id you notice that a typical Nigerian project got under way at several fronts last week? It is called "project sugarcoat national tragedies." But it hardly ever goes by this rather self-incriminating name. However, this project did resurface last week neatly repackaged with benign names such as "explaining the true situation," "giving my own side of the story," "self-defense," or, as Americans would say in similar circumstances, "leveling with the people." The main objective of this project appeared to be, to persistently sweet-coat bitter pills, and subsequently, to force them down the throats of gullible Nigerians. Poring over the different news reports on Nigeria this past week, I got the hunch that Nigerian leaders were up to their tricks again. They have quietly re-engaged their usual game of inventing sweetened fables to cover up national tragedies, which they consider inimical to their personal interests and embarrassing to their offices.

But there is hardly any surprise in learning that this project might have crept back into our national consciousness. Time is rife for it. Nigeria has entered a terrible era of desperation. There seems to be a veritable fear that 2003 might become another 1983. Everybody seems therefore to be looking for a way to move forward. The government with its imagery-charged slogan is even urging a rapid desertion of the present: fast-forward into the future. One of the obvious ways of moving forward in modern politics is for leaders to persuade their people to buy into their lies about the true situations of things. Once this feat is achieved, both the government and its people can then move on to the other challenges confronting them. Nigeria appeared to have arrived at this particular point this past week. Hence the numerous honey-coated stories that were being sold to our people to get them to cut out their worries and move forward into a blissful future of promise and hope.

If my surmises proved correct, then I would have to applaud the various people that regurgitated this project for their ingenuity. They were in fact applying the right medication to our nation's present political uncertainty syndrome. It is a proven fact that Nigerians of all ranks have the knack to explain away horrifying tragedies with sugarcoated languages. And this is usually based on an equally proven fact that Nigerians as a people easily fall for such pranks. However, the ultimate reason for the application of this project is because the overwhelming majority of our compatriots is gullible and has neither the knowledge and courage nor the patience to peel off the coated layers so as to get to the truth of the matter. This usually serves as a powerful incentive for the government as well as well-placed Nigerians to feel ever-encouraged selling such national tragedies as goodies to be desired by all. They know that they have a ready-market for them among the rank and file Nigerians.

I was fascinated watching the return of "project sugarcoat" in our national discourses last week. The president, the embattled senate leader Wabara, the Abia South senate seat challenger, Elder Imo, the Ukwa-Ngwa citizens and discordant INEC, one way or the other, all engaged in "project sugarcoat our national tragedies" this past week. They did this either by trying to paper over or to sugarcoat some current national embarrassments by pretending to be appealing to higher values, or with the employment of diversionary mechanisms. One could see all over again that despicably shameful culture of our country to cover up a stinking dog mess with a thin layer of sand so as to move on. In fact it was quintessential Nigeria on display for the world! Once again, our country was cast before the world as a haven of con artists and liars who are not perturbed manufacturing dodgy fables to sugarcoat their foibles and crimes.

First, the Nigerian president vigorously contested the classification of our country as a terribly impoverished nation where every two in three Nigerians are living far below the poverty line. The international poverty evaluation agency has once again returned another damning verdict on the level of poverty in Nigeria. And that appeared to confirm the fears of Home Truths Column that all the years of the Obasanjo administration have been witnessing a rapid downward spiral in our people's well being. Noticing in good time the embarrassment potential of this report, the Nigerian president promptly activated his sugarcoat project as counter measure. The president acted fast to cover himself up against harmful political fallouts even though he knew full well that those foreign agencies were telling the truth about our country and poverty. The president was supposed to have known first hand the tragic nature of poverty in Nigeria. He knew that ordinary Nigerians are today wallowing in a type of poverty that is almost unimaginable in the civilized world. But he chose to deny and lie that our people were in such a horrific distress as a result of artificial poverty that had consistently been identified by concerned international agencies.

	The president, the embattled senate leader Wabara, the Abia South senate seat challenger, Elder Imo, the Ukwa-Ngwa citizens and discordant INEC, one way or the other, all engaged in "project sugarcoat our national tragedies" this past week.

