and run by some of the best doctors in the world. Today, those teaching hospitals have come to abject ruin, the result of neglect by the country’s cast of misbegotten “leaders.”

Nigerians ought to awaken to the scandal, and resist the rule of men and women who wreck the nation’s health sector and then run abroad for medical care. Has Yar’Adua ever paused to ask himself whether Saudi Arabia has more doctors than Nigeria? Has it ever occurred to him that Saudi monarchs do not fly to Nigeria when they urgently desire a doctor’s attention? Why then does he – do other “prominent” Nigerians – have a habit of rushing off to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Germany or elsewhere to worry their doctors? Don’t Nigeria’s rulers realize that a good health care system does not emerge by accident? Instead, that such a system is the product of vision, planning, and seriousness of purpose on the part of genuine political leaders in partnership with medical professionals. What is Yar’Adua’s record, even, in paying doctors or equipping existing federal hospitals? Is that record not – bluntly put – wretched?

That’s the kind of conversation Nigerians ought to be having. Those who wish to pray for Yar’Adua’s restoration to health should, by Last week, Attorney General Michael Aondoakaa went out of his way to establish his closeness to Aso Rock resident, Umaru Yar’Adua. With Nigeria gripped by widespread rumors of Mr. Yar’Adua’s death in a hospital in Saudi Arabia, Aondoakaa set out to squelch the whispered falsehood. In a statement, he told Nigerian, in effect, to relax. In Nigerianese, the statement was akin to declaring, “Nothing spoil!”

Aondoakaa wanted Nigerians and – why not – the world as well to know that he’d been on the phone to Yar’Adua, and Umaru was, as one newspaper reported, “hale and hearty.” Well, good for Mr. Yar’Adua, but how about millions of Nigerians who can’t afford to fly abroad for the succor of Saudi or German doctors?

A day after Aondoakaa’s upbeat, “nothing spoil” report, Yar’Adua’s personal physician finally owned up, in a statement released by Segun Adeniyi, that the former Katsina governor has been diagnosed with “acute pericarditis,” described as an inflammation of the covering of the heart.

Nigerian clerics, Christian and Moslem alike, weighed in with prayers for Mr. Yar’Adua’s quick and complete recovery. Moved, no doubt, by Christian and Islamic sense of charity, these ecclesiastical authorities urged adherents of their religions to storm heaven with petitions for Yar’Adua’s physical mending.

I’m not one to argue against praying for any ailing person. In fact, I wish Mr. Yar’Adua nothing less than vibrant, exuberant health. Even so, each time I made to pray for the man, I stumbled. A voice within me kept protesting, “How about the millions of sick Nigerians dying silently, slowly, in excruciating pain in Nigerian hospitals laid waste by the avarice, greed, idiocy of so-called Nigerian leaders?” Since assuming – I’d say usurping – the Nigerian presidency in 2007, has Mr. Yar’Adua taken any significant step to improve the quality of health care in the country.

My answer was there – it was easy – No! There’s no question that many Moslems and Christians heeded their leaders’ entreaties to storm God with petitions for Mr. Yar’Adua’s well being. I hope the Aso Rock resident recovers well enough to answer a simple question: What have you ever done to give ailing Nigerians a praying chance at revamped health?

Mr. Yar’Adua was enthroned on Nigerians on May 29, 2007 – thanks to a combination of Olusegun Obasanjo’s colossal malice, Maurice Iwu’s shameless mischief, and (later) the Supreme Court’s tragic misjudgment. Since his investiture in office, Yar’Adua has made several trips abroad – specifically to Germany and Saudi Arabia – on account of his sickness.

These frequent medical trips have proved costly for Nigerians. Nigeria is in woeful shape, and demands a full-time, energetic and visionary leader to devote himself to the generation and execution of sound policies to rescue the country. Yet, Yar’Adua has been far from focused on Nigeria and its myriad crises. Quite simply, the hardest thing the man does in a typical day, it seems, is to nurse himself to sleep.

