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[email protected] Albany, NY, USA

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en. Olusegun Obasanjo has finally capitulated to the unflagging demand of his country men and women to deliberate their future. His predecessors tried to stave off a national conference, but he has now come to terms with reality. I have pointed out elsewhere the inevitability of an untrammeled disquisition in a country like Nigeria buffeted by innumerable fissiparous tendencies both from within and without. Nigerian leaders have buried their heads in the sand for long like the proverbial ostrich feigning all is well with the most corrupt and crassly misgoverned nation on earth according to Transparency International.

Obasanjo achieved so much during his first tenure from February 13 1976-October 1 1979. His friends and foes alike can all attest to this. When Obasanjo handed over on October 1 1979, things were not as bad as they were to become at his second coming in 1999. Nigerians could still dream dreams of greatness. We still had hope. All these were to change for the worse in just a matter of few years. We had our national dreams of greatness shattered. What Alhaji Umaru Diko claimed was not happening in 1983 has actually started happening as today some Nigerians eat from dust bins and garbage storage sites. Worse still, Nigerians now troop out of the country to prostitute in foreign lands. During this second coming despite all distractions he has once again done a lot and has been making it clear that it will no longer be business as usual. There is nothing on the ground today to show that whatever Obasanjo achieved all these years cannot again be reversed come 2007.Those that did it after 1979 can still do it after 2007.

The signs of intent to reverse the achievements of Obasanjo are already there. They are there for those who can read between the lines to see. Today Obasanjo's National Constitutional Conference is being opposed mainly from a particular section of the country. If not for plans to reverse, why are we hearing: no to parliamentary system of government, no to regions, no to resource control, no to due process and in fact no to anything that will alter the status quo? The council of state as it is today is not representative of all the sections of Nigeria. Most members are from just one section of Nigeria. It met recently and advised that all the standard variables of enumerating people during census will not be included in our next human counting. It beats my imagination why this should be so. Somebody somewhere is hiding something. There is no doubt that the whole idea is to ensure that business as usual will continue and that there will be no scientific basis to disprove or confirm long held concepts in Nigeria even if they are erroneous. This is an attempt to ensure the continuity of all the things that have been going wrong in Nigeria and in fact fight the reforms of Obasanjo unchallenged after his tenure.

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Now that a concentric reason has emerged that discuss we must as a people, it should be nothing short of opening all fundamental agitations that have hindered the nation's mission and vision. But the current occupant of Aso Rock shouldn't vouchsafe this inevitable discuss or treat it as mere tokenism or a condescending sop to the unending demand for a sovereign national conference whose time has come, whether he likes it or not. Lamentably, his disingenuous artifices of careful calibration of the discussions that are yet to begin speak volume of his insincerity to come to term with the Nigerian stark reality.

Those who have engaged in the business of love and marriage know there is no compulsion in love. That is why there is no law for love, but there is law for divorce. The latter , in most cases can be very messy and ugly, so to mitigate against mischief by either of the warring parties, to calm frayed nerves associated with it, to compensate for self-sacrifice and may be soothe bruised egos, governments in civilized nations intervene through law of divorce.

A nation is a collection of individuals who are governed by law of interaction and relationship just as couples in matrimony. When there is no genuine love among nationalities, disaster lurks. A nation like Nigeria that is constantly at odds with itself and desperately trying to stitch herself together in the form of a dialogue must hold absolutely nothing back. Like warring couples in an acrimonious divorce trying to reconcile, the fundamental differences that caused friction and lost of love in the first place must be thoroughly trashed out if genuine reconciliation is to take place.

Nigerians have ogled for a Yugoslavia for long and romanticized with the Ethiopia-Eritrean option as a way out of their forced cohabitation. If now they want to cultivate real love and long-lasting nationhood, spelling out ludicrous "no-go areas" as Obasanjo did the other day will fuel further separatist tendencies and exacerbate centrifugal feelings. Don't Nigerian leaders know that those very "no-go areas" are the very fundamental differences leading to intense acrimony and war of attrition endangering the Nigeria nation-state?. They can't be swept under the carpet. They should be brought into the open and exhaustively trashed out if Nigeria is to remain a union. Of course, Nigerian leaders aren't so insouciantly cavalier that they can't feel the pulse of their countrymen and women or at least see the handwriting on the wall that the "forced" marriage between the North and the South by the imperialists and its attendant corollaries are issues driving Nigerian insane and people aren't happy about it. Nothing has changed fundamentally since that psychopath called Abacha went to where he rightly belonged six years ago. You can't compel two feuding parties to pretend to be in love when accusations and counter-accusations are flying all over the place. If Obasanjo is now claiming to be Mr Fix-it, he must do it with candor and glasnost even if the unfolding volcano will consume him in the process. That is true leadership. But can or will he?

