[abidde]

In my estimation, this is the most "important" essay Dr. Abati has written in the last year or so. It has some of the elements I seek in essays of this nature: measured anger and precise articulation, as opposed to hedging or dillydallying.

What was President Yar’Adua hoping to go do at the G-20 conference? Walk around looking dazed and helpless? His entourage would have contained 30-70people, most of whom would have used the opportunity to make financial deposit, visit with their mistresses, undergo medical checkup or engage in frivolities.

I totally agree with Abati. Nigeria is not a serious country. It has not been since the mid-1980s. And no state or non-state actor has paid Nigeria serious mind for almost two decades. No amount of rebranding or triple-branding will do Nigeria any good. None! In fact, the rebranding project is just another avenue by which to steal millions and millions of dollars.

You rebrand a country that can not feed its people and/or provide the most basic of all basic needs? What a stupid and dumb concept!

True, Nigeria is our country. After all these years, and in spite of all the troubles she has put us through, we still love her because she is our country. Sadly, Nigeria is a country that defies all logic and all known solutions. Common sense and decency has no place here.

Cliché or not, repetition or not -- Nigeria is a mess. The country is one giant bowl of fetidity, a place where the vast majority of the people live in sub-human condition: a country where you are either poor or miserable. More than seventy percent of the people are miserably poor!

Insofar as leadership goes, I am of the opinion that -- except for Generals Yakubu Gowon and Mohammadu Buhari -- all past and present Nigerian presidents/head of state, along with their deputies and ministers and governors should be Rawlingnized. Nothing short of this will give Nigeria a second chance at redemption.

The system is too corrupt, too diseased, too rotten; no amount of “democracy” will help solve the problems we have. Not even an Obama-like or a Mandela-type figure can save Nigeria. No! Nigeria is too far gone into the abyss for anyone to think that decent methods of governance can cure it of its socialized and institutionalized cancer.

As a result, thousands of the ruling/elite class must be legally and/or extralegally taken off the stage. Anything short of this method adds to the people’s pain and agony.

Again, kudos to Reuben Abati for a well thought out and a well-articulated composition.

Sabella Ogbobode Abidde