Tunnydad

COMMUNITY POLICING: THE WAY FOR NIGERIA SECURITY

2025-10-19T20:41:00.002+01:00

Opinion of the Director General of DSS, Mr. Tosin Ajayi, Nigeria, on the prevailing insecurity ravaging the country.

OH WILD WORLD WIND

2022-08-02T03:37:00.005+01:00

Oh, wild world wind

Blown by the acts of a few

For many to drink

Few made planes, phones.

For all to smile

Few made conflicts and wars.

For all to cry

Oh, wild world wind

Passed by the hands of a few

For many to obey

Few execute the law and order.

For all to meet justice

A few twists of the rule

For the human right to wobble

Oh, wide world wind

Mandated by the minds of a few

For many to affect

Few made banking ethics.

For all to trust

A few corners of the banker's deed

For the economic meltdown to ensure

Oh, wild world wind

Urged by the desire to love

For many to marry

Few are of good heart, care.

For all to be happy ever after

Few are of cheat, gain.

For all to mate regret

Oh, wild world wind.

POWER IS IN THE VOICE

2022-05-22T14:08:00.003+01:00

In the captain’s seat, they sat.

The ship twists and turns,

Rocks hit our foreheads,

And tatters our feet to work rides.

Still, they pour champagne.

Laugh and pour champagne.

Silenced mind of the masses, their roll-the-drum

Yet the other cheek salutes the air.

In a toothless tirade

As “Lame is the ship’s state”,

“Enthusiastic was its slaughtered skin.”

“They know ‘no’,”

The lame shouts at the wall

The wealthy state, wealthy underfoot,

Come beggar

Among nations of made-in, be right.

Yet bowl in hand, it dances.

With the lowest of low

The voice for change cowered

Yet death is the health house.

Across the sea, meet the health house.

We know they know ‘no’

Adrift we flow for five tens and two.

In the journey to the same, same place

Same place,

Of a zero library, of endless cry

Yet to topple the inane power.

The power is in the voice.

GONE WITH THE CHANGE OF NOTABLES

2022-05-21T01:15:00.001+01:00

We must tell it, I’ll tell it

To trap tomorrow’s we didn’t, I didn’t

Statesmen entombed with tested, tuned traits

Men are in-state merciless and selfish

Luxuries, the opium of stone their soul

Admirable and endearing trailblazers in the grave

Now-men fail that wealth and fame not to gate of the grave

Vacuum is a vital virtue to their values

Laurels, thousands as their hands reach, they loot

To serve stainless steel to their mind

To serve per assignment, buried with the notables

In state-seated drug deals, it serves to kill

Parcel bomb, your fate, should mouth kiss no grave

Their path to rule, vicious like the beast,

Stage-managed gangster, the barrel of execution

In the human red, they pile the spoil of the office

To do or die, they do in the office of virtue

Death in the air of deathtrap roads

Death in the air of no-bed hospitals

Tomorrow piles the deeds

The dead good men,

And yet-to-die bad men

The scroll of revisit waits.

WELCOME TO NEW NIGERIA

2021-12-07T11:50:00.004+01:00

Community of nations, it’s a great honor to stand before you to talk about the most populous black nation on earth. At this junction of our statehood, I’m proud to be the Chief Presiding Officer of Nigeria.

Welcome to the new Nigeria, where election to our various offices is by the universally accepted norm of one-man-one-vote. Our electoral process now breeds sound minds of selfless servants. We’re happy that corruption has been reduced to a bearable minimum. And few among us who dare to put ill knives in our cake are summarily judged and adequately punished by an upright justice system.

Fuel scarcity has now been put to eternal sleep of no glory by the grace of our locally engineered refinery, to the degree that we’re now able to produce our need for gas, and sell well over 70% of refined fuel to the international market. Thereby ensuring double gain from than 50million barrels of national high of 150million barrels of crude oil produced per day.

The best news of the growth of the oil and gas sector is that the gas that we have consistently wasted through gas flaring for over five decades is now yielding to the nation's foreign reserve in millions of hard dollars.

Our masses right as we speak have zero need for imported schooling nor private institutions of learning, as our public schools are adjudged to be among the fifty best in the world-UNESCO. And the schooling costs are completely borne by the government to the high school level and are compulsory for all of school age.

At the tertiary level, excellence in academic works, research, and development is the cornerstone of all institutions. To the extent that our corporation and industry do not have any need to consult outside expertise to get their formulas to produce globally competitive goods and services.

A feast made possible by resources provided by the government that made available up-to-date libraries and scientific research centers in all of our over 500 higher institutions of learning.

The workforce smiles home with a minimum wage of 300,000 naira per month. Like eternity were the days of fighting for 18,000 naira per month.

Our road networks speak for themselves. There is no corner of Nigeria without good roads and commensurate drainage systems of a life span of more than 100 years.

Air Nigeria, after the misadventure with Virgin Nigeria, can now boast of over 2000 aircraft of all sizes and shapes, with services and safety record comparable to any carrier in the world.

Modern track rail routes now move goods and persons to the nooks and crannies of our vast borders.

Marine transportation has also taken its pride place in our hitherto non-existent transportation systems.

Gone were the days when our big men, in and out of government, traveled over the seas for their health needs, because our hospital facilities are current and adjudged, according to WHO data, as some of the best in the world.

All this unparalleled advancement has given birth to a new Nigeria where the cry of marginalization, ethnic strife, and disunity are things of distant memory.

We’re the investor’s heaven here on earth. No corporation of note in the world is without a foothold in Nigeria, the land where green is evergreen. A real brand that doesn’t require Prof. Dora’s lip service rebranding to sell itself.

All I can say is join us if profit and growth are your mission in business.

Now we’ve proved to the likes of Fela Anikulapo Kuti wrong, when he said, “my people self dem fear too much, dem fear to fight for freedom”. We’re free at last through one of the fiercest fights of civil rights ever fought on earth.

We fought tooth and nail to become the third-best economy (IMF’s voice) in the world, and the second least corrupt nation (Transparency International’s verdict) in the world.

Once again, of distant memory, I’m proud to tell that we have removed epileptic power supply from the remotest hamlet in our land. In fact, six sister countries are today paying heavily for our supply of power to their national grid.

In conclusion, our magical transformation now makes millions of citizens of dozens of close to one hundred countries across the globe queue day and night for a choice visa to either visit or stay in Nigeria.

The skeptics of gone by years now sing a different soul song, “me, I love Nigeria, I love the land and people, everything is in Nigeria, let’s join hands to make Nigeria the greatest. Thank you.

INEFFECTIVE HEADS

2021-11-18T01:41:00.017+01:00

INEFFECTIVE HEADS

Something is wrong, where a man supposedly elected, paid to steer the affairs of the state, yet cannot create employment for the people who employed him as promised, when seeking the job with a purported blueprint to solve the unemployment problem, in hand. Housed in a massive mansion by the state, but cannot initiate a workable housing program to house the people who gave him a comfortable home.

Round the clock, national resource fuels his abode and mobility, even as imported fuel he fails to make available for the people to buy at fuel lines.

Then one wonders, why steal the stool if performance is not part of the steering lexicon, yet he knows enough to place hurdles in the way of audit of his stewardship.

Surely and steadily, this ineffectiveness is making it strenuous for the sleeping masses to slumber in peace. Believe he does his predecessors that, “that the people are toothless”.

Watch the weather, a wise counsel, the storm on the face of the wall is unlike the former time. Right now, frustration lives on the skin of the restive people. Fifty flirty rooms’ mansion, one of your forerunners got away with. However, the bird that read this storm says, you would be lucky to live in a hamlet, within this shore, should the gathered break gauge in your term of office.

Be wise, make jobs, make durable roads, build enlightenment schools, build functional hospitals, refine the bestowed crude oil within our borders, and provide healthy portable water. Right the wrongs, as the patience of the people is drying up.

IN DARK SHADES

Something is wrong when third-world nations' rulers and ministers travel to working countries in dark shades, so that they do not see the good roads, twenty-four-hour electricity, pipe-borne waters that are taken for granted, functional hospitals that they run to, at the slightest itching on their dry, unfeeling skins.

Otherwise, tell me, what sane mind goes out to spend converted weak currency into a strong economy? To access the kind of facility they are being paid to provide for themselves and the people.

They proudly come back home to the woes, with their dark shades left behind at the desk of a functional airport. At least nature is good at dishing the right meal, as power failure, a popular slogan in our enviable environment, often welcomes them at the port of return.

Anyway, they expect the darkness, hence the reason they possess a pair of electrical generating engines. So that on alternate nights and days, they would have power in their mansions.

NATIONAL HONORS

Something is wrong in a situation where more than fifty-five of our political office holder and their collaborator in both the private and public offices are holders of national honor, and yet not one of our critical national sectors is out of comatose. The situation makes mind wonder, where is the location of the performances that yield the merit, which are widely publicized, in announcement and congratulatory messages, in the national dailies.

World bodies and organizations should put their head together and give my nation an international award for a meritorious dysfunctional state. Otherwise, we should recall all the awards, from the member of the Order of the Niger to the Grand Commander of the Niger, from the inception of the awards to the most recent.

Because we all agree that this nation is a failed state.

ENDEMIC CORRUPTION

Something is wrong with a nation in which no stratum of its fabric is free of corruption. A state in which corrupt characteristics have become a way of life. Let us take the petrol chain as an example, where the owners of tankers would have to pay a bribe before receiving an allocation of fuel. Yet they will still have to part with another set of bribes to get to and pass the loading queue. At the point of sale, the pump gets adjusted by the proprietor to make excess profit; still, the pump point attendant will collect a percentage of the content to serve the motorist, and if you are not diligent enough, the attendant will still short-change you by delivering less than your money paid for into the vehicle.

In a government hospital, one has to pay to get attention and a bed space. In the establishments and ministries, one must part with hard-earned currency to avoid a case of missing file or unwarranted delay. One of the reasons the online, say registration, activities of governmental bodies do not function as designed is that some of the operators of the system put in the way various hindrances so that the processes would have to pass through them physically, and deliver some currency into their mucky pockets.

Every stratum stink of it, even the well-paid worker in the oil sector manipulate and pads contractual figures to amass unmerited returns.

Something is certainly wrong in a state where the populace, from the Commander-In-Chief to the Messenger-In-Service, is not content with their take-home pay, even when the package ought to get them home and beyond.

A nation where no one seeks the answer of a man who became a governor with no personal building of his in town but left office with purported one hundred and seventy-nine choice houses in his name after four four-year terms in office deserves a surgical operation.

An urgent ponder on what went amiss with the principle of a ‘good name is better than gold’ of the recent past must be undertaken. Before this pandemic, it became the official color of our nation's state flag.

CONSUMING THE RESERVE

Something is wrong with a policymaker who extracts black gold, sells it out to a foreign country, only to turn around and buy the refined product of the same crude oil hitherto sold out.

If elementary arithmetic were right, the initiator returns the buyer’s money plus profit, as well as empowers its workforce, while at home, unemployment bites the populace to high heaven.

This same prudent policy miller, flare gas, a byproduct of crude oil exploration, for upward of forty-five years, continually intentionally shifted the goal post of ending the flaring.

It took a foreign dignitary, on a courtesy visit, a minute to point this out as a colossal national waste of acquirable reserve.

These self-proclaimed wise men and women who make policy on our behalf would rather leave a huge reserve of bitumen beneath our soil, and spend billions in hard currency to do roads that fail annually.

The functionaries, who make these policies, know the trap they set, the population calls it, re-budgeting to launder more funds.

Consequently, consuming the reserve, which ought to safeguard the future of future generations, even as there is nothing of meaning on the ground, neither the purported roads nor other infrastructure to gladden the eyes and mind of the living generation.

This brings to mind the drainpipes called steel rolling mills, railroad networking, power holding company, Nigeria telecommunications PLC, aluminum smelting, a national fertilizer company, etc., to mention but a few.

Specialists in the art of policymaking that drag the nation backward, while other nations with comparative natural resources/manpower or less are leaping beyond bounds.

THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN DEVELOPING SOCIETY

2021-11-13T07:32:00.005+01:00

THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN DEVELOPING SOCIETY
o      Developing society
A developing country society consists of economically and technologically developing nations. They are about two-thirds of the world population, and are mainly in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

Political instability occasioned by a precarious economic situation is widespread in the third world, as they are often designated. The third world has little homogeneity; it is divided by race, religion, culture, and geography, as well as by frequently conflicting interests.

The conflicting interest is a major factor for men being accorded more roles in society than women.

o      Roles of women in a developing society

Women in developing societies still play a subordinate role in comparison to their men counterparts. They are expected to be more active in the lives and care of their children and home, while the men are expected to essentially dominate all levels of society. However, gradually and increasingly, the number of women in leadership positions in local communities, government employment, and professional work is gaining ground.

To a degree, women have penetrated various professions and also serve in the armed forces, which hitherto was the exclusive preserve of men, although the ratio when compared to men in such roles remains a far cry from what it ought to be in comparative sharing.

Women are also beginning to play an increased role in governance across developing societies, thanks to the dogged fight put forth by various women's societies and the efforts of various United Nations organs across the developing nations.

Women suffrage, the right of women to share on equal basis with men the political privileges afforded by representative governance and more particularly to vote and be voted for in elections and referendums and to hold public office is as good as settled, as most government across the developing society now makes a concerted effort to increase the participation of women in electioneering processes, thanks largely to vigilance and effort of women as assisted by women suffrage movement dotted across the developing world.

One role that women have consistently played in the developing society is their influence in life of their husbands, by constantly adding the feminine touch to the various decisions taken by men, a point in instance is the role of the first ladies of most of the developing countries. To such an extent that the role goes with the office and all that pertains to it, and running it effectively. And these offices are complementary in providing for the deficiencies in the main activity in the day-to-day running of the state by their husbands.