Rather than be educated by the findings of those reputable international agencies and perhaps seek their assistance on how to fight the scandalous poverty in our nation, the president chose instead to engage them in a lawyerly debate about the veracity of their findings. This was in spite of the fact that he knew or was supposed to know that the UN and its social services' agencies usually employed scientific methods of measuring poverty levels across the world that were almost scientifically unflappable. They would not single out Nigeria for embarrassment. They would have no reason to indulge such a sinister methodology that could easily be revealed by another or a handful of scientists reviewing their findings. That is to say, the methods usually applied by these international agencies in the determination of the poverty situation within a certain locality are not usually prejudiced against any nation in particular.

However, even these facts, as clear as they might have been to the Nigerian president were not enough to convince him of the truth of the findings. Outrageously he believed that Nigerians were far richer than they had been presented by the foreign poverty-measuring agencies. Ideally speaking such a stance would be very risky a position for any democratic leader whose legitimacy depended on popular support and goodwill. This is because it would cast him as out of touch with his people. It might show him as disconnected from the day-to-day concerns of his people. But Obasanjo can afford such an insensitive stance because as a Nigerian president he enjoys a near-tyrannical liberty to dispense of a democratic legitimacy and popular support. And that is surely what he appears to be doing right now. However, we believe we know what he is up to with his efforts to discredit the findings of the international poverty agencies. There is an underlying reason why he desperately seeks to replace their findings with the ones that are certain to be favorable to him. The president appears to be invoking the age-old sugarcoat project that tries to deceive, divert and distract so as to get away with an embarrassing situation. The Nigerian president is perhaps tactically dodging his responsibility to commit to specific programs that could help reduce the debilitating and tragic effects of poverty on the ordinary citizens of our country.

Also the Nigerian president knew that another independent agency, Catholic Relief Services, has only recently appeared to corroborate with its own assessments the poverty findings of the UN and other poverty agencies that had marked Nigeria down as a destitute nation (Reuters, June 17). The Catholic agency had only last week indicted the leaders of Africa and Nigeria in particular for misusing the more than 300 billion dollars derived from oil alone in the last 25 years. According to this agency, the Nigerian governments at this time frame did more to inflict poverty on their peoples rather than uplift them. Even though the nearly 40-trillion Naira that was stolen or wasted in the last twenty-five years in Nigeria could have been more than enough to transform our country into a respectable nation, the revelation that it had all been wasted while poverty ravaged the nation apparently did not bother the president of Nigeria. His concern was elsewhere. It was not with the sciences of those findings though. He was not even interested in credibly challenging the conclusions of the findings. He appeared to have been interested only in one thing, namely, sugarcoating propaganda. He was intent on exonerating himself from the blame of the scandalous poverty in our nation. Unfortunately, by way of tipping his hands on where his interest lay, the president promptly set up his own propaganda outfit to provide him with skewed data to discredit the findings of those internationally acclaimed bodies. That was classic sugarcoating project!

Obviously the Nigerian president was trying to be one step ahead of an anticipated flap from the press that unfortunately was caught napping last year by a similar report from the UNDP. He was perhaps trying to avoid the embarrassment of last year when Home Truths column single-handedly blew the whistle on the dangerous implications of the UNDP's poverty evaluation of our nation. But this year the president appeared to be smarter. He quickly embarked on nipping in the bud the whole poverty brouhaha. On learning that our nation had sunk further down on the international poverty grading scale the president moved fast to set up his own panel of indigenous poverty evaluators made up of homegrown government propagandists. He armed them with a whopping war chest of 200-million Naira, just for them to say that all those international poverty agencies were lying and in fact wrong in claiming that poverty existed in Nigeria in a very alarming scale. Who will dispute the fact that this president has bought and paid for the favorable report that will eventually emerge from the so-called indigenous poverty panel that is ascertaining the true nature of our nation's poverty level?