In a moment of comical diversion during his “run” for the presidency, Yar’Adua had challenged those doubting his superb physical conditioning to step into an arena and face him in several rounds of squash. That sad attempt at swagger has since earned a spot as one of the theatrical interludes in Obasanjo’s “do-and-die” campaign against a people who had the effrontery to deny him an unconstitutional third term in office. Since his investiture in office in May 2007, Yar’Adua has cut the image less of a swashbuckling squash player than of a man who, on many a day, would be incapable of sitting up to watch one round of squash.

Rumors have swirled in Nigeria that Yar’Adua has cancelled numerous state functions because he was in no shape to sit through them, or to stand up for a few minutes to make a speech. Nigerians wasted billions of naira on an election to choose a leader, and ended up with a man that must rank as one of the costliest liabilities in the history of leadership. Again, Nigerians must be in no hurry to forget that Yar’Adua is a product of vengeance. Even so, Yar’Adua deserves scolding – he’s grown up, after all – for consenting to be a pawn in Obasanjo’s diseased game of vindictiveness. Yar’Adua knew full well that he was a feeble man, that his body could not withstand the sheer physical tax of being a president. For his own sake, for the sake of his family, and in the interest of the Nigerian collectivity, he should have had the courage to tell Obasanjo: “Sorry, but I can’t serve as the instrument with which you whip Nigerians.”

Aondoakaa wants to toast what he alleges to be Yar’Adua’s strong health. It’s fine if Saudi doctors nurse Yar’Adua to health, or even a semblance of it. The trouble is that, in a perverse way, Yar’Adua’s health care translates a health scare for most Nigerians. Let me explain.

The record is that Yar’Adua has been seriously sick for a long time, even spanning the eight years he operated as Katsina governor. Yet, the man didn’t see fit to build and equip one hospital in his state that would cater to other residents facing similar health issues. He was apparently like most Nigerian “leaders,” content to take care of himself – by flying abroad for treatment. It never occurs to these so-called leaders to use their offices to improve the quality of health care in Nigeria and for Nigerians.

Last week, a young man contacted me from Lagos to report his shock at the dismal state of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital. “The place is not even fit for pigs to be treated there,” the man said, pleading that I write about the issue.

LUTH is no isolated case. Nigerian hospitals, almost without exception, are a ghastly sight. In the 1970s, Nigeria boasted a number of teaching hospitals that were well equipped and run by some of the best doctors in the world. Today, those teaching hospitals have come to abject ruin, the result of neglect by the country’s cast of misbegotten “leaders.”

Nigerians ought to awaken to the scandal, and resist the rule of men and women who wreck the nation’s health sector and then run abroad for medical care. Has Yar’Adua ever paused to ask himself whether Saudi Arabia has more doctors than Nigeria? Has it ever occurred to him that Saudi monarchs do not fly to Nigeria when they urgently desire a doctor’s attention? Why then does he – do other “prominent” Nigerians – have a habit of rushing off to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Germany or elsewhere to worry their doctors? Don’t Nigeria’s rulers realize that a good health care system does not emerge by accident? Instead, that such a system is the product of vision, planning, and seriousness of purpose on the part of genuine political leaders in partnership with medical professionals. What is Yar’Adua’s record, even, in paying doctors or equipping existing federal hospitals? Is that record not – bluntly put – wretched?

That’s the kind of conversation Nigerians ought to be having. Those who wish to pray for Yar’Adua’s restoration to health should, by all means, do so. Here’s my own prayer: That Yar’Adua’s luck in Saudi hospitals should not continue to spell misfortune for millions of Nigerians.

On his return to Abuja, Yar’Adua should (as a priority) outline what he intends to do to lift the quality of Nigerian hospitals to Saudi levels. If he can’t come up with a plan, then Nigerians ought to insist that he should head for a Nigerian hospital when next he needs to see a doctor. That way, he would gain first-hand experience of the grim reality at Nigerian hospitals – and a deserved taste of the desperate fate facing most Nigerians who suffer from common and severe ailments.