Women's roles in politics are also on the rise, through the efforts of various pressure groups as lobbying forces for various social issues and against deficiencies in the policy framework responsible for the allocation of offices for elective positions, both in the administrative and legislative organs of governance. And increasing numbers of women are meriting various government appointments, such as ministerial offices of minister and diplomatic postings.

Another estate in the developing world in which the women have a lasting impact is the teaching profession, especially the primary school, where they capture more jobs than the men; they also have a competitive share of the jobs of secondary education, and they also hold positions in the tertiary institutions, though much less than those held by men.

The women in a developing society play a significant role in the informer sector of the economy. Since the developing economies are mainly fueled by the traditional rural sector, which features subsistence production of farm produce and simple manufactured products.
The women are in the main responsible for making sure that most of these goods reach the market and get to the consumers. They are also responsible for the vitality recorded in the textile industry in a developing society, being almost the sole agent between the manufacturer and users of the textile products.

The banking sector provides considerable engagement to the women, both in terms of employment and provision of soft loans for small businesses-such as farming, fishing, and petty trading.

The contribution of women is noticeable in the sporting arena, where many have distinguished themselves both at home and across the globe.

Though the truth persists that women are less powerful than men in the developing nation. Traditional partitions, which still play a major role in the developing society, still restrict the role women may play and limit their economic opportunities, and deny society the contribution women can add to the growth of the nation.

o      Limiting factors

The women in a developing society are largely undermined by conventionally accepted male attributes, such as physical strength or aggressive behavior, to gain and keep their positions in society. The thinking within a developing society is still largely that male dominance was the natural or God given order of the society.

Another factor militating against strong strides by women in developing countries is poverty, which in some of these countries exceeds 90 percent. This results in high unemployment, situation arises whereby men are allowed to fill available slots before allowing women to compete.
Also, in many developing nations, women have low social status and are restricted in their access to both education and income-generating work. Without adequate income, they commonly depend on men for support, but often get little.

Despite rapid modernization across the globe, the way of life in the developing society still remains largely traditional and in accordance with conservative values. And they will remain underrepresented in such an atmosphere.

o      Conclusion

The role of women in the present-day developing society is a great improvement compared to some decades prior, though the number is a far cry when juxtaposed with their counterparts in the developed world.

To cheer is the number of women who have excelled in cooperate conglomerates, in government services, etc. With women like Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, as the first female president of Liberia, and Portia Simpson Miller, the first female prime minister of Jamaica, and a lot more in the legislature across the developing society, there indeed is reason to believe that with commitment and dedication tomorrow of the women of the developing society will meet better days.

A good number of women in developing societies are rural dwellers and work in the fields and marketplaces. With concerted effort, the status of women can be improved through an increase in functional literacy among women, training in relevant vocational skills, knowledge for civil participation, and skills to assist in nation-building. These will enable the women to consolidate on the progress already made in their contribution to the development of their society.

The women interest groups already on ground in most of the developing societies should redouble their efforts in fighting to overcome most of the limitations that are presently militating against their effective competition in all strata of the state, to take equal position with the men in every aspect of national life in the nearest possible future, by taking advantage of the numerous international organization in place with the advancement of women in the third as cardinal in their policy.

UNFORGETTABLE!

2021-11-12T23:10:00.007+01:00

I'll keep writing you on paper as I still write in my mind. Even though, as dust in the wind, you now stay.

Change is me, to cherish the woman of you.

Forget the things that shut say,

Forgo the things that mill mute,

Returning is a renewed day

To brighten your life,

As the sun is on the stars of heaven

Forsake, keep the hurt

Foreclose, the vibe, ‘not anymore

As for you and you only, this flight, fly

To soak the spaces of your heart,

With unforgettable passion,

As denied at unvalued appreciation

Evacuate the things that vacate me,

Relive the things that endeared adore,

Have the memos of the storm thin to dust

Power of sweethearts, be, the flicker

Accept the song of my soul as solder,

As glue us inseparable

Stay by the side of you,

To clear the tears cried

And make the skin of your heart

Radiant than apple pelt

My world is all yours,

As you have repeatedly tried to turn its knob

Access denied, killed, and buried

Changed is me, to cherish the woman of you.

THE IKOYI COLLAPSE IN FOCUS

2021-11-11T12:02:00.002+01:00

AN AVOIDABLE MISFORTUNE, THE IKOYI BUILDING COLLAPSE.

PREAMBLE: The Structural foundation design sets the tone for the strength of high-rise buildings. Ensure your foundation follows the designed specifications, and the rest will follow.

The engineer’s first problem in any design situation is to discover what the problem is.

My take: the above is an inadequate foundation or a case of overloading.

The failure occurred, if all things said are done, over 40meters below the ground. That collapse is a complete failure arising from either incompetency or profiteering(occasioned by the use of substandard or uncertified materials.

INTRODUCTION: I'm an engineer myself who deals with deep foundations.

PREMISE: A whole bucket of questions needs to be answered.

1) The geotechnical detailed results used in drawing the plan should be investigated

2) The structural analysis that advised the depth of the foundation should be investigated

3) The records kept of adhering to the design depth should be investigated

4) The certification (at that level, all materials used must be accompanied by certificates) of the materials used should be investigated

5)etc.

As alluded to by the Association of Nigerian Chartered Architects.

IMMINENT FAILURE: The concern of structural engineers in charge of the building before abandoning the project will shed much light on the immediate causes of the building collapse.

LOCAL AUTHORITY: Our local authority on building matters doesn't have enough expertise to delve into high-rise building certification. Learned that the authority approved six more floors for the collapsed structure

For this level of approval. A structural engineer is required. Someone with good knowledge of structural analysis. Not just any graduate civil engineer.

EMERGENCY RESPOND: The next thing, people will criticize the government. The government will set up a panel to look into the causes of the crisis. Some people will embezzle some funds. Nothing achieved. Case closed until another disaster for another opportunity to make money.

At this age? We should have well-established first responders on the ground doing their best. Dismantle the rubble first and fast. Time is of the essence to save as many lives as possible.

A direct result of the failure of the state. The first and fastest response to damage (crisis) is equal to zero.

It's unfortunate for Nigeria that it's taking days to evacuate just one building, not thousands, fallen by severe weather.

They might be trapped within an enclosure. With only oxygen as the major challenge does not weigh on their bodies.

SUSPENSION ON THE PROGRESS OF BUILDING

Our supervising authority, however, placed little or zero premium on the on-site supervision of a going project on the ground.

If at all they appear on the work site, it is to intimidate the workforce so that the owner of the building can part with some cash for them to look the other way.

PANEL OF ENQUIRY: DEAD ON ARRIVAL

In the 6-member panel, 5 of them should at least have been competent professionals in building and construction. Not 1 Structural engineer and 5 lawyers to ascertain the causes of a building's structural collapse.

In a functional sense, this should be a structural engineer's investigation. The lawyer is just to provide legal premises for litigation.

THE YOUTH OF NIGERIA MUST RISE

2013-08-07T10:17:00.009+01:00

A FAILED NATION

A government is put in place to serve the people of a nation. The government is expected to maintain law and order in a State. But unfortunately, the power cartel in Nigeria, since the introduction of popular democracy served in the opposite direction. What is in place as government is rather used to undermine the nation and its people.

Cases of non-availability of infrastructure, such as roads, water, and electricity, are the norm in most states of the nation. Infrastructural failure serves as a constant reminder that a government, as desired by the people, only live in the recesses of their psyche.

Everywhere are the cases of failed institutions such as electoral commissions, water boards, electrical authorities, school systems, health facilities, banking systems, communication commissions, etc.

The failure of these facilities is onset in the inability of both the federal government and state governments to sustain a functional educational system, where public schools can provide adequate, sound, and competitive training to their ever-bourgeoning school seekers. Rather, what is on the ground is a system that makes it impossible for low-income earners to be able to send their wards to school on account of a lack of school fees, plus bribes to pay their way through the compromised registration system of the school authorities. On the other hand, those who manage to find their way into any of the schools are given half-baked education consequent of not enough classrooms and fewer than enough number of ill-equipped teachers, this sorry state is the same from the pre-primary to the tertiary institutions of learning.

The same sorry story as illustrated for the education system is apparent in the health institution as other major infrastructure of the state.

A FAILED ELECTORAL SYSTEM

One of the most dangerous aspects of this institutional failure is the peculiar cases of non-functional electoral systems. This ought to be the base upon which the people decide the caliber of people that are to be elected to serve the needs of the nation and its people. What is rather in place are electoral commissions that are not accountable to the people who are to make decisions in the elections. The apparent lack of accountability of the electoral process is because the electoral bodies are in the hands of the ruling political party or the highest bidder.

THE LACK OF FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY

Lack of financial accountability is a big setback in the development of democratic governance in the nation. The people are aware that the nation is endowed with abundant resources, but the dividends of it are forever as a mirage on a far-off road to them. Everywhere, telescoped in the vast land of our nation, are a few among many easily able to corner the resources of the state to the detriment of the nation. And this tendency makes corruption one of the biggest problems of the advancement of representative government in the nation. As the states are sapped by a handful of its citizens, who have no other source of income than the state resources, which are supposed to be used to smoothly run the engines of the state.

In its fifth decade of independence, there are lots of Nigerians from its government because the system perpetrated by the powers that be has not been able to evolve a representative government that is accountable to its people, both in terms of elections of the leaders and the recall of erring elected officials.

THE YOUTH MUST AGITATE AND DICTATE THE STATE OF AFFAIRS

The salvation of the nation of Nigeria lies squarely on the shoulders of its youth, who, to good fortune, are in the majority. They represent the group that should agitate and dictate the state of affairs across its length and breadth. The political bandits, who are at the moment enjoying the common wealth, cannot be relied upon to release the nation from the shackles of underdevelopment. It’s indeed an unfounded expectation to expect the beneficiary of a manipulated system to wake up and put in place a policy that will unseat it from the very corridor of power it cherishes so much. Plenty of dirty deals, they do to get to power, so to expect the syndicates in power across Nigeria to willingly make statecraft accountable to the people will be like expecting a constant bright sunny day at midnight.

Changes urgently needed, most start with insisting on the overhaul of the electoral process. The youth of Nigeria must rise to the occasion to change the system of governance that favors the selection, hand-picking, of office holders in the name of elections by a privileged few through a compromised electoral process.

IN CAPTAIN SEAT THEY SAT

2013-08-07T10:08:00.004+01:00

In the captain’s seat, they sat.

The ship twists and turns,

Rocks hit our foreheads,

And tatters our feet to work rides.

Still, they pour champagne.

Laugh and pour champagne.

Silenced mind of the masses, they roll the drum.

Yet the other cheek salutes the air.

In a toothless tirade

As “Lame is the ship’s state”,

“Enthusiastic was its slaughtered skin.”

“They know ‘no’,”

The lame shouts at the wall

The wealthy state, wealthy underfoot,

Come beggar

Among nations of made-in, be right.

Yet bowl in hand, it dances.

With the lowest of low

The voice for change cowered

Yet death is the health house.

Across the sea, meet the health house.

We know they know ‘no’

Adrift we flow for five tens and two.

In the journey to the same, same place

Same place,

Of a zero library, of endless cry

Yet to topple the inane power.

The power is in the voice.

The act of making love

2012-09-03T17:09:00.010+01:00

To make love is to copulate, that is, to have sexual intercourse. In this endeavor, we’re interested in consenting men and women making love. After all the involvement of introduction and getting connected is done with the kingship of love affair, make love. In here, we’re interested in settled heart affairs, that is, such that have past the rudimentary stages of courtship and even have past the initiation of sexual activity between couples. In other words, we’re to deal with such as have no barrier in going to bed together and be at joy in doing the things that lovers do.

Love making could be a straitjacket thing, the woman lying on her back and the man mounting her, thrusting in and out, given little or no time to oral sexual activity or pleasure that each of the parties could derive from intercourse. Stay specifically within what is widely referred to as traditional style without reference to what we call the variety of style, which ironically is the spice of pleasurable intercourse.

Making love is beyond as stated above. In the minds of many, due to deep-seated beliefs, moral high ground, and being right in conduct, the traditional way of making love has come to be either the only way or the righteous way. Nothing can be further from the truth. On the contrary, lovemaking is an art of merging two consenting souls, bodies, and minds into one entity. Love making is an art that makes two souls in love completely surrender to each other in rare minutes when sense gives way to senselessness.

Love making ought to be so enjoyed that getting off each other’s arms after the deed should seem inconceivable. In other words, only sound sleep in each other’s arms is the state deserving of lovers just past the climaxes.

THE DOINGS AND UNDOINGS OF LOVE AFFAIRS

Many are the juices and tears on the terrain of love affairs. An average aspirant to its ship will wish and hope for a taste of its juices. But reality checks reveal that the tears take the day in most surveys of an average day of mating of hearts. Why is it so, asks the mind of the most concerned observer. Let’s expose some of the potholes in the wings and branches of the birds and tree of love.

The touch, taste, and transit

The individual interested in touch-and-go will, by expectation, be a competent trickster, to be able to make another believe in him or her and the attended escapade. He must necessarily be a good judge of character and body language, must be a good storyteller, and must be able to spread make-believe and get the victim carried away. That’s, be able to make the victim draw a non-existent conclusion about the ensuing relationship.

The touch-and-go man or woman will, of course, not come to the intended catch with a blueprint stating that he or she is intending to hit and run, or he or she is only interested in merely wanting to make some cash. But irrespective of the antics of a dubious lover, a careful mind in courtship will always be able to separate real from fake intention.