But far more disturbing is the fact that Nigeria has to waste that amount of money to accomplish something, which has no bearing whatsoever to the reality and embarrassing pain of poverty in our land. Isn't this a tragedy of no mean proportion? What will a forged documentation of the fictitious wealth of the ordinary Nigerians, bought with a whopping amount of 200 million, which will ultimately be the outcome of the president's panel, do to alleviate the poverty-induced pains of our people? Absolutely nothing! The whole program to re-determine the level of poverty in Nigeria embarked upon by this president is a total waste, a fraud, a deceit and a sugarcoating nonsense. It is absolutely baffling that this president seemed that eager to commit and burn precious millions of Naira in a seemingly fruitless exercise to disprove the international poverty agencies' claims about Nigeria's poverty level. This is taking place in a country where millions of Nigeria's minimum-wage workers are owed months of areas of salaries. It is happening in a country where petroleum subsidy, which is the only welfare available in Nigeria, is being removed to attract more revenue to the government. But the government is wasting millions establishing propaganda outfits to distort and discredit international scientific findings. It is a pity! Does this mean that the Nigerian president is more interested in images and politics than in the dangerous poverty that is ravaging our people? You decide! But one thing is certain, the Nigerian president is totally committed to the project of sugarcoating Nigeria's tragedies.

However, the president didn't seem done in his creative use of the sugarcoating project. Rather he and his lawyers led by Afe Babalola, a senior advocate of Nigeria (SAN), opened up another channel of it in the so-called electoral tribunals across the country this past week. And their argument appeared to be something that defied basic commonsense. It was premised on a blanket denial that there were fraud, irregularity, illegality and criminality in the last election. As reported by the Guardian, "the respondents, (being Obasanjo, his co-respondents and his clan of lawyers), deny… all allegations of illegality, irregular conduct, malpractices and violations of the constitution, Electoral Act 2002, or electoral regulations, and all other laws contained therein, and (challenge) the petitioners to strict proof of all the averments contained therein" (Guardian Jun 17). So the president of Nigeria opened up his defense at the electoral tribunal with a denial of a fact witnessed worldwide and testified to by large contingents of knowledgeable people from across the world. What message does this send to the monitors who came to observe the Nigerian elections of 2003? Are they to take it in their individual hearts that the Nigerian president is a liar? Moreover, is the president daring the tribunal to summon the international monitors to the witness stand? The blanket denial of the reality of fraud in the 2003 elections speaks volumes on the characters of people who are running the Nigerian government.

But unlike what the president was spoiling to do with the findings on Nigeria's poverty in which he had decided to set up a body to provide counter-evidence to challenge those of the international agencies, his defense at the election tribunal appeared to be based purely and completely on technicalities. The only hope of the president surviving and retaining his office at the tribunal appeared to be based on the tribe of his lawyers discovering some legal technicalities for exploitation. Absent that, he is toast. That is, if the tribunal is made up of people who care about their personal integrity. Hence, the president's lawyers are challenging the petitioners to a "strict proof of their averments." So, unless the allegations are strictly proved to the letter, the president wins. But his victory will neither be based on the facts, the constitution, nor on the electoral law, which are clearer than the legal hurdle of strict proof. Rather it will be based on a technicality or a default arising from the fact that the alleged fraud mightn't be strictly proved to the satisfaction of the cowed judges of the tribunal. In other words, the president's lawyers do not have much work to do at the tribunal. All they will have to do is to sit at their tables and wait for the tribunal judges to decide whether the petitioners have proved their allegations of fraud in the 2003 elections to their satisfaction. At the moment, strict proof is nothing but a euphemism for the tribunal judges' discretion - a mountainous legal hurdle that is rarely scaled in politically charged cases. Perhaps the president's lawyers will be magnanimous enough to help the petitioners by providing them with a clearer definition of a strict proof. But what does all this word game mean? It means only one thing. The Nigerian president is trying to get off the hook through the grace of legal technicalities. And it is sugarcoating our national tragedy!

	But no matter what the Nigerian president might have achieved last week along the line of trying to bamboozle the already dazed Nigerians, it paled in comparison to what was happening in the camp of Sen. Prez. Adolphus Wabara.

