In the year 2125 AD, there was this model nation state called Palestisrael, comprising mainly indigenous Palestinians, Lebanese, and Jews, with some other diverse minor migrant Ogoni, Ishan, Ijaw, Efik, Okrika, Isoko, Ekpeye, Urhobo, Ibani, Anang, Bini, Itsekiri, Ibibio, and Kalabari émigrés from the former Federal Republic of Nigeria. On Friday, February 13, 2122 AD, there was a bloody military coup, in which a mutinous group of Christian Arabs assassinated the Moslem Arab head of the ruling military junta, General Mohammed. The coup attempt failed. Thanks to the patriotism and jungle justice expertise of some loyal Moslem Arab soldiers like Colonels Shehu, Sani, Mohammadu, and Ibrahim. At that time, the Chief of Army Staff was one Brigadier Theophilus, a Christian Palestinian, and a one-time leader of a gang of rebels that killed, on July 29, 2112 AD, his Supreme Commander, Major General John-Thomas, the Christian Jewish Head of the defunct Palestinian Defence Forces.

General Mohammed had, just ten years before his assassination, singularly led a group of mutineers that hijacked a British Airways plane, packed full with the wives, concubines, girlfriends, relatives, and children of mutineers then resident in former Southern Palestinian, and successfully relocated them safely from Jerusalem to the ancient city of Al- Qaeno in the far north of former Palestine, in readiness for a unilateral declaration of secession, also called "araba" in fluent ancient Palestinian Hebrew. In the midst of all the confusion generated by the attempted coup d’état of Friday, February 13, 2122 AD, the surviving members of the ruling junta hurriedly nominated one fat Brigadier Mathew, a Christian Lebanese, as their new head of junta. It was not his will to stick out his neck in an ocean of Moslem Arab "araba-loving" sharks. Neither too was Brigadier Theophilus ready to risk his throat. And so, it came to pass that Brigadier Mathew very reluctantly accepted to rule Palestisrael against his will. It is interesting to note that twice again in his life, in 2145 AD and in 2148 AD, General (later Chief) Mathew very reluctantly accepted to rule Palestisrael against his will, except after long periods of fasting, prayers, and forced celibacy, in complete submission to the will of All Mighty Jehovah, the God of Ancient Palestine.

Any way, with retroactive immediate effect, by the powers conferred on them by virtue of the opportunities staring them in the eyes at that point in their lives, and by their self-evaluation of their military egos and assumed capabilities, Brigadiers Mathew and Theophilus were each promoted to the rank of a three-star Lieutenant General, while both Colonels Shehu and Ibrahim became members of the Supreme Military Council, Colonel Mohammadu became the Minister of Petroleum, (who misplaced 2.8 billion naira worth of crude oil money, in the process of doing his patriotic duties as a disciplined combatant politician). Colonel Sani was rewarded with the command of a strategic brigade in the oil rich city of Port Haiquat in Southern Palestine. Ever since then, each and everyone of them has been, at one time or the other, a Head of State, or Vice President, or Army Chief of Staff, or Minister of Defence, or/and a US dollar-denominated multi-billionaire business magnate. Some even had accelerated promotions. Most of them retired from active military service under 45 years of age. Such are the dividends of loyalty, patriotism, and coup plotting. That is the beauty of military politics. The winner simply takes all, and moves on to live happily thereafter, in an out of active military service, probably forever, or so it seems!

Let us just quietly come back to the here and now, and take a closer look at the games that the founding military fathers of Nigeria have been playing for over a quarter of a century now.

Game Theory is a branch of Applied Mathematics that simulates the processes of opposing strategies, in order to predict their possible outcomes. Historically, Game Theory was founded on the rather curious motives of certain applied mathematicians, who were very eager to assist gamblers, risk takers, and decision makers alike, to enable them take informed actions as they indulge in their fixation. Specifically, Game Theory seeks to maximise the player’s benefits and/or minimise predictable losses, especially in situations of general uncertainty. Applications of Game Theory abound in military strategy, conflict resolution, diplomacy, business management, risk analysis, scenario modelling, riot control, stock market dynamics, psychoanalysis, economics, and behavioural sociology, amongst several others.

