What better distraction can there be for a people bludgeoned into submission by hunger, disease, unemployment and uncontrolled deregulation (the mint for example)? What else can make us forget our problems and concentrate on inconsequential things that are definitely out of our control? While our incorruptible rulers set up grandiose commissions headed by (in) corruptible ex judges who spend a large part of their time pursuing corrupt local government chairmen while our wise and benevolent rulers devote their time to grafting new paragraphs to laws, insulting victims of their disastrous negligence or otherwise conspiring to further ensure the destruction of our collective futures.

Nigeria has no future, what we see everyday is a carefully planned reoccurrence of our past, convoluted in such a fashion as to completely render us impotent. We are denied the rights to even think of better options for our well being: that is why the newspapers and magazines are daily filled up with position papers on the desirability of the return of either Obasanjo or Babangida. What this well crafted treaties are designed to do is to lull us into a state of belief that the only available alternative is a choice between six and half a dozen. I find it impossible to believe that in a vast country like Nigeria, the only available candidates for the presidency are two completely immoral ex-dictators-general with no respect for the populace or the rule of law. How else could one explain the speed at which other candidates are quickly confined to the rubbish heap soon after their names are mentioned while we are daily inundated with the politicking of our dear dictator generals? Is it then safe to assume that the general public is gradually being forced to make a stand either for Obasanjo, Babangida? or to adopt the tested sidon look posture.

A further twist to this carefully articulated campaign is the presentation of totally inept and discredited politicians as candidates or how else will one explain why people like Abubakar Rimi have been given so much time and exposure or is this just another way of telling us that we are as stupid as they take us to be? I find it completely ironic that people that stood up to general Sani Abacha (there was only one other presidential candidate aside from old goggles but I just can't remember his name) are completely forgotten today while people that opted for the Senate instead of their life long ambition are daily given mention in the news (calling Saraki) as possible successors to our dear Uncle Shege.

I could go on and on and on (like the energizer bunny) until I get struck by lightning or die of old age, but before I get confined to the cadre of the mentally retarded allow me the space to further disabuse your minds. I do not intend to catalogue the impeachable offences of his Excellency or dredge the ugly riverbeds of Babangida's history, but I cannot resist mentioning a few unforgettable landmarks in our collective memories.

I love my country, I cannot do otherwise. Nigeria is the land of milk and honey, the only place in the entire universe where the measure of a man's importance is the quantum of wealth he has corruptly accumulated. Where the government can murder its citizens by negligently exploding weapons of war in residential areas and the perpetrators of this heinous act are not sacked but are rewarded.  Where else but in a country like Nigeria would a sitting president who had fraudulently connived to alter a bill already passed into law be considered the front-runner for the next election. I love my country, I cannot lie, it is only in Nigeria that one can cloth a man in black clothes, give him a gun, put him on duty on a highway and not pay him for months and still expect a decline in cases of highway robbery. Where else in this world will a man who over eight years perpetrated a series of unmentionable assaults on the social and economic fabric of a nation (he finally declared failure himself) still be considered for another chance to finally do to us what he was unable to conclude during his earlier tenure.

But I must concede that democracy provides room for every egomaniac to display his craze for power and unquenchable thirst for the fruits of corruption. Democracy allows ethnic militias to terminate the lives of innocent Nigerians who dare make abode in states not their own while the government looks on in amused bewilderment. Democracy allows for the emasculation of the people while their leaders grow fat on their corpses.

I love my country, I cannot lie, but I think it is time we close our minds to the strident pleas of taking case studies in abject failures in leadership as our only leadership options. We must force people of courage and fear of God to come forth and be counted. Or is it time for me to believe that there is no one out there who is capable of leading Nigeria to the Promised Land?