PDP - Peoples' Democratic Party, our party, is the largest single political organization in the continent of Africa and also the wealthiest. It is indisputably the most gifted and progressive in Nigeria. We are the driving force behind the mass political movement in Nigeria, the most inclusive political organization ever assembled in our nation, as well as the most result-oriented party in Africa. Ours is the party with the longest history of staying power amidst the unruly and undisciplined crowds of political parties recently recognized by the Independent Electoral Commission [INEC]. Our party slogan is power to the people because we are a people-oriented, people-loving and people-caring party. Our party caters to the welfare of the ordinary Nigerians especially the most vulnerable among us. We are a party that strongly believes in democratic devolution of power. In our short period of existence in Nigeria we have managed to deliver power right down to the most rural population among the Nigerian peoples. We have consistently empowered the third-tier of our democracy by reorganizing and strengthening our local governments. Our commitment to the local administration of our people is unquestionable. As far as we are concerned, PDP remains the beacon of hope for all Nigerians. Our goal is to make Nigeria and Nigerians the glory of Africa and the envy of the world. And we are on track to deliver for our people. PDP! Power! Power to the People!!

oes such an outlandish and outrageous grandiloquence sound familiar? Of course it should. It sounds Nigerian, doesn't it? It is quintessential PDP unrestrained, unchained and unleashed in the present-day Nigeria! In fact the vignette sketched above is part of a larger script from the playbook of the current ruling party in the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the Peoples Democratic Party. PDP's paraphrased hubristic declaration is exactly the type of bombastic eulogy that has been repeated several times across Nigeria since the emotional conception and caesarian delivery of the Fourth Republic Nigeria. Ever since coming into power in 1999 under the leadership of the accomplishment-challenged Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, the ruling PDP has been reveling in a sort of binge flaunting its intoxicating power in celebration of its fictitious accomplishments throughout Nigeria, notwithstanding the fact that only itself and itself alone is in any way aware of such imaginary accomplishments. But the party does not care. All that matters for it is to persevere in its delusional belief that it is doing well for Nigeria, and has therefore attained a high level of popularity among Nigerians.

One needed to have read or listened to some of the PDP leaders revel and gloat shortly after they had ensured for themselves another nightmarish four-year term of office through a tragically fictional election in April of 2003. It was eerily similar to shameless revelries typical of night marauders and hardened criminals after a successful robbery operation. In a post-re-election party the president's household had put together at Aso Rock Villa mainly for him and the top-brass of the new PDP gang, President Obasanjo told a gathering of those party stalwarts celebrating their ill-acquired victories at the non-polls that theirs was a "deserving reward" after serving their people very well in their first terms of office. He had the effrontery to award a top grade for his imaginary performance in his first term of office despite a clear evidence suggesting that he might have in fact garnered a resounding "F" in the estimation of the majority of Nigerians. Since his purported re-election President Obasanjo has rarely backed down from boasting to the unending gatherings he regularly hosts how well he and his party had performed in their first four years. According to him, they would use the next four years to consolidate the "gains" they had made in their first term. The same line of delusional self-congratulation has since been toed by nearly all the state gang leaders known as PDP governors purportedly re-elected with the president in the last no-show elections.

	So the question turns up again. Where are the democracy gains of the last four years, which the PDP leadership has continued to celebrate and gloat about? There is absolutely none one can easily point to as at this very moment.

(As I readied this write-up, I came across a news item in the Nigerian-Tribune showing the president in one of his rare grace-filled moments acknowledging that his government had under-performed in the last four and a half years. According to him, "…from whichever angle you look at it, the country has under-performed. We have no excuse to continue to under-perform" [Nigerian-Tribune, July 19]. As I said last week concerning President George W. Bush and his African visit, this is President Obasanjo's moment of the miracle of Amazing Grace! ).

