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Just look at the irony of life. Americans ingrained into their Constitution ...Read the full article.

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Mr. Tosan Okotie, I offer my thunderous applause to you for this article!

I was thinking the same thing yesterday, as I read this article below.... AND, I wondered and wondered about the "journalist" his colonial mentality, his inferiority complex .... which seem to be pervasive among Nigerians at home and abroad.... including the leaders and the led....

Here is the VERY vexing article:

April poll: U.S. review team arrives (Why REVIEW) master-servant? the boss-supervisor is reviewing the employee servant/
SIMON IMOBO-TSWAM, Abuja

A pre-election assessment team from the United States, The Institute for Advancement of Democracy (TIAD), has arrived Nigeria to assess the level of the country’s preparedness for the 2007 general elections scheduled for next month.

The TIAD is a non-profit pro-democracy whose primary objective is to promote the advancement of democratic ideals world-wide, especially in Africa where democracy is struggling to take root after decades of authoritarian civilian or military dictatorships.
The executive director of TIAD, Debbie Lee Magee, who disclosed this in Abuja, said the "high level delegation was part of the institute’s continued commitment towards playing a vital role in the up-coming elections."

The executive director of TIAD said the purpose of the pre-election assessment was to ascertain the country’s preparation for the elections, the electoral environment, and the level of support enjoyed by relevant agencies as well as get first hand information on the status of the electoral process so far in line with the principles for international election observation standards adopted by the United Observation Standards adopted by the United Nations in 2007.

Speaking further, she said: "The delegation has been meeting with senior government functionaries, officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as well as representatives of the various political parties, civil society organizations (CSOs) and collaborating international organizations.

"TIAD understands that no election can be viewed in isolation, but rather should take into consideration all aspects of the electoral process: the constitution, the electoral act, various related court decisions, the ability of the citizens and political parties to campaign freely and the voter registration exercise."

Magee, who is also leader of the delegation, expressed satisfaction with the innovative measures adopted by INEC to boost the credibility of the electoral process, and praised the role of civil society organizations in voter education through the effective use of the mass media.
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Foreign Election monitors and supervisors


The Nonsense Of Elections Monitors From America And Europe 2003

http://www.ngex.com/personalities/voices/padujie042603.htm



http://www.google.com/custom?domains=www.nigeriavillagesquare.com&q=Election+Monitors+Adujie&sa=Google+Search&sitesearch=&client=pub-9312122639450878&forid=1&ie=ISO-8859-1&oe=ISO-8859-1&cof=GALT%3A%23008000%3BGL%3A1%3BDIV%3A%23336699%3BVLC%3A663399%3BAH%3Acenter%3BBGC%3AFFFFFF%3BLBGC%3A336699%3BALC%3A0000FF%3BLC%3A0000FF%3BT%3A000000%3BGFNT%3A0000FF%3BGIMP%3A0000FF%3BFORID%3A1&hl=en

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Words & Consequences Why do we say things like.. ... American WARNS Nigeria!

How about Nigeria WARNS America over Katrina failures in New Orleans?

America Predict Buhari's Election Victory? (How about, Nigeria Predicts Obama Victory in 2008)?

http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/articles/paul-adujie/words-consequences-2.html

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Nigerian military no match for militants - US

AND US Military No Match for Iraqi Insurgents & Taliban!
http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/board/main-square/35994-us-military-no-match-iraqi-insurgents-taliban.html

John Ogbedu and Bolaji Ogundele with Agency Reports
Monday, March 19, 2007

THE United States of America (USA) has decried what it called the under-training of the Nigerian military, insinuating that the Nigerian Armed Forces is no match for the Niger Delta militants.

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence, Theresa Whelan, who made the observation, told a forum that, compared with the militants, Nigerian military is “under-trained and under-equipped to enforce security in the Niger Delta.”

Worried about increasing insecurity in the Niger Delta, Whelan stated that American assistance could not be utilised by the Nigerian military due to lack of training

“Because of a lack of training, Nigeria is unable to use four boats donated by the United States and 17 others bought by its Navy to patrol the Niger Delta, a vast maze of mangrove-lined creeks and wetlands, Whelan said.