The most basic and classical case problem in Game Theory is "The Prisoner’s Dilemma", which teaches us some basic lessons about the benefits of cooperation. A brief overview of "The Prisoner’s Dilemma" is in Appendix 1: The "Prisoner’s Dilemma teaches us that:

Given the human tendency to maximise options intuitively, anybody faced with "The Prisoner’s Dilemma" would naturally want to define his interest relative to his opponent’s perceived vulnerability, and so, opts to inflict maximum damage freely, in the hope that his opponent would be naïve enough to remain loyal to some form of altruism, thus securing his advantage against his opponent, even if it is ultimately at the expense of both himself and his opponent: Zero Sum Games. "Win-Lose" transactions

In Zero Sum Games, one man’s win is another man’s loss. One man’s victory is another man’s marginalisation. If I win, you must lose. If you win, I will lose. Therefore, I must win. I must not allow you to win, if not, I will lose. A vicious circle emerges and self-propagates ad infinitum, ad nauseam. A more efficient, effective, and intelligent strategy of transaction is known as the "Win-Win" approach.

The culture of Zero Sum gamming was formally firmly entrenched in Nigeria after the assassination of General Murtala Mohammed, over a quarter of a century ago, when summary execution was first decreed as the penalty for planning, executing, assisting (in cash or kind), or even hearing discussions or rumours of real or imagined coups. Prior to Friday, 13 February 1976, there had been a civilian coup attempt, led by the looser of the Independence elections, Chief Obafemi Awolowo. We have only recently been duly informed authoritatively ⁽¹⁾ that the then British colonial Governor-General, Sir James Robertson (OBE) actually rigged those elections. At any rate, for conspiring to overthrow the democratically selected government of His Excellency, Alhaji (Sir) Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (OBE; KBE), Chief Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo was sentenced to jail, not in Kirikiri, or Gashua, or Bama, but in the comfort of the VIP wing of Calabar Prison. Some few years after that failed civilian coup d’état, some regular combatants of the Nigerian Army struck again, and killed Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh, from the Niger Delta, Chief Samuel Akintola, from the South West, Alhaji (Sir)Tafawa Balewa, from the North East, Alhaji (Sir) Ahmadu Bello (OBE), from the North West, and some of their fellow soldiers, with whom they most likely had personality clashes, in a real and bloody coup d’état on January 15, 1966.

Shortly after the events of January 15, 1966, the Zero Sum syndrome began to creep deeper and deeper into the mentality of Nigerians, initially in trickles, peaking to a flood post-Murtala Mohamed. Barbaric as the questions sounded, they were asked without qualms, "Why was it that Zik, Okpara, and Osadebe were not also killed? (As if, they were talking about chicken!) Why was it that only one Eastern officer was killed, why not more, so as to prove the impartiality of the coup d’état (probably to reflect the federal character of the then nascent military dictatorship)?" Therefore, to satisfy the minimum requirements of the Zero Sum Games that Nigerians habitually play, an orgy of self-justifying ethnic cleansing was unleashed in May, June, and July 1966 and beyond. The irony of it all is that none of the coup plotters of January 15, 1966 was executed by the aggrieved, instead, millions of other innocent non-coup plotters died simply because of the Zero Sum mentality of their fellow Nigerians.

In the South Pacific region, there is a secret society called the Cargo Cult. Over 60 years ago, during World War II, the villagers in the South Sea Islands saw US Air Force cargo planes land with lots of goodies from America, for their troops stationed there. Today, almost three generations later, South Sea Islanders still want the same thing to happen. So members of the Cargo Cult have arranged to build make-believe runways, burn controlled bush fires along the sides of the makeshift runways, to serve as runway lights, build a wooden hut in which one of their members sits and maintains complete vigilance. He is the "air traffic controller", with two wooden pieces on his head to act as headphones, and bars of very tall bamboos sticking out high in the sky as radar and antennas. They wait for the cargo planes to land. Indeed, they are doing almost everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked in the 1940s when American pilots regularly landed with tons and tons of goodies. However, it just does not seem to want to work any more. No American cargo planes land again.