Aside from this rare moment in which the president admits the reality that is known to every Nigerian, the truth remains that the Nigerian PDP, as currently constituted has become so self-delusional and out of touch with the day-to-day experiences of Nigerians that it confuses its imagination and wishes with reality. The party of the would-be legendary-status-lost Olusegun Aremu Obasanjo is always dressing itself with highfalutin accolades. It is always sounding self-assured and grandiose. It usually prides itself as the best that has ever happened to Nigeria in party politics while in fact it is well on its way to becoming the worst political organization our nation has ever seen. Members of the party hardly ever miss an opportunity to remind everyone that theirs is a political organization that is the torchbearer of Nigeria's fourth republic democracy, while in actual fact they are proving to be Nigeria's torch extinguishers and agents of darkness. The fact is there is almost an unbridgeable chasm between the way the PDP sees itself and the way it is seen by the majority of Nigerians of today. While the party claims to be led by messiahs and saints, the people keep seeing their leaders as a gang of rogues and marauders that is hell-bent on pillaging and sucking the last pints of blood from the veins of our nation. As it often happens in the criminal world, while the gang leader attends prayer vigil, camps and fasts for God's deliverance of Nigeria, he details his marauding minions into a binge of robberies of the meager resources of the states of the federation. Recent events in Nigeria have indeed bailed some of us out who had always seen the current leadership of the PDP as a bunch of rogues who are using Pentecostal Christianity to cover up their criminal tracks.

However, where the president and the members of his criminal gang saw "gains of the first term" Many Nigerians only saw "pains of the last four years." So the problem becomes how to decode the PDP's meaning of the "gains of the last four years." Do President Obasanjo and the governors mean concrete gains, or, what Nigerians call "democracy dividends," which are independently verifiable, or, are they "speaking in tongues" and communicating to Nigerians with codes? What actually do they mean by the "gains of the last four years"? Have the security of the nation improved in the last four years? The answer has to be a CAPITAL NO. Have the army and the police become more professional and civil? They are still the same corruption abetting "wetin-you-carry" people! What about the economy? Has the Obasanjo administration made any gains in the economy? Of course the Nigerian economy has far worsened under the current administration than in any other one in our living memory. Has the evil of corruption been checked or at least minimized? Absolutely not! Rather, members of the Obasanjo administration, in the 2003 elections decided en masse to regularize their positions as executive members of the Nigerian Corruption Fosterers Association (NICOFASSO). Have NEPA, NITEL, NIPOST, NNPC, NPA and all the other agencies improved since PDP came into power in Nigeria? All Nigerians know the answer to such questions as another CAPITAL NO. What about the civil service, education, commerce and all aspects of Nigeria's socio-economic life? Have there been any gains recorded in any of such places? Once again the answer has to be an undeniable NO.

All right, what about democratic development and maturity? Have there been any gains in the way democratic politics is practiced in Nigeria ever since the resumption of the fourth republic under the leadership of the PDP? Any recorded gains in the relationship among the three arms of government? Every Nigerian knows what has been recorded so far in our democratic development to be nothing short of a net loss of time and opportunities wasted through bickering and rivalry between the executive and the legislature even as the judiciary is swallowed up and made completely subservient and irrelevant to the democratic process by the Obasanjo administration. The legislature under the leadership of the courageous Anyim Pius Anyim and Ghali Ummah Na'abbah wasted the whole moments and opportunities of the fourth republic's first term trying to contain a military dictator donning a democratic garb. Therefore, from the point of view of democratic practices and growth, the first term was a net loss for Nigeria. Early indications from the second term of the Obasanjo administration show that the Nigerian president learned absolutely nothing from the wasted political capital and opportunities of his first term. Rather he had strengthened his hands as a potential hater of democratic ethos. He has chosen the path of dictatorship as his modus operandi in his second term.

So the question turns up again. Where are the democracy gains of the last four years, which the PDP leadership has continued to celebrate and gloat about? There is absolutely none one can easily point to as at this very moment. Of course, the well-funded crowds of the Obasanjo administration's Fadeyeen will quickly and readily rush in their brainless and argumentative platitudes that insist that because President Obasanjo has managed to keep Nigeria together in peace in his first term should be considered in and of itself a "monumental" achievement. But such an argument is a clear evidence of how the Obasanjo administration had wasted the first four years of Nigeria's fourth republic democracy. If Nigerians wanted to hire a leader who would use all the crude means available in the book to keep the nation together, they would obviously not hire Obasanjo. Evil dictators like, Buhari, Babangida and the late Abacha would do the job far better than the current president of Nigeria. In fact dictators like Abacha and Babangida did the work of keeping Nigeria in brutal unity far more efficiently and effectively at less cost to all Nigerians than the Obasanjo administration. Obasanjo's "monumental" achievement in keeping our country together cost about ten to twelve thousand innocent lives, which are two to three times more than the precious lives the evil dictators had wasted during their fifteen dark years. The PDP with its administration has nothing to show for their gloat about their delusional achievements.

