any Nigerians of all walks of life are quick to claim or gloat about the fact that one out of every four Africans is a Nigerian. It is something to be proud of when size matches achievement and self-worth. The size of the elephant has not taken away the Lion�s claim to being king. Singapore is a little island in the Pacific is classified as one of the 4 tigers in the Pacific due to her economic power. Great Britain which is far less than half the size of Libya or Sudan was colonial master to India, Canada and America at one point in her history. Nigerians are also quick to tell anyone who will listen we have embraced the American Presidential system even though our doing so is proving to be far more expensive and hard to sell in a relatively poor country like ours.The system is not producing the same kind of result in spite of our natural endowments as the figurative land flowing with milk and honey because of the mismanagement of our leaders and our high tolerance level as the governed for that evil.

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Some will argue that the British Parliamentary system we had before January 15, 1966 when Chukwuma Nzeogwu and his famous Majors struck was more suited to our needs than our current system. That may be true to a point, but the devil is in the details. The British Parliamentary system is also not immune to bribery corruption and bad leadership like the ones Nigeria is so notorious for. The problem is not so much in our system of Government. The culprits are our leaders and the people who run our Government across the board and our willingness to tolerate them for so long. There are a few stars among our leaders but the great majority of them are vampires, pen robbers and heartless dictators.

Some of us had thought the coup of the Majors led by Chukwuma Nzeogwu on January 15, 1966 was going to give Nigeria a fresh a new lease of life. It did not.. It has proved to be a mirage or a revolution that was prematurely snatched away from the Majors by General Ironsi and the military establishment who started the unitary system that was roundly condemned at the time but has since become the conventional wisdom if not the corner stone of our Government policy today against our better judgment. Ironsi was led to the slaughter by the rebel northern officers led by Theophillus Danjuma who literarily ambushed Ironsi during a short state visit to Agodi, Ibadan as the guest of Governor Adekunle Fajuyi. Governor Fajuyi did something no Nigerian leader before and after him had ever done, by refusing, at the risk of losing his own life, to let the hot-headed Danjuma and his gang take away Ironsi because he had thought that such a move could forever be a blemish on him and his people or implicate the Yorubas as supporting the Hausa/Fulani plot to reverse what they viewed as an attempt by the South and the Majors to edge them out of power and their domination of Nigeria up to that point.

Adekunle to his credit correctly thought that the Igbos would never forgive the Yorubas for allowing such a betrayal to happen in our own backyard. Adekunle Fajuyi single-handedly bailed out the Yorubas by voluntarily offering to die with Aguiyi Ironsi rather than live. It was a heroic move the West and the East and the rest of Nigeria must never be allowed to forget or sweep under the carpet. It is sad that Adekunle Fajuyi is only being remembered and honored posthumously today in Ekiti his state of origin. He deserves a memorial as a national hero in Abuja and certainly in all the state capitals of the Yoruba states if we are truly a grateful nation. Adekunle Fajuyi was a breed apart and the Yorubas ought to celebrate him as we celebrate Oodua and his wife Moremi and Awolowo our greatest political leader so far..

The shining example of Adekunle Fajuyi ought to prick the conscience of Nigerians but more so our brothers and sister of Igbo origin who think or view most Yorubas as Owambe pepper soup-drinking chieftains and party-loving Nigerians like General Adebayo who is a good man by the way but was just too sociable to a fault in his days as Governor of Western Region. When you remember Yoruba notables like Awo, the political lion of Ikenne, Col. Fajuyi and Major Victor Banjo who sided with the Biafrans and went home with them, you have to respect the Yorubas. You will hardly find any Hausa/Fulani or Igbo man crossing the ethnic lines to be their brothers� keeper in difficult moments in our History. Akure my home town was among the few towns in Nigeria that were ready to harbor the Igbos while they were fleeing home and they made sure their properties and houses in Akure were kept save for them till after the war. Their next door neighbors in Port Harcourt and Eleme Alesa never did that, you will recall. When you remember ideologues like the aging Wole Soyinka, Adegoke Adelabu �Penkelemess�, even Baba Iyabo, General Olusegun Obasanjo, a greater evil genius in my book than Babangida, Brigadier Benjamin Adekunle the Black Scorpion, the late Professor Awojobi, Tai Solarin and the likes of Professor Sam Aluko, Gani Fawehinmi and even Fela Anikulapo Kuti arguably the craziest of them all in that group, you will have to appreciate that the Yorubas are clearly a force to reckon with in Nigeria who cannot, and should be defined just by the mistakes or stereotypes of a few rotten eggs among us. If you take away the Yoruba leg out of the 3 tripods on which Nigeria is delicately balanced, Nigeria cannot stand. Forgive my little digression. I get a little emotional in talking about the Yorubas and what we have done in keeping Nigeria going as a nation. It is pertinent to my ultimate thesis in this write-up because the same Yorubas were the first to call the bluff of the PDP by rejecting the Party even when one of our own was their sponsored presidential candidate. Obasanjo could not even win in Owu and his family compound the first time he ran in 1999 against Oluyemi Falae.