Another ground the president's lawyers appeared to be advancing this past week was their claim that not all the proper parties were joined in the petition. According to them, "the Police, Armed Forces, the Peoples Democratic Party and various other individuals against whom allegations of wrongdoing were made were not made parties to the petition. That the petition is improperly constituted as parties against whom no allegation was made and who are thereby not proper parties, have been made parties to the petition" (Vanguard, June 17). Once again, the president's defense is solely built on discovering and exploiting legal technicalities. He knows that he has no case on the facts. The entire world knows full well that the Nigerian presidential election of 2003 was completely flawed because of irreparable frauds. Ideally speaking, voiding the election would have been a no-brainer in any tribunal worth its salt. But we are in Nigeria where there is always a way out. The president's way out in this circumstance appears to be to search desperately for technicalities and exploit them to their fullest possibility. It will surely work because after all it is Nigeria!

Yet another set of arguments which the president and his lawyers shamelessly advanced in their submission included that which claimed that the petitioner(s), Muhammadu Buhari along with the other former candidates making similar arguments "waived his (their) right to complain when he (they) chose to participate in the election with full knowledge of the so-called lapses in the conduct of the elections." According to them, "if there were any invalid votes at the election, they would not be substantial enough to invalidate his (president's) elections…even if those invalid votes were deducted from the total scores by all candidates, he (President Obasanjo) would still have had the majority of votes cast at the election and satisfied the other requirements for election to the office of the president" (Vanguard, June 17).

The first in these three related lines of argument appears patently ludicrous. The president's argument that the ANPP candidates and his counterparts waived their right to complain against the fraudulent election when they chose to participate in it with full knowledge of the so-called lapses in its conduct is the type of an argument that should embarrass any lawyer worth his salt. Looking at it a little more critically, the statement as it is hardly makes any sense. How on earth can one waive a right to seek redress of an injury as monumental as that of 2003 elections because he lacked a full fore knowledge of the nature of an election that was yet to be conducted? This appears to be a demand that should be made on God and not on humans. How could Buhari have known in advance that there would be flaws in the conduct of the presidential election that was yet to take place? Suppose he had had some suspicions because of the fraud that had dogged the National Assembly elections on April 12, would that have legally counted as full fore knowledge to warrant the boycott of the election of April 19? How does a human being acquire a full fore knowledge of the future?

The arguments of the president's lawyers appeared progressively incomprehensible and ludicrous. How could Buhari and the other petitioners have chosen not to participate in the election since they were duly the nominated candidates of registered political parties in Nigeria? I don't get it. In fact how would any created being have had a full knowledge of a yet to hold fraudulent election in advance? And what is the meaning of "full knowledge" anyway? Moreover, if Buhari and the rest of the petitioners deserved some blame for not opting out of the election, which they were supposed to have known completely in advance would be fraudulent, what about the electorate who voted in the elections? Should they have opted out too if they chose to since they should have had a similar advance full knowledge that their votes would not count in the elections? Or, were the president's lawyers revealing that the electorate was willfully conned by INEC into participating in a fraudulent election, which they had a fore knowledge of? The implication of the president's position appeared to be that the fore knowledge of the level of fraudulence in the election was commonly available before even the election was held. And therefore anybody that chose to participate in it did so at his or her own risks. They should be made to prove this new position of theirs. But did they intend such an interpretation or am I am over-reading or misreading the intention of their arguments?

The second and third in the above itemized lines of argument of President Obasanjo and his lawyers dealt with a subtle admission of a partial invalidity of the elections. There seemed to be a clear admission by the Obasanjo lawyers that the presidential election of 2003 was partially hobbled and flawed. For me this admission amounted to a huge legal victory for the petitioners. If this seemingly agreed position on the 2003 elections could be stipulated among the contending parties, then the work of the tribunal would become a whole lot easier. However, what the president and his lawyers appeared to be arguing in this part of their response was the substantiality of the invalidity not its reality. The president's lawyers seemed to have unwittingly accepted without a fight the reality of fraud in the presidential election. They were therefore only praying the tribunal to decide whether the invalidity was substantial enough in numbers and spread as to warrant the voiding of the election of their client as the petitioners had claimed.