Any lover who is willing to identify and isolate a fake lover must divorce greed, overexpectation, and unmitigated eagerness from his or her psyche when assessing a prospective lover. Such isolation will allow the mind to freely read the telltale signs, such as sincerity of purpose, freedom of expression, double-check volunteered information, make a critical observation of body language, and have the ability to read between the lines. For instance, as little as not keeping to time might seem on face value in a relationship, it goes a long way to determine the seriousness that a lover attaches to the matters concerning the desired mate.

Touch-and-go lovers, man or woman, will always be available in the atmosphere of love affairs, hence they’ll do all as they wish to fall in and live in love, a world of good to learn as much as is possible about the mode of operation of love gamers.

The for better and for worse lovers

Two hearts in love that have come to the conclusion that it is desirable to spend the rest of their days together will, as of natural design, experience chains of unforeseen consequences that, in time, will test their bond to the limit. It usually starts from the moment of final decision is made to consummate the budding relationship. Like a time bomb waiting to explode, a series of irreconcilable differences raises its ugly head. This is perfectly within expectation as the habit(s) that is/are hitherto suppressed in pretense to satisfy each other get free rein. And as the true color becomes discernible, surprises and realities conflict to the extent that it gives birth to uncontrolled outbursts that will elicit a reaction. The action and reaction, unlike those in physics, are not always equal and opposite. For the conflict to reach the point of concern for both the parties involved and interested observers, one of the forces, either the action or the reaction, must be more poignant than the other.

As much as it's impossible to completely remove the happenings of action and reaction or for that conflict from heart affair, effort must necessarily be expanded on the part of the two involved not to allow degenerate to the point of consuming the good part of the bond. Each time I’m called to interfere in a threatened heart affair. I always ask the warring parties in a relationship to make a scale of the good and the bad aspects of their life together, and also to calculate the hours they spend quarreling. If the good and lean hours of quarrels prevail, then stay and live it out is my advice. And if otherwise, get out is usually my advice.

From the time when the decision for nuptials is taken to the termination of matrimony between two lovers, it’s abundantly important for the couples to learn to live with the diversity in the character and way of life of the partner.

In heart's affairs, only of a false paradise, is to think it possible to find another individual who is completely compatible with one's point of view and way of life. Matrimony is neither designed nor created to be a bed of roses.

As a matter of fact, a careful scrutiny reveals that it’s created to test the strength of the parties in copulation in the areas of tolerance, forgiveness, long suffering, accommodation, adaptability, and so on.

At the core of the dissatisfactions experienced in love affairs is the zeal of one of the parties in the bond, wanting the other to be a prototype of a person believed by one of the parties to be an ideal person like himself or herself. Therefore, spouses will do their togetherness a world of good if the man or woman learns how to stop looking at themselves in their spouses.

On the contrary, the time that is to be devoted to fault-finding should be devoted to fact-finding, as this can enrich the relationship. Only in a way such as this can conflict be converted to treasure, pressure be converted to pleasure, strain be converted to solution, and distance be converted to darling.

Constant and concerted must be the effort to be employed in the betterment of the tie called matrimony. A spouse who identifies the other as a better half is to do all within his or her capacity to learn of both the agreeable and disagreeable aspects of his or her partner for the purpose of accommodation. In this exercise, the most important ingredient of heart affairs, understanding, is to be acquired. And in the abode where understanding finds covers lives love, compassion, empathy.

The quest for something unique

For a man or a woman to seek another, something unique in the desired must do the pulling. It may come in the form of power, wealth, or class in the instance of the woman. It may be a pretty face, adornment, elegance, or poise in the instance of the man. Even for the kind as seek love for not too excellent a reason, there must exist a pull.

Therefore, every man and woman who desires another should endeavor to properly situate what he or she really desires and be prepared to entice.

After desirability has been established, there can be no too much effort to put in place to win the desired. For the man, improvement of his means is of significance, while to the woman, poise is of prominence.

Sexuality, a natural psychological incident

In living beings, the ability to act and react sexually is a natural psychological incident. That’s for a man or woman to intentionally or unintentionally respond to sexual stimuli is a biological characteristic. And as other characteristics of living beings, it varies in degree, just as the height or complexion of individuals varies from one person to another. So it becomes abundantly important for an individual to be able to situate his or her level in the scale of variation attainable.

Sexual libido, as defined, is a measure of someone’s energy/desire for sex. That implies that there is a degree to it. Here, we intend to look at it as a measure of where an individual belongs in the classification of urge and eagerness for sex. Some humans exhibit excessive sexual libido, while some exhibit near-hate zeal for sexual activities.

Like all exhibitions in life, let’s take mid-way sexual libido as the moderate way to enjoy an active and reasonable sex life. Hence, the individual with excessive or limited sexual libido is encouraged to pursue the means to either pull or push up, respectively, their sexual drive as it applies on the scale of measure.

Now, to one who has the obligation of being in love affairs with either of the two high and low ways, understanding is the advice. It’s to be looked upon as an act of nature. As a short person or an extremely tall person can’t do much on his or her fate, so as well is little within the control of any as live divergent sexual characteristics. Innate characteristics can only be accommodated or, in rare occurrences, be moderated.

Let’s come to the person who has to endure a relationship with such as are of either excessive or limited sexual urges. In the event of living with individuals with excessive sexual demands, the likely occur is undue sexual demands from the partner or resorting out to satisfy his or her needs through extra-marital affairs. While the person involved with an individual with a curtailed sexual urge finds himself or herself in a situation of satisfied sexual need.

Nature is loaded with plenty of anomalies in the formation of the human body forms and functions, such as handicaps of various kinds and degrees, being a genius or a moron. In the same league fall the people who are living with either excessive or low sexual urges.

In the case of sexual characteristics, any person going into a bond must endeavor to ascertain his or her sexual compatibility with the intending lover, which is easily possible in this era of fluid choices and information, as opposed to the bygone era.

The crux of the matter, therefore, is that sexual action or inaction is a natural psychological phenomenon that is largely beyond the total control of the individuals involved. With careful study of the factor of compatibility before entering into any lasting bond, the prospective lovers can figure out how to seek such that falls squarely into the range of their capability. So that the choices settled for will be such that, can result in the case of a round peg in a round hole.

The rudders of the language of heart affairs

2012-09-01T08:32:00.007+01:00

By the rudders of the language of heart affairs, we refer to the characteristics of the modality that transmit the intention, emotion and action that make matters of the heart rock and roll right on target as fashioned. The language at every section of the communication must be chosen to mean exactly what it meant, and be able to deliver the message as to touch the core of even such as intend to say no to the request. The intention must be clear and exact. The emotion must be real and communicable. And the action must smooth and sincere. The following will throw more light on the importance of the rudders of the language of heart affairs.

· Open mindedness

A heart that seeks another in heart affairs should proceed with an open and non prejudiced mind. Doubts and possible outcome of the encounter should left behind at the point of decide. From here hence, let’s attach ‘you’ to the seeker, and have ‘him, her, she or he’ as the desired. When you have located someone you desired, last of your bother should be how him or her will react to your action, rather, you should bother yourself with how you’re going to package your desire across with as effective and potent words as possible in your knowing.

Open mindedness place you in good stead because it keeps your mind completely on the purpose on hand, leaving your mind unencumbered with the final outcome of the encounter. I don’t see the possible gain of anticipating the end of first encounter with someone you’re introducing a proposal to anyway, because the report sheet will arrive in due course. So it’s best to concentrate on the matters on hand, and the efficacy of the delivery of your intention in as refine manner as best can impact for maximum return. Meaning that the only way you can change a ‘no’ to ‘yes’, if no, were the waiting answer, is by the spice which your brainpower and subconscious can assist you with if you’re in clear frame of mind.

Open mindedness also allow you to view the entity before you as presented, without the preconceived notion that, all men are this or that, or women likes to be lies to. Have in mind that you are meeting an individual, and that as much are the finger prints of individual defers so also do mind vary makes an entity unique. Hence the manner to open the vile over every need be discern as the navigation through the mind unfold. Moreover, open mind approach positions you in good stead to monitor the output, response and body language of the bud you wish to unravel and penetrate.

Open minded methodology is not to detract from the strength of fine tact in the art of reaching the target desired. Fine tact, as will be enumerated in due course as mount the mountain of this love affairs elucidation, is a prime mover in art of conquering a heart. As a matter of fact, fine tactic is one instrument that, the open minded approach to open a new heart needed the most to effectively deliver the message as will be memorable and unforgettable by the one courted.

· Sound mindedness

A healthy mind like the body delivers the goods. A sound mind in love affairs is a rich mind in talk and response. A mind that is alert, to its responsibility and to respond to the missile that comes to prevent or act as a seeming blockage, as is the instance where easy sail is presented. Such a mind should know when to laugh, make the other laugh, move forward/ahead, and apply the break, in a short word, know the in and out of body language.

Importance of the language of heart affairs

Love language moves the desired heart to an intended height in communication of intention and implementation of state of heart. Its major mandate is to ensure that the message as is formulated in the mind is presented to the target in a concise and effective manner through the use of potent and appropriate words. Such as could make the recipient say ‘yes’ when ‘no’ live the port of answer, and would be happy with the make over.

The language as pertain heart matters is the instrument use in taking message from one heart and imparting it into another, either verbally or by body speeches, in such a manner that the listener not only hear the words but must also get and feel the intention.

The most basic form of interpersonal communication, an encounter or a conversation between two people, is the cardinal type in heart matters. Communicating for impact on target in a love encounter requires good conversational skills. The communicators must know how to start and end a conversation, how to make the message understood, how to respond to the listener statements, how to anticipate and be sensitive to the listener’s concerns, and would have to be a good listener. For instance, someone who intends to unlock an unwilling heart must learn the arithmetic of persuasion in convincing the target that his or her agendas are valuable and are of benefit.

Anyone grounded in the antics of love affairs vis-à-vis be sound in its language and be skillful in the manipulation of its words, phrases, and sentences, would a better head start than the one who intended to play in every language.

Predominant in community of lovers is still the instances of lovers of many years been unable to use simple phrases such as, “fuck my cunt”, “I need you to give hot fellatio”, etc even simple words like romance, kiss, caress, and fondle are frowned at by majority of couples.

And here lies the crux of the matter in the problem prevalent in lover’s affairs. Situations whereby a lady, often times, a guy, cannot call her guy, and vice versa, to indicate that there is a region of the body that need urgent attention is not desirable, but yet is the one a penny occurrence in lover’s dens. This directly results in frustration and what is popularly referred to as suffering in silence. Soundness of one or the other in the intricacies of intrigues of love matter is the only implement that can make either of the lovebirds come out with suggestion on how to experiment with new style for mutual benefit and growth of the affairs. Hence the essence of learning to use the tool to unfasten the nut of heart matters.

The language of heart affairs

Generally speaking, language is the principal means used by human beings to communicate with one another.

Every field of life has its unique language, such as computer language, medical language and language for literature etc.

The purpose for the distinction in the use of language from one field to another in human endeavor is to distinguish; the content, style and sound of language as it pertain to a particular calling.

The language of heart affair, like that of any other field of life has its peculiar ingredients and spices.

Heart affair makes use of general language as well as its own unique additional stand-out languages, non-verbal, such as facial expression and body language. In body language action speaks better than words.

The language of heart affaires make ample use the five sense organ, namely sense of touch, sense of feel, sense of taste, sense of sight and sense of smell. Sign language also plays a prominent role in a subsisting matter of the heart affairs.

The use of language in heart affairs and its words are unique to that extend we don’t part most of it publicly. A good degree of intimacy most ensure between two persons, male and female, for an effective use of amorous intended words between two parties. The language is also reserved because it’s not to be used in the presence of those consider as adolescence, who could only drink the milk and not meat of intimate affairs.

Most of these lovely words in language of love, for instant, fuck, cunt, amorous, cunnilingus, fellatio etc, are frown at when used in everyday conversation. This is so because they are special tool reserved for unique involvements.

Language, hence, is a weapon, a rudder, an enhancer, in the ocean of speaking the mind of the seeker or respondent in an atmosphere of love. In more ways than one, speaking endearment to a desired heart is a war of words. In love communication, as in all warfare, effective command and use of weapon is paramount to becoming victorious. Therefore, a seeker of a heart need be vast in the diction and sound of words to employ in selling the message and responding to missile.

When the battle to own a heart is fought and won on the outside, then come, the stage of heart in consummation. When the curtains are drawn, the language, that is hitherto considered as dirty in the public sphere become white as snow. In there, the minds in love are expected to call on words to become motivator, stimulant and arouser. Extreme mating related words are to be employed to, open timid or inexperience hearts, enhance intimacy and spice the mating with sweet nothing.

The flame of copulation can be greatly raised by the use of erotic words, phrases and sentences. Lines such as, open it wide, suck it suck it harder, you’re a stallion, fuck me hard, am in cloud nine, let’s do all the styles etc. are some of the spicy lines in the kitchen of love brew. These lines, or such as these, are to be used to maximum advantage.

When the right words are deployed, right on target, it energizes the receiver of the lines to perform to the utmost. We can only compare the potency of such deployment of lines to the motivation of an employee in a striving workforce.

Some minds, such as considered these lines base, of necessity, will require adjustment for alignment. As deleting these lines from love making conversation is akin to minimizing the current in a live wire.

INGREDIENTS OF HEART AFFAIRS

2012-08-19T15:59:00.006+01:00

Love, as we intend to dissect and digest, is limited to matters of the heart, in and out of passionate, compassionate romance.

Love affairs in this dictionary refer to a relationship between two bodies that wish to have it culminate in intimate lovemaking.

The scope includes the good, which meet the expectation and consent of partakers, the bad, such as leave broken hearts or hearts, and the ugly, which dealt a blow that could be devastating to the unfortunate in a merger.