Leaders who can’t, or won’t, solve problems for other citizens should have no right to run off to better-run countries when their health is ravaged. means, do so. Here’s my own prayer: That Yar’Adua’s luck in Saudi hospitals should not continue to spell misfortune for millions of Nigerians.

On his return to Abuja, Yar’Adua should (as a priority) outline what he intends to do to lift the quality of Nigerian hospitals to Saudi levels. If he can’t come up with a plan, then Nigerians ought to insist that he should head for a Nigerian hospital when next he needs to see a doctor. That way, he would gain first-hand experience of the grim reality at Nigerian hospitals – and a deserved taste of the desperate fate facing most Nigerians who suffer from common and severe ailments.

Leaders who can’t, or won’t, solve problems for other citizens should have no right to run off to better-run countries when their health is ravaged.

by Okey Ndibe

Friday, November 13, will be remembered as a day of hope for the people of Anambra State, nay Nigerians. That day, the Enugu Division of the Court of Appeal dismissed a misconceived lawsuit by Emmanuel Nnamdi Uba – widely known as Andy Uba – seeking to be foisted, via judicial fiat, as the governor of Anambra. The court’s five justices unanimously refused to grant what Justice Sylvester Nwani Ngwuta aptly described as “judicial blunder.”

Had Uba succeeded – God forbid! – he and his coterie would certainly have assaulted logic and sought to give God a bad name by categorizing their triumph as ordained by divinity. They would have staged a fiesta of carefully orchestrated celebration to leave the impression that Mr. Uba’s ascendancy had popular appeal.

Instead, the justices did not just decide to rain on the parade; they chose to send Mr. Uba’s paid puppeteers and hired jesters home. Ngwuta struck a powerful note when he declared that the effect of obliging Uba’s petition would be “too disastrous to contemplate.” The reason, said the judge, is that the April 14, 2007 election that purportedly elected Uba “was not conducted in accordance with the supreme law of the land.” Therefore, to grant Uba’s prayer to be established in Government House, Awka effective March 17, 2010 (when the tenure of incumbent Governor Peter Obi will run out) would be, in Ngwuta’s pertinent metaphor, to “bury the rights of Anambra State people.”

Beyond the death knell to Uba’s dreams to sneak into power by any means, last Friday’s verdict also held out other judicial, moral and political lessons. The universal spree of celebration that attended the judgment demonstrated Nigerians’ desire to achieve nobility. All too often, I encounter Nigerians who believe that there’s no hope for their country. They insist, for example, that every Nigerian, given the opportunity, would steal or cheat.

This brand of despair is fertilized, one realizes, when too many public officials leave office with wealth they cannot account for – and nobody makes an attempt to investigate, much less prosecute, them. Negative attitudes about Nigeria and Nigerians fester when the electoral commission proclaims clear losers in an election as the winners. Nigerians cannot help thinking the worst of themselves and their fellows when craven or corrupt judges, sitting on electoral tribunals, shamelessly validate beneficiaries of stolen political offices.

There’s nothing worse than a judiciary that is perceived as open to accepting cash inducement in exchange for bizarre or patently illogical verdicts. But last week, we saw a panel of judges who spoke clearly, boldly, and fearlessly. Even better, their pronouncement was in consonance with what the Nigerian public, including lawyers, recognized as the right – if not inevitable – conclusion.

That verdict had an electrifying effect. In Anambra, Enugu and elsewhere in Nigeria, millions of people heaved a sigh of relief. There was widespread boisterous celebration. I got calls from friends, relatives and even total strangers from different parts of the world – Sweden, England, Nigeria. Each caller bore witness to a sense of hope, an expectation of greater things to come.