For me, this admission is a major development in the case. It is the main reason why there is the judicial system in a democracy in the first place. The role of the tribunal in the 2003 elections is to decide cases of this nature, the presence of invalidity and its substantiality. It is the tribunal's responsibility to decide how much of the former reaches the threshold of the substantiality that is required for an electoral nullity? If the tribunal can isolate this point and focus on it, their work will move faster and their decision will attract wider support. However, for some us who approach such issues from the broader social justice point of view, the presence of invalidity, no matter how little, amounts to substantial grounds for a judgment of nullity. The tribunal should not get itself enmeshed with the intractable task of deciding whether it would be a one- or two-thirds invalidity that should result in the voiding of the presidential election. For me one bad apple spoils the whole bunch. One fraud in the system brings down the whole complex. A little admission of fraud in the election as the president's lawyers appeared to have done in their submission means that the 2003 presidential could never be considered legal and credible. What it all means is that the tribunal has no other place to go than to order INEC to start preparing for another presidential election that will be fraud-free. Anything absent that will not do.

However, it proved quite fascinating to discover this latent admission of partial invalidity of the presidential election in the president's lawyers' submissions of last week. This was because the admission appeared to be a new position, which contradicted their banner position denying completely the presence of irregularities and frauds in the April 19 elections. The president's lawyers made categorical statements in the preliminary areas of their response denying and precluding the presence of fraud in the election. For them to come back and from the back door try to sneak in an admission of a partial presence of fraud in the election was for me very troubling and fascinating as well. It was amazing that President Obasanjo's lawyers could be speaking from the both sides of their mouths. Perhaps they should quickly decide on their line of argument and stick with it. There was either irregularity in the election, which voided it on the whole or there was not. Those eminent lawyers started by denying any irregularity whatsoever in the elections and staked their reputation by challenging the petitioners to a strict proof of its reality. But then they ended their submission by admitting a partial invalidity in the elections and once again re-staked their already pledged reputation by once again challenging the petitioners to prove substantiality. This makes little sense in reasoning. What is going on here? Is it the reality of electoral fraud or its substantiality that needs to be proved? Honorable Afe Babalola, I crave your indulgence to answer me!

However I do not think there is any mystery to understanding what the Nigerian president and his lawyers were up to last week. They were in fact stretching the sugarcoat project to its absurd end. Their interest in both the poverty issue and the defense of the validity of the flawed presidential election was to create as much sugarcoat as possible for themselves, and at the same time insinuate diversion and confusion in the camps of their opponents. It seemed abundantly clear that the president was engaged in what could ordinarily pass as a double whammy of discrediting foreign agencies alleging tragic-level poverty in Nigeria as well as creating a substantial amount of doubt against the claims of the petitioners to the electoral tribunal. The president's legalese in the electoral tribunal proved quite fascinating because of its discordant incoherence. But I will bet here that the Nigerian president will achieve all his goals no matter how insidious they appeared to be last week. And he will get away scot-free with everything he ever wanted. After all this is Nigeria, where every trick in the book works to perfection!

But no matter what the Nigerian president might have achieved last week along the line of trying to bamboozle the already dazed Nigerians, it paled in comparison to what was happening in the camp of Sen. Prez. Adolphus Wabara. Camp Wabara was awash with drama this past week. The week had started spectacularly well for the embattled senate president. The Nigerian press generously donated to him an abundant space to freely market his sugarcoated message to the befuddled world. Reading his propaganda-laced accounts this past week one could not but feel sorry for him for he appeared in fact to have been the victim rather than the cheater in the senatorial elections of Abia South constituency. The feeling was real that the new senate president of Nigeria was perhaps robbed in the election. In other words, those of us who had been badmouthing him as an election cheater were in fact unfair to him, and therefore should make haste to apologize to him individually and collectively. But wait a minute! We have fallen easy-prey to project sugarcoat! The senate president had employed this project last week to initiate a groundswell of sympathy for his artificial victim-hood situation. And nobody should fall for it. At least, not Home Truths column!