Awolowo you will recall was among the first if not the first Nigeria leader of consequence to rise up to the ruling party in Nigeria giving them a run for their money and dragging out the Sardauna Bello to go canvass for votes and to have his convoy of cars covered with dust. He was the first to demand that a confederation similar to what American practices today should have been the best option for Nigeria. Awo made that case long before the Military establishment crafted and imposed on Nigeria the so-called 1999 Constitution, a plagiarized version of the American Constitution which was put together under cover of darkness by Abacha. The Constitution was never formally debated or ratified even in a simple plebiscite till tomorrow. That Constitution was contrived to make Nigeria a carbon copy of America in so many ways but the crafters do not expect Nigerians to exercise the same discretion and freedom the world has come to know about the American Democracy. You could argue that there is really no basis for comparison with America other than the fact that we operate a presidential system by name only because we totally lack the discipline to make it work for our country the way it is working for Americans. It is by no means a perfect document for Americans but it produces far less dividends for Nigerians across the board because our leaders would not let it..

The Nigerian voters operate on a different wave length or mindset with Americans in the sense that our shock absorbers and tolerance level for manipulation and injustice perpetrated on us by our own political class and the ruling party in Nigeria are so profound and dehumanizing that you will be right to call Nigerians imbeciles. I hate to use the word �Idiots� like Pastor Tunde Bakare has characterized Nigerians in one of the videos of his speech I have seen on Sahara TV. It is amazing how much depravation Nigerians are able and willing to take before they turn their backs on the PDP for their misrule of the country.

The way the American presidential system is designed to work hardly gives room for a dictatorship like the one Nigeria has had to endure in the NPC, the NPN, the NRC and its successor, the PDP which is really a pig with a lip stick if you compare it with the NPN Nigerians should long have rejected the PDP after its first 4 years in office to bring the Opposition to power for a change. The idea of one party dominating the country year in and year out despite their abysmal record in office in the last 50 years and counting is totally repugnant to tell the truth.

Out-going Speaker, Demeji Bankole was not too long ago charged by EFCC for stealing or misappropriating trillions of Dollars and Naira which he shared among his fellow legislators and senators of the Upper House including the Senate President, the powerful David Mark whose next ambition is to be President. As a member of a minority tribe in the North who has only tasted power only once from 1966 to 1975 when Yakubu Gowon, a Christian was elevated to Head of State not so much because the North had wanted him per se but because it was expedient to use him as a compromise choice to deceive and appease the South which had started grumbling about the way Aguiyi Ironsi and Adekunle Fajuyi and the other southerners were being eliminated or marginalized following the first coup in 1966. The North power brokers at the time were scared that if they imposed another Muslim Head of State from the North to replace Ironsi, hell could break loose. They therefore quickly settled for Jack Gowon and the Christian South, East and West, buried the hatchet to give peace a chance.

Dimeji Bankole was recently arraigned before a court and released on bail. Between that release and his next court appearance, he plea-bargained, named all of the more than 300 legislators and more than 100 senators that shared out of the loot revealing how much of those trillions of Naira went to each of them, and making it clear that even the Head of State of could not plead total ignorance of what transpired because the notion of separation of powers in the Nigerian system was simply an aberration. The PDP Board of trustees and Mr. President, the de facto Head of the Party call the shots. Not a single kobo got released without the President�s approval. Mr. Bankole refused to be made a scape goat for a collective malfeasance.

That was the last straw that broke the camel�s back for the EFCC hoping to prove it was even-handed in going after the former Speaker President Jonathan instinctively knew his transformational agenda was dead on arrival if he insisted that Dimeji and all the PDP legislators and Senators who had shared out of the loot must be brought to justice to the full extent of the Law. He knew that if he did, there would be nobody left in the PDP to run the Government. They are all guilty of the same Corruption in high places. The only way out is to set Mr. Bankole free because to keep Nigeria going the President has to do that. If such a scandal ever hit the air wave in America, the people involved would not go scot-free. That is a major difference. Speaker Bankole has to be left off the hook and quietly allowed to settle the problem out of court and public scrutiny. The Media would never allow that kind of scandal to be swept under the carpet in America, Never.