A truth is that all who travel this line of hearts mingling, wish, and hope, to encounter olive and a dove only.

However, reality reveals that the most common products of heart affairs are vultures and hyenas, though they arrive garbed as olive and dove.

In cancelled real purpose, these groups take love as a game or a fling.

When two hearts of divergent anticipation collide to coil a joint.

Then, failed desire a most possible outcome.

These affairs, personal opinion, are better based on a strong foundation of understanding.

In a manner that can downplay undue and uncoordinated desire.

And place a premium on the craving and requirement of the partner.

In this way, if the two eyes and hearts that decide to come together and knot a ring can open their sight and feeling to the convergent and divergent points of view in their respective partner, then indeed they can learn to live as a couple of their hearts' desire.

Let’s hereunder take a brief journey through the muddy waters of heart affairs and possibly locate one or two condiments that can put a good percentage of pilgrims in this climate on an enjoyable and lasting footing.

Living in dungeon, without four wall

2012-08-05T20:02:00.007+01:00

Living in a dungeon, without four walls

In walls of four and a ceiling of twelve

The numbers on the tip of the finger,

Because out invited me not

Even when without, to axe joblessness

Lacking, smiling, and talking faces,

Extend my incarceration

Live on the streets with a streaming two-legged ghost.

Pounding the paths, for not there sustenance

Where is the government? Where is the job

Dearth all over, of job, of road, of water, of clinic,

Even of collective waste bin,

Litters, hugging the sky, stench feeding the nose

Yet, they are in charge; they got the jobs, elective offices.

Birth of deceit, gun, murder, lip service promises

Serve the state; they do, by throwing lavish wedding parties,

At the president’s town home, for the bride,

At the governor’s town home, as the groom,

At the governor’s state house, still as the groom,

Grand finale, at the palatial presidential palace

Their electrical power holder withheld power,

Living the balance of active imagination

I, though, ride on my prison term with friendly darkness.

The ever constant companion, anyway.

Mr. Goodluck Jonathan, just do it.

2010-05-23T23:49:00.004+01:00

On a personal level, I have no inclination to accept any of the characters, out of the band of clueless cabal, on the rulership map of our nation, Nigeria. And I should also make it clear that I’ve no expectation whatsoever that the acting president, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, can be an exception in a pack of wolves that rule in Nigeria. A man who consulted the likes of Obasanjo and Danjuma early in his ride in the presidency cannot but fail in the steering of the state affairs. Moreover, Goodluck Jonathan is a product of selection by the same cabal.

The intrigues as projected below are for such a time as the PDP remains the albatross around the neck of the political progress of Nigeria. This subsists, until such a time as we can fix the project Nigeria, through an accountable voting process, until such a time as Nigerians can muster enough courage to say enough is enough, and push the cabal (both within and out of PDP) out.

For the time as now, as things stand, we have to project and see a possibility of speeding the change we require. Remember that the hasty and stubborn hunger for power by Atiku Abubakar truncated the third-term ambition of Obasanjo.

In the year 2006, Obasanjo manipulated the constitution of the PDP to make provision for the outgoing president to be the head of the party’s board of trustees. And he came out of the presidency to head the office he provided for himself ahead of time, by changing the rules of the game in the middle of play.

In the case of acting president Goodluck Jonathan, not to manipulate the PDP zoning option, as things stand, is to commit political suicide. As the vice president under President Yar’dua, by Nigerian political maneuvering, it is an expected conclusion that had the president been well enough to complete his eight years of two terms, he would have been the obvious choice of the PDP when the zoning machine beams its light on the southern pole again in 2015.

As things stand, if Goodluck Jonathan does nothing by way of being smart and changing the rule, and unless there come up another abracadabra comes from the hood of the PDP, it will be more than impossible for the political career of Goodluck not to be sacrificed on the altar of the ill-health of President Yar’Adua.

The option, as is coming out of the grapevine, is the arrangement of having Goodluck Jonathan run alongside Atiku Abubakar as running mate. The danger in such a gamble to Goodluck Jonathan is predicated on the possibility of Atiku not emerging as the PDP flagbearer. If that scenario plays itself out, it's bye-bye to the young political journey of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan. Let Goodluck Jonathan be wise and not fly with a droning man, who wants to take someone, anyone, along with him to the base of the sea.

Therefore, since the PDP is a barrel of bunches of manipulators and fixers, and since the acting president is already dining with the arrows of the demons in the ruling party. It’s to the advantage of his political profession to put woods in the works at all levels of the PDP to ensure that the gentleman's agreement of zoning is set aside and pave the way for him to be a candidate in the PDP primary.

One or two hindrances can be discerned on his way, one is over overblotted IBB meaning in the Nigerian political arena, two is the return of Drifter Atiku to PDP. As things stand right now, he can easily dispel with the irritant call IBB with the freshly found pages of the ever-disappearing and reappearing Pius Okigbo panel of inquiry report on the disappeared windfall on oil revenue during the Gulf War. Moreover, if Mr. acting president can locate a couple of dipping the hands in the wrong dishes of OBJ, OBJ can rub his palm with more of the disappeared items in the dirty kitchen of IBB, which he thought were dead and buried by the agreement he signed with OBJ to sign off his presidential ambition in 2007. While Atiku aura in the PDP has of his prostituting spirit, courtesy of greed and uncontrolled ambition, nose dive beyond management. Scrutiny of his picture in the presence of the acting president on the entourage of Wakili of Adamawa to the presidency reveals a man who is politically lost in the scheme of things. Hence, with study and tactics, the acting president, in aid of the fixers in the PDP, can easily find a place for both Atiku and IBB out of the presidency.

The others who will rear their heads for the high office, Goodluck Jonathan, should be prepared to pacify with juice contract and mouth-watering promises, which are the reasons why they were in the race at the coming of every general election.

Let it be clear that this brief is for their Nigeria, the Nigeria of the clueless cabal, where personal interest supersedes national interest. Their Nigeria where manipulation is a noble game and corruption is a way of life.

In our Nigeria, the Nigeria of our dream, wish, and will, is a country to be populated by men of patriotic zeal. Not of men like IBB, whose only credential to rule Nigeria is that he fought to keep Nigeria as one country. A man of short memory is IBB of the 50-room’ hilltop mansion, wishing to wipe out our memory of him, of the father, godfather, and grand patron of corruption in Nigeria.

Back to the zoning option, no nation or group of people, with a strong will to grow, will encourage a principle as zoning, as it sacrifices the spirit of effective competition, which allows the selection of the right and the best among equals. So the prayer of this discussion is that Goodluck Jonathan be man enough to rewrite the wrongly written gentleman's agreement that the cabal of clueless cluster in the PDP imposes on the nation. An obvious inconvenience of the principle of zoning becomes apparent when the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Mr. Yar’Adua, sneaked out of the country to Saudi Arabia for health reasons. And the principle of zoning left in our hands a dilemma as to how to make the vice president the president when the time of the northern zone has not been fully utilized. Irrespective of the backdoor arrangement hatched by the legislator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the debacle of the sudden demise or impeachment of a sitting president based on the PDP zoning principle has not been fully resolved.

My humble submission regarding the political destiny of the acting president, Mr. Goodluck Jonathan, and the hindrance on his path courtesy of PDP zoning option is for him to place his ambition above the self-serving zoning principle of his party and get rid of the merit killer called the zoning agenda of the PDP. To pass over this seeming hurdle, Goodluck Jonathan will have to play hardball and emerge as the presidential candidate of his party.

The acting president needs to awaken his inner power as a surge of hunger, to give him the strength and a ready wit to repress the antic of maunder as IBB, Atiku, and the likes of them in a cabal that has taken it upon itself to direct the destiny of Nigeria. This advice has become necessary because, as it stands, Mr. Goodluck Jonathan has not, by any stretch of imagination, proved to be prepared to face the obstacle that PDP and its stronghold can place on his trajectory.

Mr. Goodluck Jonathan, Mr. acting president, would have to come out of his hiding and prove to Nigerians and the world at large that his gentility is not born of diffidence. A word as said, I heard it is enough for the wise.

I WISH A WORLD

2010-05-11T06:12:00.003+01:00

I wish a world

Talking a talk of peace

The West and the Middle East bear olive

I wish a world

Sharing a share of the resource

Russia and Africa parting intellectuals

I wish a world

Seating a seat of equals

A United Nations of proportionate chair

I wish a world

Feeding a feed of common wealth

The haves and have-nots in satiation

I wish a world

Chanting a chant of a dove

North, South, East, West anthem as one

I wish for a world

Traveling a trip of green

Departure to the destination with clean air

I wish a world

Powering a power of unity

United States and Russia mint alley

I wish for a world

Anticipating an anticipation of outlook

Make imminent world grateful.

Haiti! Haiti!! Haiti!!! Help Haiti

2010-04-27T00:37:00.006+01:00

Haiti! Haiti!! Haiti!!! Help Haiti

The song is now sung, from America to Africa.

Yes! Time love Haiti is now.

But then, the time to love Haiti was then.

And time to love many more, as Haiti is now

Now as time sings improvised

Help had better be at governance failed Haitian

When infrastructures are scarce happen upon

The time to spread the common wealth of nations is before distress.

Have in hand functional health centers across the land.

Lend a hand to make it strong when nature flexes its muscle.

Time and again, nature and man undermine the art of living.

Help the fragile to insist on working heads.

Teach the stealing heads to install a one-touch redeemer agency.

Open the mind of disaster-prone zones,

To the importance and acquisition of tell technology

Have the masses make a run on fast limbs

Bury, let’s do the ‘shine of late’ with the Haiti earthquake.

Yes, nice to lend a hand as all did

But better be Haiti that could apply first aid.

Before the rest of us make a safe common humanity.

Lord, I wish to edit

2010-04-27T00:34:00.005+01:00

Lord, my lord, was I too intractable

At me meet the wings of choice.

You placed the prospects and conflicts.

Did you allow me, or did you guide my hands?

When long-suffering suits my allotment

You ought to have insisted, “Son, pick a different”

Oh, sorry Lord, I put the cart before the horse.

How did I pick this treaty?

Be the start of anxiety.

Is it by apportioning or my will?

On this side, the trait pulls down or lifts up.

Meaning to know, how I opted,

This, which is judicious, liberal, and gracious,

Yet suffer in sustainability as such.

While I behold, the constraint of conscience,

Grow in mass and reach

Maybe this toil is the root of yet journey.

Otherwise, Lord, I would rather be

The controller general of stupendous wealth,

In this magnificent divide of your bestow

Any which way, Lord, I wish to edit,

Yes, Lord, add fine components,

Say finger of gold

As I delete, near it syndrome

Because I’ve come to realize,

Prosperity is both breezy and healthy.

MAKE YOUR TIME COUNT FOR POSTERITY

2010-04-21T23:32:00.000+01:00

Make your time count for charity.

Make your mingling meaningful for many.

Make someone around you happy today.

Dry the tears on someone’s mentality.

For these purposes, are you a part of common humanity

Wait, not till your supply is overflowing to lend a supply

For benevolence is for much of a lean purse.

Stretch out your hand to the low of the purse.

Like bread spread across moving water, its look-alike

As time passes and your navigation gulp distance

A possible chance is of a release or of rare mintage.

A possibility that makes the heart merry as a pleasant surprise

Then it may be grown as the dryer of unexpected tears.

Hoard not the having as acquired.

As a commonwealth of nature, it means during your tenure

And luscious luster in a charitable face

A face as long in give as short in take

Do these, be this, as a seed in a plant, out of a marvelous green

So shall the sprout you give, give much.

In the time of your seeking, meet need as you surpass your possessions.

MATURATION OF AFRICA DEMOCRACY

2010-04-19T16:17:00.000+01:00

their

By Babatunde Seyi Dada

Maturation Of Democratic Culture Across The Continent Of Africa.

Introduction

The intention of this brief exposition is to shed light on how far the concept of democracy has fared on the continent of Africa, which is composed of people of diverse cultures, customs, and tongues. From the former Gold Coast, where the first bell of independence from European rulers sounded on the soil of sub-Saharan Africa, to South Africa, where apartheid gave rise to the strength of popular resolve in 1994, it has remained a form of snail-like navigation in the ocean of democratization across this vast and purported cradle of civilization. Various are the reasons why African states, through its length and breadth, remain the least of the seven continents that constitute the globe, to be beneficiary of the system of government that has come to be identify as the most favored and stable of the various form of government, as so far practiced by man, in the administration of the state, for fulfillment and uplifting of its constituent, for the maintenance of law and order, and for the provision and sustenance of resource to its population.

The first decade of self-rule on the continent of Africa is characterized by imposed unity governments, often in the form of one-party states, although they were often purported to be multiparty states, with the understanding that the entire population of its constituent parts could work together for the common good in emerging democracies. This became difficult in practice to actualize because it gave free rein to dictators and tyrants in the corridors of power, which invariably led to instability in governance, as witnessed across the countries of Africa from the inception of independence to date in the sixth decade of attempts at a stable democratic way of life.

As widespread as the concept and practice of democracy has come to be among the nations of the world, especially in the western world, with its benefit on the board for all to see, nearly, all of African countries, who assume they are a democratic state, are in the real sense of the tenet of democracy, still as babies trying at make a first step.

Hence, the intent of this effort, to expose the drawbacks, enumerate the possible way forward, and analyze the possible process of maturation of democratic culture across the continent of Africa.

The continent of Africa.