“The only problem is that the Navy is not appropriately trained to use those boats and so for the most part ... they sit idle in the Niger Delta,” Whelan said last week

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Could Nigerians not argue that poor training of American Military is why the Militants/INSURGENTS in Iraq.... the Marhdi Army, Mosada, Al Queda in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan are resurgent and indomitable and unyielding?

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Absolutely nothing unlike say Ghana. A higher percentage of us never wanted independence ab initio and were comfortable with the status quo. Thus our colonial masters cashed in on that fact and till date we are dependent on Jerusalem first before Nigeria if you are a christian like myself, Saudi Arabia before Nigeria if you are a moslem, Benin Republic and Cuba if you follow voodoo, UK b4 Nigeria if you want political/economic power, US b4 Nigeria if you want military power etc etc. :D :D :D

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How about .... the then usurpers of Nigerian political power? How about the colonial occupiers at the time? How about the illegal British government in Nigeria as it then was?

Why the MASTER?????

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A higher percentage of us never wanted independence ab initio and were comfortable with the status quo. Thus our colonial masters cashed in

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Below is another "intelligent" Nigerian who is DEMANDING foreign intervention in Nigerian political affairs.... intervention by Prime Minister Blair of England, a "perfect" politician


Open Letter to Rt. Hon Tony Blair.... Save Nigeria from Disaster

Phil Chinwuba esq.
aguleri2000@yahoo.co.uk
London

Culled from www.Nanka.Org

The RT. Hon. Tony Blair
The British Prime Minister
No 10 Downing Street
London

March 21, 2007

The Rt. Hon Prime Minister Sir,

Re: Save Nigeria from Disaster

“
We wish to draw your attention to next months general election which portends
grave danger for Nigeria democracy going by the way the voter’s registration
exercise was conducted and the ongoing screening of candidates for various
electoral offices. Nigerians want a credible election. We should not have a repeat
of the 2003 election which till date; we have not been able to explain the extra
votes over and above the number of registered voters. Prof. Iwu INEC chairman
who admitted that 2003 elections were neither free nor fair must guaranty
Nigerians that 2007 will not be a repeat of 2003 elections. The constitutional
crisis tearing the country apart now stems from the fostering of impostors in
government as a fall out of rigged election. Despite the judgement of the
Supreme Court on Buhari vs. Obasanjo with regards to the 2003 elections,
Nigerians knew very well that Obasanjo never won the 2003 presidential election
despite completing his second term of office. The degree of the lawlessness now
witnessed in the country is a fall out of the wholesale rigging.

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Hear from a “patriot” who “passionately loves Nigeria” and “selflessly” “loves and craves” her “independence” from “vindictive” and “brainwashed” “maggots”:

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Yar’ Adua, a disaster waiting to happen —Olu Falae
By MIKAIL MUMUNI
The Sun
Sunday, March 25, 2007

A former Secretary to the Federal Government , Chief Olu Falae, has done an appraisal of the past and the present regimes of President Olusegun Obasanjo and declared that they were not in the best interest of the country.

Falae, also a one-time Nigeria’s Minister of Finance, spoke in Lagos exclusively with with Sunday Sun. He said President Obasanjo’s first coming as military head of state in the seventies laid foundation for the economic crisis which the succeeding civilian administration of Alhaji Shehu Shagari “merely built upon.”

Chief Falae who was Obasanjo’s main opponent in the 1999 presidential elections also regretted the current state of decay of infrastructure in the country despite the soaring income Nigeria generates from the sale of crude oil. According to him, the failure by the Obasanjo’s regime to satisfy the yearnings of the electorate accounts for the current manipulations of the transition program so that the ruling Peoples Democratic Party could hang on to power.

Falae, currently the National Chairman of the Democratic Peoples Party< DPP>, also spoke on the flagbeare of Peoples Democratic Party , Umaru Yar’Adua among other issues.

Excerpts:
You ran against President Obasanjo in 1999 . Would you say Nigerians made a mistake electing him and later giving him a second term ?

Nigerians didn’t vote for him in 1999. He knows it and I am sure you know it, I know it. In the South- West where we both come from, I took about 80 percent of the vote. And elsewhere in Nigeria, people did not vote for him, but it was the power that were that decided that one of them, a fellow military person must take over from them. That was what happened. In 2003, General Muhammadu Buhari, his main opponent went to court , you remember the verdict. Even in Ogun State where he comes from, the court said it was a sham election and elsewhere. So, if he found it necessary to rig election in his home state in 2003, it meant he knew he would not have won without rigging. So he never won an election. He has never had an undisputed mandate either in 1999 or 20003.