They have followed all the apparent principles and arrangement of the real thing, but they are missing something essential, because the planes do not land. Cargo Cult science! It is obvious that something is seriously missing somehow, somewhere. Nevertheless, it would be just about as difficult to explain to Nigerians how they have to arrange things so that they get some meaningful dividends of democracy from their rulers. It is not as simple as telling the South Sea Cargo Cult Islanders how to improve the shape and functionality of their useless wooden headphones. However, there is one feature we know that is generally missing in Cargo Cult mentality. It is a kind of integrity, a principle of thought that corresponds to a kind of downright honesty, a kind of leaning over backwards not to fool oneself chasing shadows. From all indications, Nigeria is going through an era of Cargo Cult politics.

At this juncture, we need to take what may at first appear like very mundane example to illustrate our point:

In the gubernatorial elections of 1998, one Mr. Hubert Humphrey III, the son of a former Vice President of the US of A, was the flag bearer of the Democrats in the state of Minnesota. His opponents were a lawyer Republican candidate, and an independent professional wrestling champion. By the way, Minnesota is one of the largest and most influential states in the United States of America, with a GDP of over US$170 billion. Minnesota is the centre of operations of 16 of the top 500 business enterprises in the US of A. In short, the State of Minnesota is several times richer than Nigeria as a whole.

To most observers, Mr. Jesse Ventura, a world-renowned wrestler, must have been joking even to have contemplated running against such a formidable combination of opponents, given his rather funny curriculum vitae. Indeed, one of his opponents was the then incumbent Attorney-General of Minnesota, while the other was the incumbent Mayor of the capital of Minnesota. Both were lawyers with the advantage of the awesome political machineries of their respective parties to back them. Ventura was a wrestler. Everybody predicted that Jesse Ventura would be trounced mercilessly at the elections.

However, the sceptics got the shock of their lives when, against all obvious odds, Mr. Jesse Ventura won the elections, and was duly sworn in as the Governor of Minnesota. Incidentally, even today, some four years into his tenure as Governor of Minnesota State, His Excellency, Wrestling Champion Jesse Ventura still has no tangible political infrastructure, even in the state that he governs! That is the beauty of democracy as practiced in the US of A, where the people are free to dream dreams they believe can come true. What Ventura did in Minnesota was equivalent to seeing Chief Zeburudiah Okoroigwe Nwaogbo, the Palmwine Powerless (alias 430), defeat Part-time Student Governor (Dr.) Orji Uzo Kalu (JP) in Abia State, in the forthcoming gubernatorial elections in 2003, or Femi Kuti defeat Chief Olusegun Osoba in Ogun State, or a Moslem defeat a Christian at the polls in Imo State, or an Urhobo become a Governor of Niger State, or an animist, atheist, or Christian become a Governor of Sokoto State. Impossible! Impossible, not because Nigerians cannot, if they try. Impossible because nobody seems to want to give them the chance to meet and discus, evaluate viable options for symbiotic interaction, and reap the immense benefits of team spirit, collusion and cooperation, through mutual trust, nurtured in dialogue. Cargo Cult politics just would not allow Nigerians the chance they need to set themselves free, and FLY!

Only very recently, a distinguished Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria averred that the presidential election that Nigerians thought took place in early 1999 was only a smokescreen. The Senator asserted that the CIA actually imposed General (Chief) Olusegun Obasanjo (GCFR; pss; fss) on Nigerians. And to date, neither General (Chief) Olusegun Mathew Aremu Obasanjo, nor his official praise-singers at the Abuja Office of Strategic Image Laundry, have denied the damning and very saddening innuendo of the blatantly neo-colonial obligations of the President of Federal Republic of Nigeria to Washington DC.