To further enhance the flow of sympathy he had begun to enjoy both from the press and from the Nigerian peoples, the senate president invoked the usual Nigerian all-time winner, namely, God almighty. The Nigerian new senate president declared, "the Lord will fight for me" (ThisDay, June 15). In fact it did appear at the beginning of last week that the good Lord was smiling on the senate president. Things were turning his way fast. A report was circulated claiming that his principal challenger, Dan Imo, had withdrawn all his petitions against the senate president's election, thereby clearing the coast for him to enjoy his pre-eminent status in the upper house. And it appeared that the embattled senate president had begun to amass an army of home support to serve as a buffer against any attempt to tamper with his election and new position in the senate. Many reports claimed that Dan Imo was prevailed upon to discontinue his petition by the leaders of Ukwa-Ngwa community in Abia South who seemed to have begun to calculate what the loss of the plum position of Wabara, as the senate president, would mean in Naira and Kobo to the communities of their senatorial zone. On the other hand, it appeared as if the pressure of Ukwa-Ngwa was not enough to get Imo to withdraw his petitions. In fact some newspapers reported that a deal was struck in which Wabara agreed to part with large sums of money as compensation to Elder Imo. Both politicians would deny the report mid last week. All in all, the new senate president was winning and appeared safe and home dry to retain his senate and new position as the second person in the order of succession to the Nigerian president.

	The position of INEC in the Wabara palaver is what makes the case both fascinating and tragic for every Nigerian. Who speaks for INEC in this case? Is it the integrity-challenged INEC of Abuja or the mythology-spewing INEC of Abia State?

Wabara's bright week continued deep into the midweek. In line with his declaration that God almighty was engaged in a fight on his behalf, the resident electoral commissioner in Abia State, Elkanah Adeoye Akintade put forward a graphic narration of the little moments that eerily plunged the embattled senator into the present quagmire. According to an apparently flustered electoral commissioner of Abia State, the plight of Senate President Wabara was caused by a spectacularly executed 419 escapade against him by people suspected to have been agents of Elder Dan Imo. Wabara, according to the commissioner was in short a victim of 419-scam in the 2003 National Assembly election. An impersonator had deceived the returning officer of the zone into accepting a false result that denied Wabara his earned victory early on the day the results were released. But this was promptly corrected and victory re-awarded to the rightful winner, being senate president Wabara. But the confusion of viewing Dan Imo as the winner of the disputed seat remained with the Abuja headquarters of the INEC, which appeared to have had its own line of communication with the electorate of Abia South senatorial district different from those of the Abia State electoral commissioner and Abia South returning officer.

Akintade's account of the tragedy sounded so romantic and believable like any village cock and bull story. It appeared like a story lifted from the book of ancient Babylonian or Greek mythologies. An agent of Dan Imo had impersonated the collation officer and turned in a fraudulent result with which Imo was declared the winner of the senatorial election of Abia South senatorial zone. As I read the story of deceit and impersonation in the 21st century Nigerian politics, I put on my biblical scholarship hat. And immediately I began to think of the Epic of Gilgamesh in the Sumerian and Babylonian legends. How the Abia South Senatorial Returning Officer was allegedly conned by Elder Imo's agent into declaring his man the winner of the senate seat of Abia south senatorial constituency approximated, in my view, to the stealing of the secret plant of immortality Utnaphistin gave to Gilgamesh by the nefarious serpent when the former was taking his bath. Akintade's fable is for me the highpoint of Nigeria's fairy tale elections of 2003. Our country is indeed the magic fairy-tale kingdom of the 21st century world.

The story of Akintade (Vanguard Wednesday June 18) made me feel a tremendous pity for the nation of Nigeria. For once I was tempted to feel that the democratic administration of Nigeria has fallen so low, so precipitously and so fast in the last four years. Today our nation appears to be quagmired in the Babylonian mythological kingdom filled with impersonators and stealers. How did we get this far? From where did we arrive in our present situation in which our compatriots placed in leadership positions preferred to speak and act like mischievous characters in ancient Babylonian mythology? Nigerians have a far bigger fight to reclaim their country than they can ever imagine. The fact is our nation may be ruled and run at the moment by a clan of very shameless people who could fabricate all sorts of fables to retain power.