President Obasanjo has endorsed Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua, two-term governor of Katsina State as his successor. How much of him do you know?

I don’t know him. Honestly, I don’t know him at all. I knew his elder brother, General Musa Yar’ Adua of blessed memory. He and I contested on the platform of the Social Democratic Party for nomination . Him I knew, him I respected . The respect was mutual .But his younger brother who has been dragged into the presidential race, I don’t know him at all. So I have no opinion about him.

But how would you describe the process through which he was drafted into the presidential race as the candidate of the PDP?

He was dragged into it like Alhaji Shehu Shagari before him and each time a man is forced to assume a public office, it is almost invariably a disaster because the man is not prepared for the assignment. If you were never prepared for an assignment and somebody just came to you and dragged you into it, it is going to take you several months before you get your bearing, before you begin to know what to do and in what sequence. The poor chap in my view is totally unprepared for what he has been saddled with. Moreover, people said his health is not sound, but they said oh, he has recovered, he could almost run the Olympics, but before they stopped talking he collapsed.

That single event debunked two lies. The first lie was that he was well. We all know now that he was not well. And the they told us that they had established centres for medical excellence in Lagos, Ibadan, Zaria , Enugu and indeed all over Nigeria, second to none in the world. But when Yar’Adua collapsed, they couldn’t take him to any of those centres o excellence. They had to fly him abroad. Another lie exposed. So, his collapse debunked two lies at the same time.

So, all in all, since Yar’Adua was not prepared, not exposed and is not of good health, in my view, he is totally unqualified to assume the post of president. If the Shagari experience of an unprepared president is anything to go by, I would not expect much from Yar’Adua if he becomes the president.

You remember it was Shagari who plunged us into this monumental import credit debt that triggered our economic crisis. We were importing much more than we could pay for under his presidency to the point that the corresponding banks stopped confirming credits for Nigerians until the General Ibrahim Babangida’s government renegotiated, cancelled some of the debts and rescheduled the balance.

It was Shagari’s unpreparedness that plunged us into that economic crisis. Of course the foundation of the crisis was laid by the Obasanjo military regime in the third quarter of 1978 when Nigeria for the first time took a jumbo loan of One billion dollars. It was like an overdraft from the commercial banks at commercial rates of interest. That laid the foundation for the crisis that the Shagari administration built upon. So, I have my fears about a Yar’Adua presidency. I feel it would lead to similar difficulties in future.
You just talked of administrations plunging us into economic difficulties but left out that of General Ibrahim Babangida under which you served at different times as Secretary to the Federal Government and Minister of Finance. You don’t agree with those who say that regime also mismanaged the economy?
On the contrary, it was the crisis the previous regimes created that we came to solve.
So did you succeed?

When the Babangida regime came, Nigeria was owing about 25 billion dollars , thanks to Obasanjo and Shagari. And it was Babangida’s government that got Chase Manhattan to look into the debt and find out which one was genuine and which ones were bogus. About eight billion dollars was found to be fictitious and was rejected by the Babangida government. The rest was then rescheduled for the re-payment over a long period. So, the government that did that did not create the problem. It tried to solve the problem. But before they could agree that we should spread the debt, because we could not pay immediately,they said we must have a structural adjustment programme . That was how SAP came about. They made it a condition for solving the problem created by Obasanjo and Shagari. That is the truth of the matter. And if people would be honest, they would say the situation under that regime is far better than what we have today. At that time ,we had about six thousand megawatts of electricity. Today, we have one thousand. At that time ,we had the National Directorate of Employment creating jobs or graduates, today, unemployment is the order of the day. At that time ,all the major roads were well maintained. Today, they are almost impassable. And the price of crude oil at a point that time was around ten dollars. Today, it is fifty dollars and yet are not seeing the benefits. Any unbiased commentator would agree that despite the hues and cries about SAP, it was a much better time than we have now. And in any case, the exchange rate by the time I left that government in August 1990 was 7.5 Naira to the US dollars. Not N 75 mind you. And we were screaming it was too high. Today what is it, 130 Naira to one US dollar. So, which one is better?