In the absence of any obvious "gains" of Nigeria's democracy being overseen by the PDP, it should be assumed that when its members talk about democracy gains, or dividends achieved by the PDP, they are in fact talking in codes. Perhaps they are being deliberately evasive and paradoxical. Of course criminal gangs similar in operation to the current PDP gang in Nigeria, use mainly symbols and codes to communicate with one another and with the outside world. Such gangs usually mean exactly the opposite of what they purport to convey to themselves and to others. When they say, stay, one must run as fast as one could. It is that simple. When gangs assure your safety, they are in fact digging your grave. And when they celebrate they are indeed mourning. Their ultimate goal is to deceive people into believing sheepishly what they do not intend to be taken literally. So it must be assumed that the PDP, proven beyond doubt with the recent events in Anambra State, to be more of a gang than a political party, uses codes to communicate with Nigerians. And it is the task of critical commentators in the press to decode the communication codes of the PDP gang.

But what is this code? Any clues to its decoding? Going by the principle that codes of criminal gangs usually mean the opposite of what they seem to convey, it should be accepted that when the PDP gang talks of the "gains/dividends of Nigerian democracy in the last four years," it should be read as the "pains and losses" of democracy in the same period under consideration. And this seems to accord with reality. Democracy a la PDP has only registered pains and losses for the overwhelming majority of Nigerians in the past four years. The party has proved itself to be a pain-delivering, anti-people party. It has shown itself to be anything but democratic. If anything it has cast itself as a gang of robbers that steals elections as well as robs Nigerians of their money and resources. And if the last couple of months were to be any indication to the "gains to be made" by the PDP in the next four years, the president and his PDP governors are in fact promising Nigerians that they will use their second term of office to consolidate the "pains" they unleashed in their first term. The arbitrary petroleum price spike was just a taste of what the Nigerian political gang may be up to with its criminal second term. The odds stack in favor of the PDP hurting Nigerians and hurting them quite deeply in the next four years. And this should serve as a warning shot to all Nigerians: more pains are on the way for you, thanks to PDP, the peoples' deprivation party of Nigeria!

	The scenario of PDP becoming almost a party of criminal gangs and dictators especially with the recent revelations in Anambra State necessitates a follow-up question: how did it come to this? How did the party once advertised as the Nigerian peoples' democratic party become the peoples' dictator's party?

How does one cut through the layers of fiction, codes and spins PDP has been employing to deceive itself, and hoodwink Nigerians and the world into believing that it is a legitimate democratic party and not any other thing else? By constantly repeating what it knows to be absolutely untrue, does the president's party think that it can deceive all the people all the time? Having watched the party perform in the last four years or so, can we discover any more meaning to its acronym? That is to say, seeing the Peoples Democratic Party's anti-people and anti-democratic policies, their knack of disenfranchising voters in the elections, their vicious frustration of the third tier of a presidential democracy - the local government, and their overall tragic economic returns, can we actually notice a pattern that could help us infer other meanings from the PDP? Can anybody tell us one thing that is purely democratic which the PDP has done since it assumed power in Nigeria in 1999? I have been looking very hard and am yet to find anything that I can use to validate the democratic credentials of the present administration. Rather, all one sees littered all over the place are numerous undemocratic and anti-people actions of the so-called democratic party of Nigeria.

In view of all this, I am inclined to put forward a very controversial suggestion in this essay. I would suggest that while it can be granted to the ruling party in Nigeria its constitutional right to describe itself as Peoples' Democratic Party (PDP), other Nigerians have equally the same right and in fact should consider reading further meaning into the party's abbreviation in view of its non-performance and gang-like lifestyles in the last four years. Seeing the criminal elements that populate the party today and its penchant to commit fraud and steal public funds, wouldn't it be more meaningful to interpret the acronym, PDP, as standing for things like Pure Demonic Party, Peoples' Deprivation Party, Peoples' Diminution Party, etc.? Other interpretations such as Peoples' Despoliation Party, Peoples' Demolition Party, Peoples Destruction Party of Nigeria, etc., could serve far better to convey the real meaning of the PDP in the present-day Nigeria. Considering what this party has meant to the many hard-hit Nigerians in the past four to five years, these other names, in my view, stand a far better chance of representing the party's true meaning to our people. To many in Nigeria who have no jobs, to students who have not completed up to one full academic year since this party came into power in Nigeria, to the average Nigerians who have had to buy gasoline (patrol) at 1000 Naira a liter, the PDP, no matter what the members of this political gang may claim, is indeed a party of woes not that of democratic dividends or gains. Looking at the Nigerian nation today, it would be a hard sell to convince the majority of our people that the PDP is a peoples' democratic party. The party that currently rules Nigeria is anything but a peoples' political outfit. Politically it is light years away from qualifying as a democratic institution. It operates more like a gang and a mafia.