No one really understood Nigeria better than the slain Premier of Northern Nigeria, the late Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto. While Awo and Zik were entreating Ahmadu Bello at the Constitutional Conference in London in the '50s to forget the differences between people of the North and South and become one nation, the Sardauna candidly replied: "No, it's better to remember our differences before we become one nation." History is on the late Premier's side.

Treating the unity of Nigeria as inviolable in the midst of contrary reality does not bode well for the nation's survival. It doesn't even guarantee continued statehood. Unity is not implanted in citizens; it is love, genuine love for one another and shared values that makes a nation endure. If there is no manifest belief and overwhelming conviction in the hearts and minds of Nigerians about the supreme destiny of the nation to remain indissoluble and indivisible, no amount of sanctimonious platitudes will pull the country from the edge. Nigerians now have a fanciful lexicon to describe their nation: "stake holders." Cool! But who wants to stake his or her future in a project that you have no say and won't yield you any return? Of course, those who have stolen or are now positioned in the circus to have a bite will fight tooth and nail to preserve an illusory unity. But it won't last.

The stake holders have their pilfered funds scattered all over here in America and elsewhere which exposes their hypocrisy. Like Buhari-Idiagbon used to exhort Nigerians in those days: "You have no other country that you can call your own, so let's stay here and salvage it together." Give me a break! Labor has no permanent home. I am an American, although originally born in Nigeria, Africa. Nigerian leaders, if truly they are leaders and not stake-holders, see their country men and women bailing out of this fiery furnace called a nation and can't ask, what the hell is wrong? What can be done? Why are the best of our men and women leaving in droves to other nations?

No leader here preaches unity and abiding love for America. Both the born and the naturalized love this country, but it just didn't happen. Every American is ready and willing to die for America. There is no standing Army here, but thousand of volunteers ready, at short notice to bear arms and protect their beloved country. Many say it is the pursuit of the proverbial American Dream. It is not true. There are countless dreams here that remain what they are: mere dreams. The answer lies partly in what I will call the American acculturation heritage. No matter where you come from, once you get here, there is what is called the American way of doing things. It is unique, distinct and palpably obvious. It is autochthonous. You can't fail to notice it, you either live by it or you leave. Whine, complain, criticize it or trash it, you must submit to it. Amazingly, people will eventually succumb to it and in time become committed converts and its evangelists. Why is this so? Love for America, yet this abiding love is rooted in something: American culture and the pride of every citizen to be part of that culture. It permeates every areas of life.

The second is what I will call the Contract philosophy. This is the abiding political transaction between the leaders and the led, the government and the governed couch in the true expression of political power that, ultimately a people decides their destiny and entrust their future in the hands of their leaders. It simply means, government must inescapably be beholden to the people. Leaders here are not stake-holders; they are servants of the people. There are different standards for leaders and the led; the standards for leaders are more stringent and rigorous. You are elected, and you mess up, you are fired by the people.

If power is stolen, hijacked or manipulated and does not reflect the genuine desire of the people, as one sees in the Nigerian situation, modern day man is nothing more than civilized beasts. This is what separates Homo sapiens from apes. A nation cannot be run like a jungle. There must be order. No "real" election has ever been conducted in Nigeria since 1960. No leader has ever ruled Nigeria through the genuine aspirations of the overwhelming votes of the Nigerian voters. They are either imposed endogenously by a ravenous cabal who are the profiting stake holders or planted by external do-gooders waiting to ruin your life for you if you fail to run it properly. This is the irony of the Nigeria project. No nation run in such a careless way tarries long.

So if Nigerians are really ready for honest business, where and how should they begin? Talk. Discourse must triumph rascality, reason must prevail in an atmosphere of decorum and civility. Law and order must first be put in place. People must not get away with lawlessness and crime because of their "agbada" or "babaringa", every act of lawlessness starting with pilfering of state funds must be ruthlessly punished. No must get away with murder, arson, robbery and stealing.

I spoke of talk. What manner of talk? A sovereign national conference where all nationalities must choose their leaders through a national referendum and present them with their demands and those leaders, truly representative of their nationalities will go to that no-holds- barred conference and talk about the past, the present and chart a path for the future. I am not talking of "stake-holders"; I am talking of genuine leaders. This is why I honestly believe Obasanjo cannot turn things around in Nigeria. A fresh start in what Nigeria needs. A fresh thinker, some one untainted with past rot and the current mess. Nigeria doesn't need a leader who just meant well, but a leader who truly leads, a Lee Kwan Yew, a Kemal Atartuk.

National greatness is not attained serendipitously just as success is not by luck, for luck is in short supply these days. A nation must plan and her leaders must think and put measures in place to win the abiding trust of the people. A nation where the likes of Abacha and his cronies were able to squirrel over $5bn national wealth abroad cannot survive for long.

The current talk show in Abuja is a mere jamboree; nothing will come out of it. Sooner or later, somehow something will give-in in Nigeria.

Fayemiwo is a Doctoral Candidate in the Graduate School of Information Science and Policy at the State University of New York, (SUNY), Albany, New York, USA