Still, it is generally believed that the Babangida’s regime institutionalized corruption in Nigerian. While that government was in power, Obasanjo indeed referred to it as a fraud
I don’t agree with that. And as for Obasanjo, how does he and his vice- president refer to their own government?

Obasanjo has described his vice- president as fraudulent. The vice- president has accused him of embezzlement of public funds. I have to believe the two of them. And so the summary is that the president and the vice- president have described their regime as fraudulent. Not Olu Falae is saying that, but they themselves and it is documented before the National Assembly. I have nothing more to add.

We are at a very critical stage of the transition programme. How hopeful are you of a hitch-free transition of power from president Olusegun Obasanjo to a new president?
I am indeed very worried about what is going on. The omens are not good. First of all, the ongoing crisis between the vice-president and the president and the role of the Independent National Electoral Commission give one a lot of concerns. It is also not clear whether INEC is prepared and to what extent it is prepared for the election. And three, it appears that the confidence of the people in INEC is eroding every day. So, all in all, it is a worrisome situation.

Do you have the feelings as some people do that Obasanjo might be trying to stalemate the transition process going by the current confusion on the political scene so that he could stay on ?

That is a possibility. It is also possible that he lost the plot. That he was trying to manipulate the process and then lost control. Those are the two possibilities. Either he just lost the plot and doesn’t know what to do again or he is deliberately trying to stage- manage a crisis.The way things are, we are unlikely to have a free, fair, transparent and credible election.

So what happens in that event?
I don’t know. I just don’t know. If elections are not free and fair, there will be protest, Nigerians will not accept it. So, it is better for the president, the government and INEC to get their acts together and do whatever it is in the next three weeks to make sure elections are free and fair.
The major factor in the election not being free and fair is the political intervention in the transition process by the Peoples Democratic Party < PDP> led government. They know that they have lost the support of the people, which they never had anyway in many parts of the country. They know that they will be defeated in a free and fair election. They know they will be massacred politically and they cannot contemplate losing the election. That is why we are having all these manipulations. They must have a change of attitude and face the electorate and accept in all humility the verdict of the people. It is just for four years. They can come back again if the people so decide. But they know they have lost the next election.

Mr President has declared the next election a do- or – die affair. Is your party ready also for a do-or-die-election?

We will do and live. We will not die. We shall win, we shall not die. We shall defend our votes in every legitimate way possible. We will not lie down to be walked over by the PDP, anywhere in Nigeria. Some of us are veterans of many struggles .Some of us have gone to detention .We did not commit any criminal offence, it was for standing for our principles that we were locked up in the past.

We shall stand for our principles again without violence, without breaking the law. Some of us have sacrificed to have democracy in Nigeria. If we did not put up the NADECO fight, there would have been no pressure on the international community to get rid of < late General Sani> Abacha. But the international community realized that the crisis would linger on and on if they don’t do something and that was beginning to hurt their economic interest and then they had to do something. If we had caved in like the rest of Nigerians, Abacha would still have been here today. So, having suffered to get democracy back, we cannot fold our arms and allow (treasonous) people destroy it.

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ILN,

That is the truth and how do you know it, by one simple test (taste), it is bitter.
Way forward, deconstruction of our mind through proper political socialisation starting from the elite. How Long?, already too late, but about 4 generations from now if we are committed..:D :D :D

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ONLY if despair and deception and discord define ‘truth’.
It does, BUT only to those
whose continued existence depends on falsehood
who despair that soon truth will force its way into their father’s throne of deceptions and discord.

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Restoring Hope To a Disappointed Nation
21st March, 2007
Daily Independent

This nation is prematurely loosing faith in itself. To most Nigerians, the concept of a protective federal republic or united nationalities under one political entity is both a fraud and a generational misfortune – nothing to cheer about, so to say. They speak more about a pending national catastrophe than about a brighter national prospect ahead. Pessimism is the word. To make things doubly difficult for the people, there has been an acute failure to put forward a leader whose charisma and personal reputation could assuredly bestride the polity. History teaches us that every young nation needs a George Washington, an Nkrumah, a Mandela, etc, to grow healthily into maturity and then blossom.
Whether by way of fate or deliberate communal choice of the very worst, this nation of ours has never seen a leader that is prepared and indeed capable of assuming such a foundation laying process. The result is that we have been saddled with a series of leaders that could never morally and, indeed, ethically, connect with the people. Murtala Muhammed was exceptionally on that track but as fate would again have it, the nation never had the opportunity to see what was within his capability as he was cut short on the saddle. So we are left to now conjecture how well things could possibly have fared had he lived long enough.