The scenario of PDP becoming almost a party of criminal gangs and dictators especially with the recent revelations in Anambra State necessitates a follow-up question: how did it come to this? How did the party once advertised as the Nigerian peoples' democratic party become the peoples' dictator's party? How did a party originally envisioned, as peoples' welfare and caring party become the peoples' deprivation and punishing party? How did a party whose original forebears led a patriotic battle against fraudulence in Dictator Abacha's administration become the masterminds of fraud and all sorts of criminal activities? What happened to the once promising party of the Honorable former Vice President Alex Ekwueme, who was described as the most honest politician of the second republic, and former Governor Solomon Lar, obviously one of the most accomplished politicians of that troubled era? What happened to the enthusiasm and optimism that had trailed the inauguration of this political party in 1998? Who dropped the ball of this potentially great party in Nigeria? Who turned this once promising party into a mafia and a slum gang?

Whenever the true story of the PDP as a political organization in Nigeria is told, it will undoubtedly be woven around the numerous criminal hijackings it has suffered in its brief existence in Nigeria. The fact is the once popular party with the acronym PDP has since lost its way and become an exclusive haven and hideouts for criminal hijackers and gangs. Does anybody still remember to ask where the founding fathers of this once potentially great political party are today? Like some reminiscing TV stations in America would often say about the stars of yesterday; where are they now? I mean the likes of Ekwueme, Lar, Awoniyi, Gemade, Unongo, etc? Those founders of the party have since been banished and relegated to the dark background by the gangs that have long taken over party organization. Hence the original vision of the party as an admixture of welfarism and conservatism has been tactically banished and lost. The thrust of the party as a people-oriented political organization has long been replaced by its new vision as anti-people and anti-democratic party. Its original description as a democratic party lives only in name today, as it has been overlaid by dictatorship, which is the method and political philosophy of choice of the leader of the party, President Obasanjo. The new ideology adopted by the gang leaders that overran the party has become silent looting of Nigeria's wealth through their surrogates operating like mafias in all the states of the federation.

In hand sight one could see when and how the original hijacking of the party had taken place. As has often been enunciated in the many essays of this column, the original PDP-hijacking had occurred when the then ex-head of state, Ibrahim Babangida and his soul mate and kinsman, the then Nigerian head of state Abdulsalami Abubakar wrested the party from the hands of Ekwueme and Lar and turned it over to the fresh-from-prison Obasanjo with the hope that it would benefit their interests in the long run as well as quell some of the blistering criticisms they were facing as a result of the annulled election of Mashood Abiola. The duo of the Minna ex-heads of state created the current culture of hijacking and gangsterism in the present-day PDP. It is unfortunate that every evil in contemporary Nigeria has to be one way or the other traced to the evil genius. But that is the true situation. He authored the politics of gangsterism in the PDP. Having propped up and secured the highest office in the land for an ex-prisoner who had lost touch with what Nigerians needed, the duo thought they would stand and enjoy their status as background kingmakers and mafia bosses. But Obasanjo would rebel against them just as Chris Ngige recently rebelled against his local mafia boss in Anambra, Chris Uba. But Obasanjo would not stop with only rebelling against his original background bosses. He wanted to become a mafia boss himself so as to enshrine a perfect control over the political terrain of Nigeria. So he started forming a gang of his own in which he would become the sole mafia leader.

No other place has Obasanjo clearly demonstrated his gangster politics than in the state of Anambra of southeast Nigeria. As two great columnists, Okey Ndibe of Nigerian Guardian (July 17) and Pini Jason of Vanguard (July 15) had brilliantly chronicled this past week, Obasanjo recruited from Anambra State a gang boss in the person of a young multi-millionaire called Emeka Offor in his first term of office. He assigned to him a battalion of Mobile Police officers as protectors at taxpayers' expense. The mafia boss of Anambra moved in convoys of police cars that rivaled those of the executive governor of the state and his deputies. And with that the Nigerian president was able to secure a permanently troubled Anambra State for the whole of his first term. For the entire fours years that Obasanjo maintained a parallel government in Anambra State through his gang boss, pains and sufferings were all he had delivered to the poor of the state in the name of democracy dividend. Perhaps Okey Ndibe is right in suggesting that President Obasanjo's institution of the politics of gangsterism in Igbo states "is driven by a rabid contempt for, and a fervid desire to humiliate the Igbo…. Mr. Obasanjo … seeks out and promotes the crudest, most repulsive and uncouth ragamuffins among the Igbo" (Guardian, July 17).