For two days during the failed coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, the United States of America played a brief but memorable role of comic relief. During the period that the democratically elected Chávez was commandeered, the Venezuelan equivalent of Nigeria’s Chief Ernest Shonekan, the military's handpicked provisional president, Mr. Pedro Carmona, dissolved, just like any soldier would have done, all democratic and/or constitutional institutions like the National Assembly, the Supreme Court, the Attorney-General's office and the National Electoral Commission. Washington DC simply remained approvingly deaf and dumb while sending a White House spokesman to say in effect that it was all Hugo Chávez's fault. It was only after President Hugo Chávez was finally restored to office that the White House chose to reprimand Chávez that he, not the coup-plotters, "should respect constitutional processes."

Although some 19 Central and South American governments denounced the coup as a violation of democratic principles, the Bush Administration publicly tolerated the military takeover. Not only did Washington DC demonstrate a radically selective view of the rule of law, it also left itself soberly lonely in a world that has been subjected to President George W. Bush’s endless lectures and tutorials on democracy. Leading newspapers and magazines in the US of A so shamelessly parroted the White House in their initial editorials that the Times (of New York) had to apologize. By midweek, with Chávez back in power, the Times renounced the forcible unseating of the democratically elected leader of Venezuela, no matter how bad he may have been! Soldiers come, soldiers go.

There is no doubt that US President George Bush was disappointed that Chávez did not lose his grip of the Venezuelan Presidency permanently. Venezuela supplies the United States with nearly as much crude oil as Saudi Arabia does. Hugo Chávez gleefully dared Americans by befriending Fidel Castro of Cuba, warming up to Colonel Ghaddafi of Libya, and Saddam Hussein of Iraq, and being buddies with Colombian guerrillas. Indeed, in 1998, Chávez, a former army paratrooper, and a failed coup plotter, rode to power as the embodiment of open insubordination to the so-called Washington Consensus of hemispheric free-market economics. In addition, for 4 years now, Hugo Chávez has gone out of his way to infuriate both the Venezuelan business mafia and the US State Department with regular blasts of red-hot concentrated macho oratory.

That Washington wanted to get rid of Hugo Chávez is irrefutable. Prior to the attempted coup, US State Department officials met with the two-day provisional president, Carmona, and other leaders of the so-called pro-democracy coalition, which ousted Chávez. The Pentagon even met with Venezuela's Chief of Defence Staff in December 2001. Later, during Carmona’s brief reign, the US State Department phoned Carmona, ostensibly to urge him not to dissolve the National Assembly. The Organization of American States, now investigating the recent events in Venezuela, may need to probe the precise scope of any CIA role in the failed coup. To have stood silent while the illegal ouster of a government was going on, is deeply disturbing, and will definitely have overwhelming repercussions for democracy, worldwide.

Whoever masterminded the ousting of Chávez miscalculated very badly. Most Venezuelan military commanders remained loyal and ensured Chávez's second coming. The political alliance that spearheaded the coup (the upper, and middle classes, supported by the trade union movement) was very short-lived. After the military handpicked Carmona to run the provisional government, the trade unions withdrew their support, literally overnight. Within hours of taking over, Carmona found himself isolated, and his wet dreams collapsed into a full-blown nightmare. In fact he whole-heartedly welcomed Hugo Chávez’s return.

That said, no one should confuse Hugo Chávez with General (Chief) Olusegun Obasanjo, or with Salvador Allende, the democratically elected President of Chile that was overthrown some thirty years ago by a similar US-backed alliance of businessmen and the military elite. Chávez has failed to produce much of the radical changes that he promised, just like Obasanjo. He showed little of the respect that Allende had for authentic democratic institutions. Unlike Allende, whose public support increased before his overthrow, Chávez and Obasanjo have seen their original overwhelming support drop dramatically. In addition, Allende never turned police and armed supporters against Chileans as Chávez and Obasanjo.