On the contrary, the country had experienced some icons and truly potential candidates from the pantheon of our ‘heroes past’ who could have fulfilled such solidifying role but who, due to a combination of many negative factors, were degraded to being just sectional or institutional heroes. For example, the great Zik of Africa diminished into the Owelle of Onitsha; the Sarduana is better described as that of Sokoto while Awolowo became better known as a warrior of the Yoruba cause, thereby living nothing for the national corpus to have and hold. The result is that the nation did not have a convincing rallying point. Even after the civil war that was supposedly fought to ‘keep Nigeria one’, not much has changed positively and she is indeed nearer united in 1960 than today. The new opportunistic leadership may not agree with this but the evidence on the ground does not give validity to the false claim that the nation is stronger today than before. If the Naira could be used as a parallel assessment mechanism for this purpose, it should have been obvious to all by now how deep the nation has fallen because it is no longer an issue that the Naira today is weaker than as it has been in the past. They really do not compare anymore. The same result is evident in many other aspects of our national life: monumental decadences everywhere.

There is the strong suspicion that the British, fearful of a strong and untied Nigeria, made this trend possible by deliberately undermining the national spread of our nationalist leaders thereby denying them the opportunity to assume truly effective national leadership. Instead of a cooperative form of federalism, we have created an antagonistic federalism in which the federating units would have to depend on a politically ******* centre that is ideologically local in focus and of doubtful constitutionality. But who can we blame for the series of wrong selections that we have been making at the highest level of national leadership since the British departed? It is debatable whether a cosmopolitan leader such as Zik would not have been better for the post-colonial nation of Nigeria than a provincial Balewa; whether MKO Abiola would not have fared better in the democratisation of the post-military Nigeria than Obasanjo who, for all intents and purposes, remains a soldier at heart. The sum total of all these historical conspiracies is to deny the nation, at very critical epochs, the opportunity to break the jinx, as it were, by continually deploying wrong persons to perform the wrong task. If the British started the evil, we have stupidly perpetuated it and there are no signs yet that we are about to get any wiser. How else can one explain that out of a population of more than one hundred million people that we have never had a university graduate as a national leader?

In our previous discourses on this page of aspects of this prevalent problem of nation-building, we attempted to resolve the riddle of the premature withering of the Nigerian state as a part of the general phenomenon of state failures world-wide that are often characterised by the irreversible weakening of national political and juridical institutions and a palpable decline in the esteem of national leadership coupled with, but not necessarily simultaneous, a complete absence of a sense of national hope. In many respects, it is obvious that most citizens are hopeless and there is nothing in the national horizon to brighten their dimmed faith in anything Nigeria. Some analysts have put the emerging pessimism to the perennial ‘failure of leadership’, a situation that has found concrete expression in the lack of a trustworthy national leadership.

The apathy and distrust of our people is worrying and only a fool would take them as signs of stability and peace. They are actually quite potent things in the opposite direction. It is not healthy, for example, that people do not trust their elected president. It is a sign of a falling system that people do not have faith in their leader and whoever is at the helm under such a situation ought to be able to see through it and adjust accordingly. The president I see on telly is not the one that seeks such a place in the imagination of the people. Instead he is deep inside the combative arena throw punches when he should be cooling frayed nerves with presidential assurances.

That is why I am somehow excited about the ongoing electioneering. For once, we are being presented with candidates that are well educated and are willing to defend their education. If little nations like Ghana and Liberia are already overcoming this problem of national pessimism due to the steady supply of quality national leadership, there ought to be hope that our lot in Nigeria would be better if someone with some intellectual ability is given the responsibility to steer the ship of state. The OBJ era, the era of shameless excuses for monumental failure in governance, is on its way out and it is time for truly educated people to take charge and should that happen, then, our match to some national relief would have started. Looking at the Nigerian situation, it appears to me that we stayed too long with the system of dictatorship and when the time came for us to shed that yoke, we foolishly handed over power to someone whose allegiance was to the old order. This coming election should provide us with the real first opportunity to break with the past characterised by a leadership that was poorly equipped mentally for the demands of constitutional democracy. That is where my hope for a truly great nation lies.

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