And the recent coup in Anambra state has once again exposed the Nigerian president as a classic mafia boss in Nigerian politics. As reported by many newspapers last week, the Anambra State gang leader that masterminded the coup, Christian Uba, is a right hand man of the president of Nigeria. According to Journalist Ndibe, "Uba is a crony, a right hand man and confidante of Mr. Obasanjo" (Guardian, July 17). Like his predecessor, Emeka Offor, the president of Nigeria assigned to this High School dropout a legion of Mobil Police officers who protected him and carried out his commands. He moved about with a large contingent of the Nigerian security apparatus even while not performing any executive function since he was not elected by anybody. He became the most powerful person in Anambra State as a result of his connection to the supreme gang lead of the Peoples' Deprivation Party. Many Nigerian newspapers reported last week that Uba has his own brother planted in the heart of Aso Rock as one of the key advisers of the Nigerian president. Some speculated that Raphael Ige, the smokescreen fall guy of the coup must have been detailed to carry out the forcible removal of Governor Chris Ngige by the supreme mafia boss of Nigeria himself, the president. According to this school of thought, the retirement of AIG Ige as a result of the coup was a mere slap on the wrist. The former assistant inspector general of police was simply paid off (settled, in Nigerian parlance) by the Nigerian president and let go to enjoy his ill-gotten sumptuous wealth in peace.

Can anyone imagine this type of gangster politics happening in any other democracies throughout the world? Of course this is not the way any democracy that I know of operates. Democracy usually operates in the open for all stakeholders to satisfy themselves with the fairness of the process. It is not this shady business that Obasanjo and the PDP are making it out to be in Nigeria. The recent confession of former secretary of Anambra State, Okechukwu Odunze, that politics in Anambra is run like a business enterprise is for me the "smoking gun" on what the PDP has become in Nigeria. The party has turned Nigerian democracy into a huge business enterprise where a few gang bosses profit most stupendously, while the rest of Nigerians suffer most inhumanely. Christian Uba's upfront demand of a check of 3 billion Naira to cover his expenses in winning the election for Governor Chris Ngige and the rest of the PDP candidates in the last election vindicates the confession of Odunze and provides unimpeachable evidence of why the PDP leadership in Nigeria must be tried for high crimes of treason and felony as well as misdemeanor. The leadership of this party is obviously without morals. And the gang leaders of the party are criminally unpatriotic.

	...the real challenge lies with the Nigerian peoples. How do we react to the culture of gangsterism embraced by the ruling party, the PDP? How do we relate to the new Peoples' Deprivation Party that is now in charge of affairs in our nation?

If you couple Odunze's confession with Chuma Nzeribe's threat to "wash the dirty linen" of the party in the open because according to him, "I have graphic details of how we won and how we didn't win the elections in Anambra" (Guardian, July 18), as well as the PDP governors' declaration earlier in the week that the political crisis in Anambra State was "a family affair," one must arrive at the conclusion that the PDP is operating in Nigeria like a drug cartel. All gangs, cartels and mafias regard their rings as families. They would always want all crises relating to their operations to be resolved within the "family." But as is always the case in loose cartel and mafia rings, when some of them are caught they turn in the rest. This is what, thank God, has begun to happen with the PDP political cartel in Nigeria. Those about to be sacrificed to keep the secrets of the criminal party are threatening to expose the inner workings of their gang. And their mafia leaders in Abuja are scrambling frantically to limit the damage that has been caused to its underworld operation by the crisis in Anambra State. How we wish that the moment of the PDP gang dissembling had arrived!

I predict that PDP mafia bosses in Abuja will continue to sound and act tough with their erring members in the few weeks ahead just to deceive the Nigerian peoples that they are doing something positive to arrest the Anambra situation as well as learn from it. But the more they will act to damage-control the whole mess, the more Nigerians will get to know what is happening in the underworld of the PDP gang party. And this is one reason why no one in their right senses could see the PDP as a democratic political party. It has been a mafia gang ever since the crooks of Nigeria hijacked it from the likes of Ekwueme, Lar and Awoniyi. Like all mafia operations, the PDP has been reorganized to benefit a few connected individuals while hurting deeply the rest of Nigerians. PDP as a real political party is long dead and buried. But PDP as a mafia and a gang has survived and charges ahead today in Nigeria. Ever since Obasanjo has been in charge of Nigeria, the party has been operating as a mafia ring with gang leaders in most of the states of Nigeria.