Africa is the second largest of the world’s seven continents, covering about 23 percent of the world’s total land mass and comprising about 13 percent of the people on earth. It is bordered on the west by the Atlantic Ocean, on the east by both the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea; its north is bounded by the Mediterranean Sea. The Sinai Peninsula covers its northeastern corners. Africa is a land of great diversity. It is covered with green forests, grassy plains, barren deserts, tall Mountains, and mighty Rivers. Africa is populated by diverse people with a wide range of cultures and numerous languages. Africa is considered one of the foremost civilizations of the world, with a history spanning over 500 years. At a certain point in history, Africa became dominated by European traders, who sent millions of Africans to work as slaves in North America and the Caribbean. They also carry away Africa’s wealth of raw materials to fuel their industrial growth. In the twilight of the 19th century, the European intruders seized and colonized enormous African territories. Eventually, through slow reforms and violent struggles, most African societies gained independence in the period from the 1950s to the 1960s. Because of the policy of divide and rule, and ineffective bonding of people and culture, weak nations resulted as independent states of Africa post-colonial rule. With economies that can’t compete globally, as a consequence of poor communication and dwarf transportation systems left as the legacy of colonial rule in Africa. Africa is a continent rich in mineral resources. The abundance of these resources drew the Europeans in the 1800s to the continent to tap several of Africa’s raw materials: palm oil, cotton, rubber, gold, diamonds, etc.

The availability of these raw materials eventually led to the colonization of the continent. As these natural resources seemed to be a curse of the continent in the colonial era, so they remain today, as the political elite plunder these resources to make themselves greater than their society. The continual scramble for the resource, both in the colonial era and today, by African leaders, ably aided by their foreign collaborator, in the name of foreign trade, is still the root cause of the underdevelopment of African countries. One uses the resource to enrich itself while the other uses the African resource to enrich its ever-growing manufacturing sector, both to the detriment of the average African citizen.

Decolonization of African artificially drawn African border

Africa’s political legacy from colonial rule was a mass of artificially drawn borders of ethnically diverse populations with few or not much in common. The British decolonizing process was more jumbled and of lasting strife among the ethnic nationalities, even today. The Gold Coast, now Ghana, led the way in becoming the first to leave the colonial jungle. Thereafter, the pace of gaining freedom from the British is largely a subject of how fast any of the colonies could organize and seek freedom. Like the departing Britain, Belgium had no plans for decolonizing the Belgian Congo until 1959, when it caved in in the face of rapid political changes in surrounding colonies. It rushed toward an ill-prepared decolonization in 1960, with the departing Belgians hoping to retain a measure of economic control by handing political power over to a weak and disunited government. The liberation of Portugal’s colonies of Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique was achieved after lengthy and bitter guerrilla wars. Exhausted, Portugal withdrew from its colonies in 1974 (in Guinea-Bissau) and 1975 (in Angola and Mozambique), leaving behind revolutionary Marxist regimes to attempt to transform battered economies. In sub-Saharan Africa, the French were quickest with political reform. Across French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa colonies, the French allowed the election of local government representatives and, in return, received African agreement to maintain close economic ties with France. White settler power in industrialized South Africa was more entrenched. The white South African government overrode the wave of African nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s by the use of widespread oppression and imprisonment. Through the 1980s, internal rebellious pressures combined with the loss of Western support finally prompted the South African government to change. South African-occupied Namibia became independent in 1990, and the government negotiated an end to the oppressive apartheid system with the country’s African majority from 1990 to 1994. In some parts of North Africa, independence came fairly quickly and smoothly after the Second World War. Libya became independent in 1952, and both Morocco and Tunisia in 1956. Meanwhile, in Algeria, the numerous and powerful French colonists were determined that it would remain part of France. The bitter and bloody Algerian War of Independence was fought until the French finally conceded independence in 1962. In Egypt, radical Muslim army officers overthrew the British puppet government in 1952. Led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, they redistributed Egyptian land to the peasantry and nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956. This was the final symbol of Egyptian independence from Europe, and the failure of Britain’s attempt to regain the canal signaled to the rest of Africa that the colonial bluff had been called.

The lack of a definitive foundation for the emerging democracies of Africa

This apparent lack of deliberate foundation for the incoming state led to most of the instability experienced by most of the emerging states. Since deliberate effort was not cultivated to put a lasting foundation and workable state on the ground. The political evolution of Africa’s political bequest from its colonial ruler was a collection of hard-to-mix people of individually diverse cultures forced together by an arbitrarily drawn boundary. Hence, working together to collectively make a nation is impossible, as each section wants what’s best for their region, especially in those nations that favor rotation between their constituent parts to rule one after the other, as the region in power sees its turn as an opportunity to better its lot in the marriage of convenience in which they found themselves. In the struggle for independence, nationalism binds the various ethnic nationalities on one course to send the colonialists packing.

However, as soon as independence was fought and won, the seeming unity survived while the new African governments were being formed. Thereafter, the survival of the unit within the collective comes to the order of the day. This led to strife that resulted in various Civil Wars, such as Nigeria, 1967-1970, Liberia, 1989-1997, Mozambique, 1984-1992, Rwanda, 1994-date, Somalia, 1984-date, etc., fought across the continent in the period preceding independence in most of the newly formed African nations to the present date. In other countries, the outbursts to ineffective leadership of initial attempts at self-rule were calls for military intervention.

It was not until external support, given to dictatorial regimes in Africa, was withdrawn around 1990, at the end of the Cold War, that most African people had the chance to demand representative and responsive government. From 1990 to 1994, most countries established or reestablished multiparty systems of elective government. Citizens voted long-standing autocratic governments out of office in countries such as Niger, Mali, Malawi, and Zambia, while the more astute military rulers, such as Jerry Rawlings of Ghana, discarded their uniforms and were elected as civilian presidents.

Political Parties based on Ethnicity

The departing colonial powers, in their wisdom, bestowed on the emerging independent states of Africa ethnic diversity by bonding people of diverse customs into one border, as a way to subdue larger national opposition, to a degree far greater than existed in the colonial era. For instance, the German and Belgian rules of Rwanda and Burundi had encouraged Hutu and Tutsi adversity. As they designated the Tutsi aristocracy as their partner in colonial times, and denied the Hutu peasantry educational opportunity and economic emancipation. That seed planted in colonial rule sprouted into big massacres and genocide decades later in the 1990s. In many democratic nations of independent Africa, political parties develop around ethnic sentiments, along the lines as handed over by the erstwhile colonial powers that partitioned the states of Africa. As a result, unstable governing structures subsist in most of the emerging democracies of African states. For instance, such a fragile composition was what resulted in the 1967 secession bid of the Igbo extraction of eastern Nigeria, which led to the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970). Even before the civil war in Nigeria, two of the country’s illustrious minds, Obafemi Awolowo and Nnamdi Azikiwe, who respectively are of the western and eastern blocs of Nigeria, both of whom were active agitators in the fight to free Nigeria from the colonialists, failed to emphasize their stand on working together in the newly independent nation. Obafemi Awolowo strongly believed that charity begins at home, therefore emphasizing the need to strengthen the individual region, which he postulated would eventually lead to a strong and representative center. While Nnamdi Azikiwe favors working from the center down to the region. The rivalry between these two denied the country, Nigeria, the needed momentum for speedy democratization that would have launched the country to the committee of an effective and functional nation from the onset of independence. Because what ensued was Nnamdi Azikiwe going with the north to form a central government, the marriage that eventually failed and resulted in the avoidable civil war, while the western region and Awolowo stayed permanently in opposition. This ethnicity-based politics is widespread all over Africa, from Nigeria to Kenya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, etc., and remains the biggest source of disunity that makes a one-voice government impossible to be knitted in early post-colonial African democracies.

In the periods immediately after independence in most states of Africa, the idea of a one-party state was encouraged, truly believing that this could bring the majority of the people together in a central government for the common good, for the development of the respective countries. It soon became apparent, rather that this bred weak governments, led by heads with dictatorial tendencies, who want to stay in power forever. To foretell the growing selfishness and overgrowing corruption, the population raised its voices, and the military responded by intervening and seizing power by force of arms. Democracies of pre-colonial Africa. Democratic culture as a concept is not alien to the nationalities of Africa. Pre-colonial era recorded various concepts of representative government among the people of Africa. From time immemorial, the maxim, “Three heads are better than one”, has been an inherent part of African administration and dispute resolution. In this axiom are notions of democratic values and traditions based on participation in ruling themselves through the tenet of law and order. Several studies have shown that in pre-colonial Africa, the nationalities of Africa have a variety of political organizations ranging from direct and representative democracy to various forms of monarchical and decentralized systems of government that are open and inclusive.

Precolonial Representative Governments in Africa

Fortes and Evan-Pritchard in the effort to situate past democracies of Africa, posted that, “The structure of an African state implies that the kings and chiefs rule by consent”, and that the rulers knows the responsibilities they owe to the subjects and also that the subjects knows their duties to the rulers and to the community, with in-built mechanism to make the rulers accountable. The indigenous political system of the Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria presents an elaborate instance of direct and participatory democracy in traditional African nations. Two layers of political structure are apparent in the Igbo traditional mode of community administration: the village and the village group. The village settings vary in size based on population, and government at this junction is exercised by direct representatives that has a general assembly in which every male who has come of age participates directly in the legislative and administration of public affairs. This general assembly consists of adult males known as Ama-Ala or Oha, and the assembly ground is usually an open square that serves as the assembly. The assemblage is presented with a matter of public interest, and all present are allowed the floor to air their opinion on the subject matter as the debate on the issue at hand goes back and forth before a final verdict is reached in common consent. The conclusion, as assented by the general assembly, is then forwarded to a smaller assembly called Izuzu, the village group, made up of leaders from each lineage within the village. Participation in Izuzu is highly esteemed and treasured; hence, it is restricted to men of gallantry and substance, who possess the wisdom on the customs of the community, to analyze and suggest a compromise that will be acceptable to all for the common good. A similar concept co-exists for the women of the village, in the same pattern. From the Igbo land in southeastern Nigeria to the Kikuyu tribe of modern Kenya, the pre-colonial political structure is pretty the same; there exists no paramount ruler that is above control and caution, as eligible adults constituted the legislative assembly to check and balance the powers of the ruler. And the system has been widespread in a number of African pre-colonial nations with little variance.

In other African societies, democratic systems took the form of a constitutional monarch in the fashion of the English system, with well-defined mechanisms for checks and balances. In this system, society and government were more centralized, and the power of the monarch was limited by popular representatives. The Oyo Empire of southwestern Nigeria, from 1600-1800, flourished in this style of governance. At the head of the empire was the Alafin of Oyo, as the most important figure of the government. In theory, the Alafin has absolute powers, but in practice, another organ, the Oyomesi, exists to check his power in the administration of the empire. In the Oyo system of government, the Oyomesi acts as the representative council of state, consisting of seven designated wards from each of the wards of the empire. Collectively, they are referred to as the kingmaker. Similar systems of government exist in other parts of pre-colonial Africa, such as those practiced by the Buganda people of Uganda.

The aforementioned apparently show that the democratic way of governance is not alien to the people of Africa. Hence, what the African nations require is to draw from their indigenous political traditions that are replete with democratic ideals, and form a roadmap in which their traditional system of government can marry the modern realities of self-rule, to form an enduring political system of government that can represent its constituent parts effectively.

Ethnicity, Bane of Democratic Development in Africa

Ethnicity is, bane of democratic development in Africa. Nationalism, the desire by a group of people of the same race, origin, language, etc., to form an independent country, served the nationalities of Africa well in the pre-colonial era. Immediately after independence was fought and won, the autonomy of each region became the order of the day. Each group starts to agitate for relevance in the emerging society and government, as the central government, usually dominated by the dominant ethnic partner, finds a way to corner the power and the resources of the nation. Naturally, the weaker partner responds by being in persistent unrest and calls for equitable distribution of both power and resources.

EQUITABLE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH

In most African societies, the balance of equitable distribution of the commonwealth is a difficult task. Because the resources that fuel the state engine are mostly from the minority ethnic group, while the major ethnic group is always the one in charge of ruling the nation due to the high number of its population. Invariably, civil strife leads to civil wars in several African countries. And the ensuing manipulation that forced the people to be of one nation ultimately undermines the growth of a functional democratic culture across Africa.

THE CIVIL WARS OF AFRICA

Let’s peep into the following civil wars as a case in point. In May 1967, General Yakubu Gowon, the military head of Nigeria, announced the creation of 12 states. The eastern region, mostly of Igbo lineage, is to have three states, two of them dominated by non-Igbo (where crude oil has just been discovered) groups. The leaders of the eastern region, already on the brink of secession by the anti-Igbo attacks in the northern region and the influx of Igbo refugees, saw the action of the central government in the creation of a state as a state-managed marginalization of their region. Hence, the Igbo-dominated assembly of eastern Nigeria authorized Lieutenant Colonel Odemegu Ojukwu to declare independence as the Republic of Biafra. Ojukwu obliged, and civil war broke out in July 1967.

In April 1994, shortly after concluding peace negotiations with the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) that called for a UN peacekeeping force to be stationed in Rwanda, President Habyarimana and President Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi were killed when their plane was shot down near Kigali. This action provoked a wave of ethnic violence. Over the succeeding months, it was estimated that between five hundred thousand and one million Rwandans, mostly Tutsi, were killed. The RPF army edged towards Kigali, and a civil war ensued.

In 1991, Somalia descended into chaos, with the northern region of Somaliland declaring itself an independent republic, with its own presidency, legislature, currency, and constitution. Thousands of lives were lost in ensuring the fracas.

ERA OF CEASEFIRES

As the 1990s progressed, a number of cease-fires between the factions were affirmed in the hope of forming a national government. How does clan fighting disrupt most of the agreement? At the brink of civil war in most African nations, the activities of governance usually experience a setback. More so, since the majority of the affected states are emerging societies.