That could be the last we would ever hear about that sensational indictment of Speaker Dimeji Bankole. I guess the same thing is going to happen pretty soon to Gbenga Daniel and Alao Akala, and for all you know to Asaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu whose only unforgivable sin was not allowing the PDP to overrun Lagos and the Southwest. Money laundering he is accused of is the past time of all PDP big power brokers without exception. If they are knocking Ahmed Tinubu for it, it is like the kettle calling a pot black. That does not excuse Tinubu looting Government money, it only shows Tinubu is toeing the line. Our PDP Government and legislators are experts at looting Government treasury and covering up their trail. That is why Nigeria is going nowhere but down until we find a solution to the incurable Cancer at our highest level of Government.

Our legislators and senators go to Abuja to share money and become multi-millionaires. The PDP Government is fully aware of this observation and a million Okonjo-Iwealas and Jonathans cannot stop them,

My point now is how do Nigerians tolerate this kind of Party and allow it to continue riding rough-shod over their feelings and winning one election after the other in Nigeria? It beats my imagination. The CPC and its presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buhari has been fighting a losing battle in the Courts trying to prove that the PDP did not win in most of the states it has claimed in the North because the irregularities were just too many.

What goes around comes around. Once upon a time, it was Obafemi Awolowo who used to be in the exact shoes of Muhammadu Buhari but the world has turned one full circle. The North is now doing to one of their own what Awolowo has endured for years Buhari is now feeling the pinch of the burden Awolowo had carried for much of his political life as he fought tooth and nail against the oppression of the northern oligarchy. Buhari is the victim today. Who knows who is going to be the next victim. Nigerians must come together, once and for all, to break the yoke of the PDP domination of Nigeria.

Democracy works best like it does in America where the Tea Party thought it had the key to the White House and the key to a majority in Congress in 2012 if the economy remains in the tank like what it is now, and if the country remains deceived and misguided by the Republicans. The development was a challenge to the opposition in America to come together to fight back anyway they can. The opposition is aware that they are greater in number than the Republican millionaires they are trying to fight and since Democracy as clearly understood in America, is a game of numbers, they know they can take the Republicans out of power if they fight back like they are doing now. Michael Moore, the Film maker is leading the group. He has come up with the idea of a massive but non-violent demonstration around Wall Street. The passive resistance against the richest 1 or 2% of Americans who are oppressing the middle class, the poor and elderly in America including the minorities, children and the handicapped. Their resistance is spreading like bushfire in the Harmattan everywhere in the 50 states of America.

They are quietly turning the table on the Republicans and their hopes and fears in 2012. The President is beginning to find his voice in the backdrop of the quiet revolution these peaceful but purposeful demonstrations are doing all over America. That is the beauty of American Democracy. Republican who are already measuring the drapes of the White House must now know and appreciate it isn�t over till it is over. They all have their jobs cut out for them when their eventual nominee has to get in the ring with the incumbent President and they both have to trade jabs for jabs and upper cut for upper with American voters as the umpires or the deciders-in-chief. That was something Jonathan refused to do in the last election and he still won nonetheless because the outcome was already pre-determined. Not so in America.

Developments like that don�t readily take place in Nigeria. Governments in power have the power of coercion to determine ahead of the elections what the outcome is going to be regardless of what the voters say or do. That is what Nigerians have to change. Professor Jega did try to do something Nigerians were not used to in the last elections but there is still a big room for more improvement, The outcome of those elections were still suspect in most parts of Nigeria except in the Southwest where voters were far more sophisticated than their counterparts in the rest of the country. The voters and party agents would not leave the polling booths until the result is collated and signed copies given to the polling agents of each party who refuse to be intimidated by police men working for the Government in power.

That was how the opposition ACN managed to take back Ogun, Oyo, Osun while still retaining Lagos. The Labor Party won in Ondo State in large part due to the person of Governor Mimiko and because the ACN did not view Mimiko as an enemy because they were partly instrumental to his victory at the election tribunal and they were convinced he, Mimiko would never, as a progressive Governor, alienate the opposition come what may. You can judge the sophistication of the Southwest voters by their voting for Jonathan at the presidential election while rejecting his party in other elections by huge margins.

I fully subscribe to what the ACN was able to do in the Southwest even though I am not a card-carrying member. I am watching the Party to see if it is going to be truly different from the PDP in the way they govern and the progress they make in 4 years. The taste of the pudding is in the eating. All we want is a Government and a Party that work for the people and not against the people. The ACN would have every reason to win again in the Southwest if they perform. I will be among the first Nigerians to condemn and send them parking if they fail to deliver on their promises. It is that simple.

My hope and expectation are that our voters in Nigeria can emulate their counterparts in America to move Nigeria forward. I don�t care which Party wins as long as all of them are doing what is expected of them and not behaving like the PDP which is looting the country from one election circle to another, but expecting a different result. Nigerians have got to call their bluff.

I rest my case.