But this should not be surprising to any one who pays attention to the dynamics and maturation of issues in Nigeria. Having come to power through a mafia hijack of the PDP, Obasanjo did not have many other choices than to remain faithful to the process that brought him to power. He believes that it is the only way he could survive politically. He knows that in respect of his history of non-performance in his office as Nigeria's leader, especially in the last few years, there is not much goodwill left for him in the country as a whole. So he had to plot his way of political survival. And that has to be through a political Mafioso that helped him secure power. It is natural that he will bank on it to survive politically. However, by this mafia and gangster method Obasanjo and his party become instruments of oppression of the Nigerian people. As they install and empower independent mini-potentates all through the states of Nigeria to oversee their political interests, so do they become willing instruments of oppression against the people they were meant to serve. As they share out Nigeria's money among their gang members, they become in the process a party that deprives and punishes the ordinary Nigerian peoples.

However, the real challenge lies with the Nigerian peoples. How do we react to the culture of gangsterism embraced by the ruling party, the PDP? How do we relate to the new Peoples' Deprivation Party that is now in charge of affairs in our nation? Is it enough for Nigerians to throw up their hands in helplessness over the new mafia culture that has been visited on our nation? I believe that Nigerians cannot just fold their hands and allow an obviously demonic party to continue to visit them with terror. The current popular movement in Anambra State has shown how a people could fight the gang leaders of the states. First, Nigerians must rise and challenge all those mini-potentates that are roaming the streets with large retinues of mobile policemen and soldiers. There should be a public outcry against ordinary Nigerians who move about with large contingents of taxpayer-funded security operatives. Nigeria has quite a large number of unaccounted individuals that are being protected by either a large contingent of the police or the military. These people should be unmasked, their identities and dealings revealed. It is time to confront those gang leaders and flush them out. Second our people must confront and deal with the bastardized PDP in Nigeria. The party has completely ceased to be a political party. It is now a criminal gang that is visiting evil on our people. The people of Nigeria especially the press must lead the charge in dismantling this mafia organization in Nigerian body politic. The PDP as a party must be made to kiss the dust. It is a lost political cause that must be rested. The party has become an immoral organization that has lost all rights to operate as a political party in Nigeria. The earlier it is hastened to die, the better it would be for the deprived people of our country. PDP has transformed into a people's deprivation party following its hijack by crooks. So it has lost its moral right to operate in Nigeria. Nigerians must therefore make haste and dismantle this roguery political organization!

And ultimately Nigerians will have to deal with the issue of the current supreme gang boss in Nigerian politics, the president. Over the last four to five years, the president of Nigeria has proven beyond doubt that democracy is not part of his vision for Nigeria. The nation Obasanjo wants to bequeath to the next generation is that populated by gang leaders of the likes of Christian Uba and Emeka Offor. He apparently does not have any plans to strengthen democracy in Nigeria. If he had, he would not be supporting gangsterism and Mafioso in our body politic. As Okey Ndibe rightly remarked this past week, "a man is branded by the company he keeps, and Nigeria's president has chosen to keep the company of a bandit extraordinaire called Chris Uba." And their ultimate goal is to enthrone "banditry as the ethic of governance in Nigeria" (Guardian, July 17).

The president of Nigeria prefers to operate in the dark with his surrogate gang leaders rather than in the open where democracy thrives. A president that runs a country like Nigeria with illiterate gang leaders must be embarrassed out of office. Moreover, Obasanjo's style of administration was exactly what Nigerians had hated with the evil dictators. Babangida and Abacha had transformed Nigeria into a giant gang organization. They persecuted many Nigerians while benefiting the microscopic few among their cronies. President Obasanjo has shown himself to be an unrepentant member of that world of cronyism and gangsterism. He has shown himself to be one and the same person with those discredited dictators that brought evil on Nigerians. So, Nigerians must figure out the way to democratically nudge him into embracing the fate of his kindred spirits in the persons of Babangida and Abacha. Since President Olusegun Obasanjo has refused to transform into a democrat, he should be hastened to retire as a dictator and a gang boss!