MILITARY INTERVENTIONS IN AFRICA

In the first decades of post post-colonial era in Africa, military intervention was often welcomed by an unsatisfied populace who felt betrayed by a dysfunctional civilian government, soaked in an ocean of corruption and failed economic initiative. In no time, it became apparent that the courted military government was not better than the overthrown civilian administration, or in most cases, they became worse than the civilian counterpart in corrupt attributes, as legislation was thrown out through the window of arbitrariness as soon as they took over the reins of affairs. Many of the purported military saviors grew into brutal dictatorial regimes, unrestricted by constitutionality, committing atrocities against perceived opponents and discerning members of their domain. Idi Amin of Uganda and Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Republic, both of whom were overthrown in 1979, are two of the most extreme brutal dictatorial regimes of Africa's post-colonial heads of state. Another instance of military adventurism getting out of hand is the regime of General Sani Abacha, the military's ultimate head of government in Nigeria (1993-1998). Throughout the 1980s, irresponsible and ill-prepared governments were kept in the saddle in various African nations by external collaborators in the bid to keep the abundant resources under the soil of Africa flowing to their nations. Though in extreme instances of state brutality, as when General Sani Abacha hanged the Nigerian writer Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other activists, the West mounted pressure on Abacha and also suspended Nigeria from the Commonwealth of Nations. Political development of Africa Although a new era of accountability come the way of governance in some of the African state in the 1990s, its governing structure still largely remain unstable as failed promises to improve the lives of its citizens, particularly in terms of provision of employment and social services, causes civil unrest that still leads to military intervention, such as we had in Sierra Leone, and Niger in the mid 1990s. Hence, in the decade of the 1990s, incoming military rulers had to justify their takeover of the affairs of the state, mostly due to the lack of the ousted government. Also, a timetable must be a part of the inaugural speech with specific reference to how and when a new civilian democracy will be established.

THE DAWN OF POPULAR AND MULTIPARTY DEMOCRATIC AFRICA

The 1980s, in the most part, signify the end of the rule of indefinite dictatorships in the steering of African nations. The birth of the 1990s met an Africa that was unwilling to live in military or civilian dictatorship; across the continent, the sentiment is for popular and multiparty democracy. Although deep-seated corruption, as we witness in oil-rich Nigeria, stayed a couple of countries behind the transition from military interference in politics until the twilight of the 1990s.

THE DEMOCRACY OF AFRICA

What is the democracy of Africa? Two systems of popular representation are prevalent in Africa, as in other parts of the world, namely, democratic and republican forms of governance. Although often used interchangeably, the terms democratic and republican are not synonymous. Both forms of governance delegate the power to govern to their elected representatives.

A democratic political system in which the people of a country rule themselves through any form of government they come together and agree to establish. In modern democracies, supreme authority is exercised for the most part by elected representatives by popular suffrage. The so elected representative may be unseated by the electorate according to the legal procedure in the letter of the constitution on the set down process of recall, as they are responsible to the electorate. In most democracies, both the executive arm of government and the legislative are elected on the platform of one-man-one-vote.

In the republican form of governance, however, the elected officials are vested with the responsibility to act on behave of the electorate, based on their own best judgment of the interests of the country.

THE PROBLEMS WITH AFRICAN DEMOCRACY

Fragile electoral framework

In most nations of Africa, the ruling elite, a class of self-proclaimed know-it-alls in the rules of politics, as soon as they mount the mantle of power, jump into the electoral process as one of the standing policies that requires urgent change and reframe. They usually assemble a bunch of handpicked individuals and hand them a guided mandate to fashion a new electoral framework that is capable of putting the nation out of the hood of undemocratic nations. But there ends the genuineness of their intention. As off the public view, the official and head of such an assembly are given the touchable and untouchable aspects of the expected road map. Even when the mandated report finally reaches the government, it would still be subjected to different kinds of fine-tuning, all in an effort to ensure that their intention of the final document is what makes its way to the national assembly for final ratification, and becomes the rules and regulations that govern the nation’s electoral processes. Let’s go to Nigeria, as recently as 2008, where the government of President Musa Yar’Adua set up a committee of 21 to fashion out a new electoral framework for the country. The committee, headed by retired Chief Justice of the Federation, Mohammed Uwais, and other eminent Nigerians, consulted widely and finally submitted a report that has a widely accepted by every segment of the country. Yet the presidency still subjected the report to the scrutiny of the Council of State. They, in their crooked wisdom, went ahead to delete some of the public acclaim part of the article. The most controversial article of the report that was removed is the one that recommended that the appointment of the head of the electoral body be removed from the hands of the presidency. Yet again, the presidency has been unsatisfied with the job done by the council of state went ahead to set up another committee of three, made up of a serving minister, the minister of justice, and two others, to review the reviewed report before finally sending it to the national assembly. As my typewriter drifts this brief, no one knows what will become the fate of the document when it finally reaches the president for signature. This is not new, nor peculiar to the present party in power in Nigeria. It’s rather a sad old story repeating itself from one regime to another. Neither is the story above peculiar to Nigeria; rather a common experience across the nations of Africa, except for a few who have recently managed to put in place an electioneering process that was able to put a government in place within a reasonable margin of error. Such, include Botswana, which has maintain the longest multi party democracy in Africa, Ghana, where a sitting presidency concede a general election to the opposition in an election it supervised, Kenya, Kenya is included here because it has in place an electoral process that produced the opposition as a winner, even though the sitting presidency tried to change its verdict, but the resilience of the people and international pressure forced the government to accept a power sharing option. As in Kenya, in Zimbabwe, a tint of working electoral system almost produce the opposition party of Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) as the new government, with just over 50 percent of total cast of vote in the 2008 general elections, making rerun on unnecessary, but Mugabe and his party stopped the train of progress, by refusing to accept the verdict as spoken by the people. But the doggedness of the opposition party and international pressure forced him to accede to a government of national unity, in which Morgan Tsvangirai serves as the Prime Minister.

Non-adherence to the ethos of democratic rule

A look around the landscape of democratic rule in Africa reveals that the fine thread of the ethos of the democratic way of life is still living in the pages of papers that framers of this concept scripted at independence. As time matures, the true meaning of democracy diminishes in the hearts of those who purported to be following the articles of democratic culture as formulated by their forebearers. They flag up their campaign to office on these credentials, persuade the people with the spice of democratic governance on their lips. Convince the people with the fine thread of democracy. But when they made the office, they traveled in the opposite direction to the wind of the democratic current. And these anti-democratic tendencies garb as the very essence of democracy is what makes African countries unable to develop along this path of governance adopted by most of the nations of the continent.

Homegrown democracy, democracy as it suits our diversity, has become the saying in which the failure to make democracy take firm root in Africa is buried. They lie to the people that every nation has its own peculiar way of governance, while they use the persuasion, as propagated, to install a hidden agenda, in the articles that spell the norms of the homegrown democracy, as it will make it possible for them to have their way at the polls and in office thence.

Therefore, one of the greatest impediments to the realization of true democratization of Africa is the not too clear demarcation of the exact kind of democratic norms that the nations adhere to.

Changing the political ideology of the state with a change of government makes it impossible for the system to mature. Most especially as these changes occur not for the growth of the nations, but rather for the perpetuation of the new regime in power. Hence, every regime that comes to power always attempts to put a thing or two in the constitutional framework, such as will favor its party to rule absolutely and indefinitely.

Lack of a constitution of the people

The process of drafting the constitution, as it stands at the moment, in most African nations, stands on a faulty footing. Because the process of framing the constitution and the eventual constitution are frequently forced on society by either military or civilian dictators. And the document they bestow on the nation as a constitution is closely guided from the drafting stage to the final road map. Achieved by putting together a constitution review committee, purported to satisfy the agitation of the people, as soon as they mount the helm of affairs, people, by handpicked individuals, have a parley, then submit a premeditated report. The presiding officer of the party in power will send to a compromised national assembly, the national assembly then stages a public hearing, in which they take not-to-be-utilized public opinions. Then wrap up the patch job, give it to the president for affirmation. Thereafter, it becomes the law that governs the land. This inherent lack of the people’s constitution is directly responsible for the crisis; cry of marginalization, fight for resource control, internal wrangling, etc., that have persistently characterized the state of affairs of most African nations.

Compromised electoral system

One of the biggest impediments to the growth of democracy in African nations is the compromised and ineffective electoral system. From Paul Biya’s many victories (1997, 2002, and 2007) in Cameroon, through his Cameroon People’s democratic movement, through Yoweri Museveni’s third-term reelection of 2006, achieved by an internationally criticized constitutional amendment that allowed him to run for a third term. To Nigeria, where Olusegun Obasanjo organized and conducted an internationally criticized reelection that gave him a fraudulent second term in office, and his failed attempt to adjust the constitution to give him a third term in office. The verdicts, as stated in the case of Cameroon and Nigeria, are the same for most African nations, i.e., apparent and widespread irregularities, unfairness, and voters’ apathy. The result of this is that bad, fraudulent, and corrupt rulers stay in power at the helm of their state affairs in African nations.

Moneybag, godfather in the politics of Africa

From the decade succeeding colonial rule till date, African state lacks coordinated means of monitoring campaign funds. The situation on the ground favors those who have the resources to buy their way into the various elective offices available on the ballot. It also forces those who are genuinely interested in social emancipation of the society to be cornered by the so-called moneybags, with agreement, most times under oath, oral or written, on how to loot and share the commonwealth of their nation. The moneybags seek office to further enrich themselves to the detriment of the state they swore to serve and protect, while godfathers so tax their stooge that it becomes almost impossible for the man in charge of state affairs to deliver on campaign promises. A different kind of setback usually comes with the stooge/godfather mix. The state of affairs, at some point in the life of the bestowed regime, results, when the figure head, in the charge of the state, feels that he cannot amass as much for himself as a consequent of the largess he has hand to the man behind the curtain, or he may find it hard to perform even basic functions of keeping the engine of the state running smoothly, at this junction, the stooge attempt to renege on his part of the secret oath, and naturally the godfather fights to force issue. The grand losers, as is the case when two elephants fight, are the economy and the people of the various nations of Africa where such an affair existed. A case study is the 1979 election of Alhaji Shehu Shagari to the presidency of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Largely installed by hand behind the scenes, both in terms of the provision of funds to the election and in acts that undermined the voices of those coming out victorious after the polls. As is often the case when a moneybag sponsor installs a man in office, payback day came, and Shehu Shagari obliged the kingmakers, with a second term in mind. But then, the cornering of the state purse became too much for even the abundant oil wealth of Nigeria to support, hence the center could not hold. And people cry, foul! Foul!! Foul!! Then the military, led by Mohamed Buhari, heeded the voice of the masses and rounded up most of the participants of that regime and put them in jail. He became the head of state of Nigeria, thereby truncating the second republic of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. This threw Nigeria into the darkness of military rule for 16 years (1983-1999).

Ballot box stuffing

The stuffing of ballot boxes before such get to the polling station was and is still a recurrent decimal in elections by universal adult suffrage in African experiments with democratic elections. Mostly, carried out by the incumbent leader who seeks reelection, because he is the one who placed the ineffective election umpire he placed, with unlimited power to fire or to retain the umpire. Such a fellow in charge of the electoral process but seriously subjected to the whim of the head of government and his party machinery, often surrenders to the power that be, and assists in bringing to pass quite several anomalies, which usually include ballot stuffing both before and after the actual casting of votes at the polling station. Money changing hands or the necessity to retain office is usually the impetus that encourages even men of courage in their precedence to cave in and soil their hands. And this to a great extent aids in planting ill-prepared men to get elected and further retain African nations as states that fail to work.

Snatching of ballot boxes and switching of ballot boxes

Another serious impediment to the growth of democracy in African states is the snatching of ballot boxes, in which an aspirant suspect is loaded with cast votes that give the majority of the votes to his opponent. This is carried out by trained thugs, mostly armed to the teeth. They get to the polling stations towards the conclusion of polling activity, release some bullets to the sky, have the cloud dispatched, and do away with the ballot boxes. Two methods are applied to replace the unwanted boxes; either they immediately replace them there and then with the pre-cast boxes in the hood of their vehicles, or drive away and simply have the prepared boxes appear at the collating center. Yet again have the states of Africa, led by a fraudulent character.

Selection rather than election of a representative

The political jobber, big men of Africa, bigger than their nations, such as Omar Bongo of Gabon, who have no other vocation than to milk the state to the last drop of milk, either themselves perpetually seek office, or be persisting godfather to others, who seek any and every office of the land, are always on hand to select the persons to run and win the various offices, even before the actual polling activity. Numerous tactics, like constitution remodeling, election rigging, ballot stuffing, and other forms of irregularity, are within their arsenal to make certain that the end they have in mind comes to pass most efficiently. The selectors are men and women who hold most of the political parties by the balls. They set up the parties, finance the parties, and run all the obligations of the campaign to force the parties on the state by every means possible. These cabals of state-enriched elite are always there, creating or waiting for the best opportunity to always subvert the will of the general population. An instance in focus is the hand-picking of Umaru Yar’Adua to be voted for (in an election widely condemned as the worst in the country’s many poor elections) as the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria by outgoing president Olusegun Obasanjo, who himself was handpicked by the military cartel that truncated the freest and fairest election in the history of elections in Nigeria. The Nigerian instance is not an isolated case; it’s about the story of an average African state, because the selection syndrome is mainly used to cover the track of such a regime that could not perpetuate itself in office.