Let’s be clear: Nigeria has spent close to fifty years slipping into a crisis that is, properly speaking, a profound morass. Nigerians who are under thirty years of age may not know that there was a time when embezzlement or kickback on contract was at the level of five percent. Today’s going rate of embezzlement hovers around eighty percent. Many young Nigerians would not know that there was a time when students were a veritable force for positive change in society, instead of the situation today when student cult groups seek distinction in savagery and self-indulgent debauchery. There was a time when student unionists sought to give a headache to Nigeria’s dictators and traitors, in uniform or agbada. Today, many student unionists merely seek a seat at the dinner tables of “thieftains.”

My point is this: it will take a while to rescue the country from the mire of social and political dysfunction and economic stagnation. The Nigerian judiciary exists within the same disordered space in which moral and ethical considerations are besieged, even often erased. The same system that enabled Andy Uba to accumulate inexplicable wealth after eight years in a fairly low-level political post has given birth to magistrates and judges who sell their bench.

Even so, Nigeria cannot – should not – be reduced to its lowliest elements. It is, we must remember, a nation of intelligent, sagacious and morally exemplary heroes, living and dead. Far from being only the country of crude, venal and grasping parasites, Nigeria also boasts many proud and productive people in all fields – from the mechanic to the medical scientist – who do the right thing daily and expect the best from themselves and their fellows.

Last Friday’s verdict against Uba no doubt dismayed those who profit from corruption and iniquity, the shameless men and women who thrive in the culture of impunity. But the verdict, above all, buoyed the vast majority of Nigerians who dream, and work, to achieve a Nigeria where sanity reigns, where all citizens are deemed and treated as equal, where no occupant of a political post may help himself to the public treasury and then get away with it.

Uba’s defeat translates into the legal and political burial of part of Obasanjo’s reprehensible legacy. I predict that, in time, Nigerians will demand that Mr. Obasanjo be compelled to answer for the manifold crimes committed during the eight years he occupied (and tainted) the office of President of Nigeria.

Many of those crimes were committed against the interests and people of Anambra State. The most egregious was the November 2004 destruction of public property by hoodlums who stormed the state in many trucks. As these hired wreckers went from one government-owned installation to another, setting things on fire, they were escorted – cheered on – by police officers. The bonfire, which was broadcast on Nigerian television, saddled Anambra with a price tag estimated at N30 billion.

Obasanjo was not bothered a bit – as if Anambra were not part of the space he swore on the constitution to govern. He never saw fit to issue a query to the then Anambra Commissioner of Police. This nonchalance led many to suspect that the mayhem had the tacit blessing of a president who desperately wanted an occasion to declare a state of emergency in order to remove then Governor Chris Ngige. The ruling party had imposed Ngige as governor. But when the man balked at orders to hand over the state’s treasury to the president’s closest friends, his erstwhile sponsors came up with depraved plots to remove him. But the battle against Ngige soon became a war on the assets of Anambra. The campaign essayed to remake Anambra into a state of anarchy.

Anambra has paid a steep price as the theatre of political perfidy. The challenge – now that the Uba specter has been decisively expunged – is to ensure that the state achieves a different, salutary distinction. It would be fitting, then, if the state’s forthcoming governorship election (scheduled for February 6, 2010) sets a standard for transparency and credibility. That would send a clear message that Nigerians want to reclaim their nation and their lives from the hands of mindless, self-serving politicians.

My fear is that, everything considered, this might prove a difficult dream. One good reason for anxiety is that the electoral commission under Maurice Iwu has seemed all-too willing to act less as an impartial umpire than an arm of the PDP. Truth is that, with Iwu running the election, many voters are apt to write it off as another ruined opportunity. There’s little or no prospect of persuading Iwu to step aside. Having survived Obasanjo and Uba, the people of Anambra ought to cultivate the art of political vigilance. They should be on guard against any and all predators and parasites, and use every means to protect their sovereignty.

(okeyndibe@gmail.com)