Allende spoke to the citizens of Chile as a professor; Chávez, who staged his own failed coup in 1992, often speaks to Venezuelans like an Area Boy, while Obasanjo is completely oblivious of the humanity in his regularly verbally traumatised subjects. Chávez's undeniable charisma is operating full-blast on the verge of megalomania. His denunciation of his opponents borders on acute paranoia, and his answer to any other shade of opinion is often by obdurate demagogy. Same for Obasanjo. Corruption within President Hugo Chávez's regime, his progressively autocratic style, and his inability to make any serious impact in the measurable reduction of abject poverty in Venezuela, have swollen Chávez's opposition, far beyond the ranks of his usual political opponents and the local business elite, just like in Obasanjo’s Nigeria.

After winning by a landslide in 1998, President Hugo Chávez moved aggressively to dismantle the status quo. The two traditional parties were marginalised, a discredited congress was replaced, and corruption was exposed and punished. Vowing to empower 70% of the Venezuelan population earning less than the equivalent of N100,000 per annum, thus, infuriating the local business oligarchy, President Hugo Chávez issued a series of decrees, increasing state intervention in the economy, and beginning much-needed land reforms. However, Chávez's authoritarian ways, and his failure to make good on genuine reforms, suggest that social justice and authentic democracy are not yet in place in Venezuela, just like in Nigeria.

President Hugo Chávez presides over a fractured and volatile Venezuela. The military split is terrifying. The class divide has been ripped wide open. Now is the time for Chávez to talk a whole lot less and do a whole lot more. The feeling that the he betrays a dual personality overwhelmed observers of President Hugo Chávez, very early in his tenure: one to whom the vagary of destiny had given an opportunity to save his country; and the other, a confident trickster who could pass into the history books as just another military politician in elegant three-piece suits, and a certified despot. And just as it seemed like retired paratrooper Hugo Chávez was succumbing to the latter fate, almost magically, he has been granted yet another chance to achieve the former, just like the rare opportunity of a second term of office that General (Chief) Olusegun Obasanjo has had since May 29, 1999.

So, how do we know that the CIA was behind the failed overthrow of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez? How are we sure that the CIA may not try the same game plan on Obasanjo, one way, or the other? Well, here are just a few hints about some of Chávez's "sins" as perceived from the convenient distance of Washington DC:

A Washington Post report from Venezuela on April 13, 2002, stated that members of Venezuela’s diverse opposition had been visiting the US Embassy, hoping to enlist US help in toppling Chávez. The visitors included active and retired members of the military, media executives, and opposition politicians.

So what happens when a coup occurs which the CIA wants to support? Simple. They do not call it a coup. They call it a "change of government" and say that Chavez was ousted "as a result of the message of the Venezuelan people". Veritable grass-roots democracy! Homegrown democracy, indeed!

Overthrowing a man such as Hugo Chavez, guilty of such transgressions, was a duty so "natural" for the CIA that the only reason it might not have been intimately involved in the operation would be that the Agency may have been very busy elsewhere, in hot pursuit of Osama bin Laden an his friends.

For several weeks now, pundits have dismissed both the APP and AD as having no useful clue about how best to organize a credible confrontation to the failed policies of the PDP Administration of General Obasanjo. Nevertheless, whenever Nigerian politicians gather, it is easy to imagine the characteristics of their unserious opposition "post-June 12". Those Nigerians who have been pressing for months now, for a more concrete handling of domestic issues, no longer sound like lone voices in the noise of post-June 12 politics. Specifically, the leaders of the AD and APP need to be reminded that the current PDP agenda is making certain Nigerians richer, the poor poorer and the middle class, more and more, endangered as a group, and so, they should speak up and stop pointing fingers at Obasanjo. He is human. He makes mistakes (frequently). However, it is the duty of the elected representatives of Nigerians to correct Obasanjo whenever he makes mistakes, but they are not doing it seriously. Why?