Ineffective opposition party in Africa

In a democracy, the opposition is the torchlight that exposes the inadequacy of the ruling political party. The opposition comes closer to the masses in aspiration, as soon as they are defeated in the polls. Hence, an effective opposition is supposed to constantly put the party in power on its toes, so that the policies of the government that are not to the benefit of the nation are brought to the front burner for all and sundry to acknowledge and discourse, and do all within constitutional ethos to make the government of the day make the needed turnaround. The opposition, unfortunately, in the over five decades of self-governance in Africa has been as a lame dog or at best a toothless bulldog. Lost in the vast ocean of money politics, that politicking has come to be in most states of the continent. Another advantage that effective opposition could have bestowed on the democratization of Africa is the benefit of the other side of the story. That is, allow the opposition, make power due to what they have been preaching, and perceive how effectively their purported programs and policies can uplift society. The essence of the power of opposition in a democracy is better articulated in the alternation of ruling in the United States between its Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

Intimidation of the opposition

Intimidation of opposition is one recurrent decimal that characterizes the practice of democracy in Africa. Through the length and breadth of the continent, from South Africa to Nigeria, Ghana to Egypt, the tales of political oppression dot the political scenes. Suppression of the opposition is the tool employed by most of the sitting governments to perpetuate itself in unending rule of the state. Hence, the reason the continent is besieged with rulers that remain in power for twenty, thirty, or even over forty years. The machinery (armed forces, state resources) of the state is employed to subjugate any and every voice that insists that things should be done differently, to the benefit and welfare of the society and its citizens. The press, the civil society, the veritable voice of the people, hence of the opposition, is usually subjected to constant harassment by most leaders who want to remain in power forever. Journalists, prominent pro-democracy advocates, and consistent social critics are always intimidated, rounded up, charged in court on framed accusations, and thrown in jail.

Non-vibrant electorate

The strength of popular democracy lies in the doorstep of an enlightened electorate. The electorate, whose voice is loud and clear before, during, and after voting, with the strength to install and recall a representative through the powers of the ballot. A representative of such an electoral takes precautions to ensure that campaign promises are not just for the sake of winning an election, but such as must reach the light of day. Such an enlightened electorate is unfortunately not yet a living part of African democracies, even now, over five decades past self-dealing at democratization. Africa rather entails an electorate that is not properly organized, that does not know the do's and don’ts of the electoral process and procedure. An electorate that would prefer to stay at home on Election Day, because he or she is convinced that the election is already decided by the powers that be, before casting of vote. The prevalent electorate in Africa is the kind that will not fight to enforce the impression of the voting day, because of the fear of 'a crush by the state machinery of armed forces'. Lackluster and available-for-highest-bidder kind of electorate, such as need compulsion or enticement to perform what ought to be civic responsibility, is the electorate of Africa, even after six decades of democratic experience.

Citizenry's apathy for general elections

Due to noncompliance with releasing the results of the election as cast in the past, the general population across the continent has grown apathetic about performing their right to vote, civic responsibility, and electing the leaders of their choice through the ballot. Lack of performance by sitting leaders calling for reelection usually fails to interest the people because they have concluded that it will be an exercise in futility, since the incumbent factor allows the man at the helm to tamper with the process to his advantage. The conclusion in the minds of the people is that the election has been counted and allotted even before the election proper. A veritable check of this widespread voter apathy is deducible in mission reports of international election observers, whose verdict put low turnout of voters to the tune of over 80% of elections monitored across the continent of Africa. The roll calls are many and involve most of the emerging democracies of African nations.

Rigging of elections in African democracies

Rigging of elections is by far the greatest anomaly of the electoral process in emerging democracies of Africa. As evident in the following instances, vote rigging brought President Bakili Muluzi of Malawi to power in 1999; vote rigging characterized the elections of President Daniel Arap Moi of Kenya, and the rigged election that reelected President Ange-Felix Patasse of the Central African Republic in 1999. The recorded example of rigged elections dots the landscape of African leaders’ elections and re-elections. The following are a few of the established methods of rigging elections across the African democratic experience.

RIGGING OF THE ELECTION PROCESS IN AFRICA

Ballot stuffing,

Ballot stuffing, the fine name given to the irregularity of putting cast ballots in the voting boxes right before the election proper is conducted. This act of rigging is usually staged by the incumbent government through the hands of the electoral body, the use of hired thugs during elections, and the coercive use of state armed forces to harass any opposition to the exposure of such acts.

The flawed process of nomination of a candidate

The process and modality of nominating candidates for the various offices available for elections in most of the political parties in Africa is saddled with hurdles hard for anyone without a huge moneybag or godfather to surmount. The amount of money required to obtain the nomination forms is usually so outrageous that a candidate will have to possess bag bagload of cash or sort out a backer who is capable of coughing out such a sum to be able to purchase the form. Either way, the office is sold to the highest bidder; therefore, of necessity, the first course of action upon being successful at the poll is to recoup the sum of money invested to get to the office. A further disadvantage of placing a high monetary tag on the nomination procedure is that it will keep away candidates with a genuine interest in the state and its people at heart from reaching the goal of serving the motherland. After surpassing the stress of obtaining the nomination form comes the hurdle of gaining the party's recognition. This involves courting and creasing the hand of numerous kingmakers of the party. The more the party has been able to conquer the state machinery and keep power, the more difficult it is for the candidate to scale the roadblock of nomination proper. Because the number of seeker of the elective offices increase with the past successes, either through right effort or through fraudulent deals, of the party in the past polls. Campaign fund sourcing and usage is another debacle on the shoulders of aspiring candidates, because most nations of Africa have no known functional laid down principle on how to source and use such funds. Hence, individuals (s) with large cash sag come to the rescue of stranded aspirants. And when in office, they become a hostage of the ‘big man’ who knotted the rescue at the point of need.

Registration of a political party

The manner of evolution of political parties in post-colonial Africa is devoid of ideological content. In the first decade of independence, nationalism formed the bastion of coming together of the people to formulate formidable political movements, which eventually metamorphosed into political parties. Thereafter, ethnicity, individual relevance, and self-enrichment become the basis of forming political associations, which turn to political parties, which today hold Africa in the grip of undemocratic elements of its society. In most cases, these people come together to form political parties without any connotation of ideology for the betterment of their society. Personal gain, self-perpetuation in power, and political relevance become the reasons for coming together to form political organizations. Hence, the reason the democracies of Africa remain moribund after six decades of democratization. Because the emerging parties were not interested in carrying out the letters of the manifesto of the parties, even as concocted by their members, campaign promises never passed the arena in which they were pronounced on the campaign grounds. In the party manifestoes are articles such as free education, sound infrastructure, water, road, electricity, freedom of speech and association, but on the ground are the lack of these noble ideals, while the party members grow larger than the state which they purposed to serve. The derivable deduction on the ground in most African nations is that the parties, once in office, do whatever they fancy, irrespective of the article in the voiced manifesto. The professed political parties were able, and are still able, to get away with these anomalies because the electoral apparatus on the ground, as formulated by the political elite, fails in its primary responsibility to regulate the activity of political parties.

Weak institutions of African states

The institutions, including those that support the electioneering process, in most African countries are usually ill-equipped and non-autonomous. An average electoral apparatus is tied to the strings of the presidency. The ruling parties, and particularly the presidents of most of the republics of Africa, are the ones who pay the pipers and hence dictate the tunes that the electoral body plays. The electoral body gets its mandate, extent of work, and the tools to perform from the man in power. Hence, the umpire has to do the dictate of the party and the man in power to keep his or her office. Anyway, it is difficult and unexpected, mostly impossible, for the umpire to do otherwise, since he or she was installed, in the first place, to carry out the intention of the ruling political party. Hence, to liberate most of the electoral bodies in Africa and have a dawn of fruitful electioneering engagement, as is the tune of global norms of democratic experience in other democracies across the world, there is an urgent need to ensure that the electoral bodies are made truly independent of the party in power.

The absence of national identification of citizens across the nations of Africa makes it difficult to monitor the real voters as presented by the voters' register. In most African states, it is like a deliberate policy not to have a national identification for the citizenry, so as not to be able to gauge the irregularities of multiple voting that puts fraudulent government in power.

Second-term fever

In the contemporary term of office in Africa, most elected officers commence scheming for a second term in office, on most occasions, before the onset of the first term of office. And this fever for the second term of office makes it impossible for them to concentrate undividedly attention on the task at hand. It also facilitates the waste of the common resources of the state in the settlement of the power that will put and retain them in office at all costs. Meaning that most of the time spent in office is spent in politicking, one to amass enough wealth to withstand the second term battle, two to grease the palms of the power that are perceived as formidable for the actualization of their inordinate ambition. Effective and proper culture of democratic experience has continued to elude the nations of Africa because of this stay-put-in-office pattern. The state crafts suffer when the hands that ought to steer it are busy neglecting the main essence of seeking and holding an office, service to the state and its people.

• Sit-tight malady of African heads of government

The advanced stage of the second term fever is the sit-tight malady. This refers to the characteristics of wanting to remain in power till death do us part. An attitude that is synonymous with a noticeable number of heads of government in African states. Leaders such as; President Omar Bongo of Gabon, the record holder of longest head of government in office in Africa (1967-2009) as at his demise in 2009, Muammar al-Qaddafi of Libya, the revolutionary leader and strongman of his nation (1969- ), Hosni Mubarak, born in 1928, military leader and president of Egypt (1981- ), Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, born in 1942, president of Equatorial Guinea (1979- ), President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, first prime minister (1980-1987), then president (1987-). Aside the above leaders, who have strong grip on the rudders of their respective nations, we have countless despots from; Uganda, Idi Amin, president of Uganda (1971-1979), Nigeria, Sani Abacha, military president of Nigeria (1993-1998), Sierra Leone, Siaka Stevens, appointed prime minister of Sierra Leone in 1967, also became president in 1971 and served until his retirement in 1985, with thwarted attempts at sit-tight syndrome.

In both examples above, the lists are not exhausted. The in-and-out deductions of the selfish and gutless attitude, as enumerated, are that it continually deprives the states concerned and the entire continent of Africa of the root it requires to join the league of democratic nations of the world.

Political dynasties in Africa, a retrogressive step

Another dark cloud in the process of democratization of Africa is the numerous cases of political dynasties that are growing unabated in noticeable countries of the continent. It is wrong enough that a cabal of political robbers holds the populations to ransom in most nations of Africa through their self-defined kind of multiparty democracies. But this ugly case of one family ruling millions of a nation’s citizens is a direct insult to the face of the continent that is always quick to announce that democracy has come to stay in Africa. The longest serving head of government in Africa, Omar Bongo, President of Gabon, in the state he declared a one-party state in 1968, as he took office, until he kicked the bucket in 2009, with the continental record of 42 years of reign as the ultimate ruler of a state of Africa. And the next in line to the throne, a foregone issue, was narrowed down to either his daughter, Pascaline, a director in her father’s cabinet, or his son, Ali-Ben, vice President of his father’s party and former minister of defense. Family settlement has since conceded the party’s handling to the son. A common conclusion is that Ali-Ben will be the next President of Gabon. A journey to Morocco reveals that Mohammed VI of Morocco heads the state, a throne he inherited from his father, King Hassan II, nine years earlier, in 1999. And the son of Mohammed VI, Moulay Hassan, has already been anointed a no-contest crown prince. Swaziland, another monarchy with the face of a democracy, like Morocco, has Mswati III as its present King, designated as such after the demise of his father, Sobhuza II, in 1982, after ruling for 62 years, making him the longest reigning monarch in the world. The Democratic Republic of Congo is another pretension at the practice of democracy. Joseph Kabila, his father’s chief of army staff, took the reins of the state at age 29, when his father was shot in 2001. He initiated a referendum, which approved a new constitution, and won the presidential election of 2006. That makes him the first democratically elected President of the Democratic Republic of Congo since 1960. In Togo, when General Gnasingbe Eyadema, the longest serving head of an African state at the time in 2005, with a record of 38 years in office, passed away, his son, Faure Gnasingbe, was sworn in as the President. Much pressure made him step aside after 20 days in office. He then contested a home election, which he duly won, amid cries of massive electoral fraud. Impending news of expanding the dynasties of Africa are heard from Libya of Muammar Al-Qaddafi, 40 years on throne, Egypt of Hosni Mubarak, 28 years on throne, Angola of Dos Santos, 30 years on throne, Zimbabwe of Robert Mugabe, 29 years on throne, Cameroon of Paul Biya, 27 years on throne, Uganda of Yoweri Museveni, 23 years on throne and Tunisia of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, 22 years on throne. These are a sad commentary on the democratic states of Africa, in view of the strides that other continents of the world are making in the consolidation of multiparty democracy.

Luxury of elective office in Africa

The power, wealth, and luxury associated with high office in Africa are some of the great attractions that draw aspirants without a shade of common good in their intention of seeking office and retaining it. These lures of office, over time, become so intoxicating that African warriors, such as Mugabe of Zimbabwe, lose their humanity and intelligence in them, and seek only that which can maintain them in power by all means thinkable and unthinkable, the drunkenness that makes them above the state and law of the land. And view any kind of criticism, even as it is for the advancement of the nation, as a threat to their continued hold on power, and as such, they need to be dealt a killer blow. But if such dare the tiger on the throne be of valor, then, such lives as enemies of the state, permanently in opposition and always kept from reaching the seat of governance. These sit-tight leaders deprive the states of Africa of the input that is derivable from the benefit of varying personalities, which exposes the leadership of the nation to different ideologies and dynamism.

African disputed elections

Evidence of far from home of the democratic experience in Africa is easily recognizable in the numerical strength of disputed elections across the face of African democracies. Some such disputations are depicted by the characters listed. Sitting president Kibaki of Kenya was declared the winner of the December 2007 presidential election despite widespread evidence of vote rigging. The top opposition leader, Raila Odinga, claimed he had won the election, based on the tallied results that came out of the various polling stations. Yet the electoral body refused to declare the voice of the people. Weeks of bloodshed and destruction ensued as Kibaki’s and Odinga’s supporters, divided along ethnic lines, clashed over the dispute. More than 1,000 people were killed in the unrest, which damaged Kenya’s long-standing reputation for stability. A power-sharing agreement was finally reached in late February 2008, following mediation by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and intense international pressure. In the agreement, Odinga dropped his claim to the presidency and accepted the newly created position of prime minister.