The story of Adeoye Akintade, if it contained one iota of truth in it, immediately procures the total and final discrediting of the whole electoral exercise of 2003. If his story is true, it must be the case that INEC and its patron, the Obasanjo presidency, willingly chose to concoct one fabled election in 2003. The fable of Akintade proves that the so-called Independent Electoral Commission was irredeemably incompetent to have been charged with the responsibility of organizing any elections whatsoever, be it a students' council election. If Akintade's story held up in its current form, Obasanjo, in my view, would have no legitimate business whatsoever contesting the comprehensive invalidity of the last elections at the tribunals. Rather he should start immediately to make preparations so as to organize credible and non-fictional elections in Nigeria before the end of 2004.

However, Akintade's mythical story claims that Wabara was robbed of his legitimate victory in the election. And that was to be the end of the good news for the senate president last week. Also that apparently marked the end of the fight "God almighty" had allegedly engaged on the senate president's behalf. Shortly after the testimonies of Wabara on his own behalf as well as that of Akintade using the mythical language of trick and impersonation, both the party of Dan Imo, ANPP, and INEC of Abuja indicated their interest to continue their challenge of the validity of the election of the senate president. As if that was not bad enough to the senate president, the counsel to Dan Imo, Tochukwu Onwugbufor, appeared to retract the so-called withdrawal of his client from the tribunal. He alleged that the letter written by his client, Dan Imo, purporting a withdrawal from the case might have been obtained under duress. The whole matter escalated to an unprecedented height when INEC came to court towards the end of last week to claim that the certificate of return issued to Senate President Wabara was illegal and unconstitutional. Talk of "God" abandoning the Wabara fight!

The position of INEC in the Wabara palaver is what makes the case both fascinating and tragic for every Nigerian. Who speaks for INEC in this case? Is it the integrity-challenged INEC of Abuja or the mythology-spewing INEC of Abia State? Is the house of INEC divided? Why is this apparently so? There must be some underlying issue pitting apparently the national INEC against its local branch? Is somebody paying the INEC of Abuja to get the senate president even while another person or interest is paying the INEC of Abia State to lend him a helping hand? There is something fishy in the divided house of INEC. What about Onwugbufor and Dan Imo? Is Onwugbufor representing the ANPP or is he the counsel of Dan Imo? What actually is happening? What is the role of Ukwa-Ngwa in this problem? Are the people of Abia South rallying behind Senate President Wabara simply because he now has the senate presidency in his kitty and will surely bring home the perks of his high office against a potential parliamentary backbencher like Dan Imo? If such is the case, isn't this a proof that nearly everything happening around the electoral seat of Wabara accords more with the way of life of people in the criminal world?

As one can see, last week witnessed frenetic efforts both at the presidency and in Camp Senate President Adolphus Wabara to manage very embarrassing developments. And the method of choice for the two camps appeared to have been the invocation of project sugarcoat. The aim was to tone down quite significantly the bites of the embarrassing situations, to divert attention, to deceive and to gather groups of charlatans together who would advance the embattled person's cause, say what would benefit his personality, enhance his image and ensure that he lasted long enough in his ill-gotten position with minimal damage to his fortunes. But while that was going on, nobody thought of the absence of justice and fairness in our terribly abused country, nobody remembered the critical situation of millions of destitute Nigerians who are desperately waiting for the day of honest government that will allow the abundant Nigerian goodies to trickle down to the last wrung of the ladder where more than 90% of Nigerians live. Rather the operators of project sugarcoat only thought of their selfish selves, and how to ensure that they and their progenies forever lived in an unimaginable abundance while the rest of Nigeria wallowed in tragic poverty forever. This is why this column, in every one of its editions, recommits itself to taking a leadership role in the war against injustice and poverty in Nigeria. To those who are cautioning that we have been too upfront with our criticisms, or, those who may be thinking that this war has gone on for quite a while, we can only paraphrase the saying of the Eagle on the Iroko of African literature, Chinua Achebe: it is yet morning on a creation day!