A recent informal survey provides evidence of public support for an issues-based offensive specifically on the Obasanjo’s domestic agenda. On a broad range of basic concerns, ranging from education, affordable quality medical services for all, power supply, effective policing, revenue allocation, devolution of political and economic power, urban decay, the impact of inflation on the cost of living, housing, food security, telecommunications, transportation, privatisation, unemployment, and environmental blight, most Nigerians disagree with Obasanjo’s strategy. The recent "official-brown-envelopes-for-visiting –foreign-journalists" scandal reminds Nigerians that the pendulum has really swung far too far to the axis of the conventional wisdom of the dominant ultra-neurotic group of military politicians, now endangering Nigeria’s success, which also ridicules the declared moral façade of the God-approved incumbency of General (Chief) Olusegun Obasanjo.

In the final analysis, if progressive values are flourishing at the grassroots, as Obasanjo boasted when he declared his intentions to rule Nigeria for the third time in his 65 years of existence, why do both the honourable members of the House of Representatives and the distinguished Senators of the Federal Republic of Nigeria continue to be scared of him? Why are they afraid? Why? These are questions that Nigerians have started to ask.

For as long as there is no bold challenge to the excesses of this Administration, it will continue to exploit the tragedy of 29 years of havoc and total system devaluation mindlessly visited on Nigerians by the military elite, particularly the convenient camouflage of selective consciousness of the imperfections of General Sani Abacha’s tenure, so as to asphyxiate debate, and push Nigeria’s national survival in an ever more retrograde trajectory. That is why there is so much drama in the Nigerian theatre of the absurd where, as at today, the only "credible" presidential aspirants are soldiers: Generals Obasanjo, Buhari, and Babangida, the very clique of military politicians, that "mid-wifed" our current state of national dysfunction, in the first place. Nigeria appears to be, in a sense, a lunatic asylum governed by a cabal of perpetually recyclable very important inmates.

Where have we gone wrong? Is Nigeria an over-glorified banana republic, or have we all gone bananas due to our long and seemingly unending over-exposure to the debasing ambience of colonially groomed and handpicked soldiers and various other similar agents of remotely controlled underdevelopment? That is our dilemma in the present dispensation. The Prisoner’s Dilemma.

A rather shrewd detective apprehended two prime suspects to a crime, but did not have sufficient evidence to nail them squarely. So, he chose to interrogate each of them in complete isolation from the other. The idea was to deprive them of the benefits of collusion. Our clever detective got the first prime suspect into the assuring comfort of his office, double-locked the doors and windows, set the air conditioner to a comfortable 18.5° C, and started the interrogation process. He lied to the first prime suspect that his undercover agents had spent some time trailing and tracking down the two suspects, found out details of their movements and activities, before, during, and after the crime, and had actually amassed sufficient information about them to convict them unfailingly.

However, he informed the prime suspect that if he was willing to provide any further useful details of their crime, his freedom could be negotiated amicably, as follows:

Our clever detective then asked the first prime suspect to go back to his detention cell and think about his offers for about one hour, while he ushered in the second prime suspect into his comfortable office, and posed the same "conditionalities": "If you confess, and your colleague denies, you will be freed, and he will suffer. If he confesses, and you deny, he will be freed, and you will suffer. If both of you confess, you will both get minimum punishment. If both of you deny, you will both be set free. Go back to your prison cell and think about my offers. I will see you again in about an hour from now".

Predictably, both prisoners, when summoned for their humble contributions to the maintenance of law and order by our ingenious detective, each gave gory details of their crime voluntarily. They even shocked the detective with details of previously unknown dimensions of their crime. In just over two hours of civilised interrogation, the detective succeeded in extracting, not only the generous cooperation of those two hardened criminals, but also very vital details of a crime that had, before then, seemed intractable. He was sufficiently armed with foolproof information, enough to guarantee their imprisonment for life! In fact, he did exactly so. "The Prisoner’s Dilemma" is a clear example of the benefits of collusion.

 April 2002.