In Zimbabwe, Presidential and parliamentary elections were held concurrently in March 2008. ZANU-PF, the party of sitting President Mugabe, lost its majority for the first time since independence in 1980, winning 97 seats in the 210-seat House of Assembly. The MDC won 99 seats, and a breakaway MDC faction won 10 seats; the remainder went to independents. The results for the Senate were evenly divided, with ZANU-PF and the combined opposition each taking 30 seats. Meanwhile, the election commission delayed announcing the results of the presidential election. The MDC claimed that Tsvangirai won just over 50 percent of the vote, making a runoff unnecessary, but the Mugabe camp disputed those claims and called for a recount. International pressure was mounted on Tsvangirai, since Mugabe has secluded himself, to place restraint on the fight for the right, not further disintegrate an already ailing nation. He succumbed and accepted a government of national unity as mediated by South Africa, in which he serves as the prime minister.

In Uganda, Yoweri Museveni became embroiled in more controversy as he prepared for reelection in February 2006. He caused international concern when he facilitated changes in the constitution in 2005 that allowed him to run for a third term. In addition, his leading opponent, Kizza Besigye, claimed that the government sought to derail his campaign by charging him with rape and treason in the run-up to the balloting. Besigye was cleared of the rape charges but had to appear in court repeatedly during the campaign to defend himself. Besigye filed suit charging that the February polling had been rigged. In April 2006, Uganda's Supreme Court validated Museveni's election victory. The court declared in a split decision that, despite irregularities in the election, the evidence presented would not have reversed the results. Museveni was sworn into office for a third term in May 2006. Adjudged free and fair elections.

In the midst of less than encouraging outcomes of election processes in Africa, a handful of nations have been able to present a gleam of light in the darkness of unfair and not free elections that characterize Africa’s experience with democracy.

Mauritania held its first fully democratic elections since independence in 2006 for the national assembly. Presidential elections followed in 2007, as the final stage in the transition to democratic rule. Sidi Mohamed Ould Chelth Abdallahi, an independent candidate, won the runoff election with 53 percent of the votes. And the election observer from Europe submitted that the Mauritanian elections were free and fair.

South Africa’s first truly non-racial democratic elections took place in 1994 and were declared substantially free and fair by the independent electoral commission. ANC received a remarkable 62 percent of the close to 20 million votes. The African National Congress (ANC) won more than 66 percent of the vote in South Africa's second all-race elections on June 2, 1999. As the majority party in the incoming parliament, the ANC on June 16 elected Thabo Mbeki, the head of the ANC and outgoing president Nelson Mandela's handpicked successor, as the country's new president. That successfully makes South Africa among the few shining stars in the dark cloud of irregular democracies of Africa.

After the Liberian civil war, elections were held under considerable international observation. Presidential and legislative elections were held in 1997. Charles Taylor, the Liberian warlord for the past years, was elected a popular leader in the election won by his party. The elections were adjudged fair and free by international election observers.

Khama became Botswana's first president in 1966. The Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), founded by Seretse Khama, won a large majority in the elections held in 1969, 1974, and 1979. When Khama died in 1980, his vice president, Guett Ketumile Joni Masire, became the president and was easily reelected in 1984, 1989, and 1994 elections. After the retirement of Masire in 1998, he was succeeded by his vice president, Festus Mogae, who won election in 1999 and 2004. In 2008, Seretse Ian Khama, son of Seretse Khama, became the president of Botswana. Hence, Botswana remains a shining star in the emergence of popular democracy in Africa.

Ghana, the first to gain independence in sub-Saharan Africa, made history once again in 2009, as it became the first to have an incumbent defect in office, through an election that was adjudged free of widespread irregularity. Unfortunately, the number of free and fair elections in Africa is nothing to write home about, because less than 3 percent of elections since independence can wear such a toga.

Electoral fraud in Africa

The climate of African democracies was and is still characterized by heaps of unfairness and irregularities. This evident lack of firm grip on the rudder of democracy on the continent has continued to undermine its social and economic growth. Egypt’s first multiparty elections took place in 2005. Hosni Mubarak was easily reelected with more than 85 percent despite a low turnout of voters and the opposition party's charge election fraud loud and clear.

In 2003, Olusegun Obasanjo, sitting president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, won a reelection to another term of four years in a wide margin. International observers criticized the election for unprecedented incidents of electoral fraud in many states of Nigeria. President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe was reelected president in 2002, amidst allegations of voter intimidation and a wide range of irregularities. International observers declared the election flawed.

In the Cameroon general election of 1997, Paul Biya’s party won a majority of seats amid violent confrontations, allegations of electoral fraud. The three opposition parties boycotted the October presidential elections. Biya won in a landslide and got reelection. Observers submitted that voter turnout was low. These sad commentaries are not limited to the countries stated, but a good sample of the fraud called elections in Africa of the 21st century, after over six decades of experimentation with purported multiparty democracy.

Maturation of African democracy

The way forward in the journey of Africa states in the evolution of government of the people by the people for the people is the maturation of the various processes that have failed to yield dividend because some few bad element compromised the values inherent in the various systems attempted, as a proper scrutiny of the outline of governance shows that there is no problem with the articles of the frameworks but the hindrance lies with the operators of the system. Hereunder, let’s attempt to deal with the possible ingredients for the maturation of African democracy to meet the best standard of democratic practice as played out in firm democracies across the world.

A need for an effective electoral system in Africa

An election is the procedure that allows members of a community to elect representatives who will hold a position of authority within its borders on behalf of the community. Election is one most important cardinal principles of representation in a democracy. The prevalent forms of elections are those set to elect the leaders of local, state, and national governments. An effective electoral system allows the people the chance to decide who will lead the nation in the offices available at various tiers of governance and therefore effectively enable them to influence the policies, programs, and direction of actions of the sitting government.

Invariably, a grounded electoral system promotes accountability, as the possibility of defeat at the subsequent polls mounts pressure on the elected office holder to make the aspiration and welfare of the state a paramount responsibility. An election in a democracy takes place at regular intervals, which is commonly pegged at four to five-year terms across nations (practicing democracy) of the world. This process of putting a time span on the occupation of elective office is a sweet seasoning to spice the flavor of democratic government because it forces an elected representative to make certain that they put in their best in the service to the state to safeguard the possibility of their coming to campaign for reelection. Hence, the states of Africa need to put in place an effective electoral system that can allow the voices of the people to matter during the formulation of laws that are to govern the electoral process, make the atmosphere during elections conducive to both the voters and aspirants, and allow smooth judicial interpretation in the event of disputes after the elections.

THE JUDICIARY AND DEMOCRACY IN AFRICA

The judicial process goes a long way in dictating the dynamism of a society. The evolution of a society across time is directly linked to the action or inaction of its adjudicating system for actualizing positive changes in its polity. Hence, at every junction in the development of a society, the judiciary must be of strong integrity to give a qualitative and sound decision in matters affecting social changes of the nation. For the democracies of Africa to really develop, the judiciary, that characterized as the last hope of the oppressed, must divest itself from the apron of the sitting government, and rather judge with a mind that is fair and free of prejudice in all issues before it for consideration. The nations of the continent, as of other lands of the world, have a judicial process of varying degrees of effectiveness and fairness in the discharge of their justice. As things stand at the moment in most African states, the judiciary is yet to be up and doing in the effective discharge of its duties in terms of the interventional role expected of it in the democratization of the democracies of Africa. If a dispute occurs between the state and the people, the federating unit and the central government, or within and between political parties. The judiciary is expected to be the last hope of the one seeking redress and ought to be able to get justice within the umbrella of the constitution of the republic, as dispensed with without fear or favor. Though right in so many cases, the judiciary is still largely viewed as the extension of the executive arm of the government, as most time the sort of verdict they give between the parties and the central body tends to always be in favor of the central. Also, between any opposition and the serving party, the serving party always carried the day, even when the opposition and the people expected a verdict in the opposite direction. Hence, the judiciary needs to be strengthened to move the democracy of Africa to the desired level aspired by its people.

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE PEOPLE

As things stand, African nations need, very urgently, constitutions that are as fortified a city, where the state and its citizens can effectively take solace. Africa needs to find the temerity to gather the voices of its citizens in an articulated manner to voice a constitution of the people by the people. The powers that be always say that such a venture will break the nations to pieces because of the diversity of the people, as if the continent of Africa is the only one on the globe with multiple ethnicities. The crux of the matter, as events of the past six decades have shown, is that they hide under the cover of diversity to play the cards that have so far kept them in power. Africa needs to rise above the slavery that the ambition of a few has placed on its nations, and fashion a constitution that will safeguard the interests, aspirations, and fulfillment of both its constituent parts and the whole nation in one draft. Let’s digress a little and define what can enable the constitutional stride of African nations.

THE CONSTITUTION

A constitution in a polity is the fundamental system of law, written or unwritten, of a sovereign state, established or accepted as a guide for the governance of the state. A constitution fixes the limits and defines the relations of the legislative, judicial, and executive powers of the state, thus setting up the basis for governance. It also provides guarantees of certain rights to the people. The constitution is commonly referred to as the article of faith of a nation. For a constitution to be fundamental and of wide acceptance, it must be put together through a process that ensures the input of a wide range of the people that it is supposed to guide and protect. The constitution of a polity must not only define and guarantee the fundamental laws of the state; it must also state the constitutional rights of its citizens, as protections and privileges under law which are set out in the constitution or based on constitutional provisions as can be interpreted by a court in case(s) of infringement. The most fundamental rights that the constitution is expected to protect include, but are not limited to, adherence to due process of law, guaranteed civil rights and civil liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of the press, freedom of worship, restraint on police methods, right to acquittal, and court-certified search warrant. The above-mentioned are basic rights expected of the people from the state; unfortunately, an average African state infringes on these rights at will to satisfy the whim of the rulers as the need arises. Numerous are the cases of sitting political rulers who have manipulated the constitution of their states to satisfy their individual caprice. African heads of government, therefore, need to locate the will to allow the letters of the constitution to govern their nations without interference.

INDEPENDENT AND PROFESSIONAL MEDIA FOR AFRICA

The communication media, including newspapers, books, televisions, radios, and magazines, must be free from government controls and censorship as guaranteed in the constitution. Freedom of the press in a democratic society is regarded as fundamental to human rights. Hence, without free media, a free society and democratic self-rule will be a mirage. For effective maturation of democracy in Africa, the media needs to be vibrant, independent, and professional, totally free from the interference of the state and powerful individuals. The mass media must be able to gather, evaluate, and distribute facts of current affairs and interest without fear of harassment or intimidation. The reporters must be able to research and transmit information for both print and electronic distribution without hindrance. Implicitly, meaning that the press must possess immunity to transmit its information without control or censorship by any governmental agency. The mass media should be free to cover and transmit information on electoral policies, elections, and election outcomes without fear or favor. Freedom of the press, however, cannot be absolute. The principle has long been established that the press may not be used in circumstances that would create a danger of consequence to the stability of the state.

Enlightenment on universal suffrage

The average citizen across the nations of Africa is in dire need of enlightenment on the strength of universal adult suffrage. Both the educated and illiterate make up most African states need enlightenment on the power of the voice in the election of those who steer the wheel of the state on behalf of all. The citizens who are responsible for voting the aspirant to office need to be knowledgeable about the fact that the power of their votes does not end in the election of a government but also in ensuring that they are in place doing the will of the electorate according to the letters of the constitution and campaign promises. The responsibility of propagating this enlightenment should not be left in the hands of the government, who usually have a personal or party agenda distinct from those of the people and the state.

Rather, the mass media, civil society, and well-established social critics should drive the engine of the reorientation that is needed to energize the power, the strength of the people’s voice that will give democracy a stronghold across the soil of Africa.

The campaign should be geared towards integrating the values of an endearing democracy, such that it can strengthen and protect the common goal and good of the nation. Such a campaign should be able to inculcate the values, such that the populace appreciates the fact that they can unseat any government that runs contrary to the will and good of the people.

The necessity to vote at election time and the necessity to protect the verdict must be propagated in the languages of the society. So that an average citizen will know how to listen to campaign promises, know how to interpret such promises, and also how to insist on the actualization of the promises made before taking office by elected officials.

A further important enlightenment campaign is such as should be targeted at making the citizens, who are capable of standing for vote as patriotism dictates, believe in the worth of coming out for elective offices, so that the steer of the nation can be returned to the people. African citizens have left the reign of their government too long in the hands of political vultures, who seek offices to entrench corruption and perpetuate themselves in office at the detriment of the common good.

Hence, there is an urgent need for effective machinery that can educate the people across Africa on what to vote for, such as manifestos that meet their aspirations, and how to vote, as well as the know-how of dos and don’ts of an election, also how to protect their mandate, as they keep vigil throughout the collation to the final announcement of the election results.

The might of the majority in a democracy, that the electorates are more than the aspirants, should be drummed into the consciousness of the citizens, so that they can appreciate the strength of the weapon in their arsenal. And know how to call on the powers of recall it entails to unseat anyone voted into office on presented false pretenses, as those who turn a reverse character after taking office. For most African countries living between the third and sixth decades of self-rule, the time to tell the selected few among their fabric, who crave misrule, enough is enough, is right now, when the effect of misappropriation and mismanagement that they and their predecessor created bites the people the most amidst plenty.

State of democracy in Africa in 2008

In the 1990s, single-party states and military dictatorships were the most prevalent forms of ruling across sub-Saharan Africa. But as the move towards the 2000s gains momentum, the Western world starts to prioritize effective governance and respect for internationally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms. Nonetheless, efforts at democracy and human rights face severe challenges. These still make the African record a poor one, consisting of conflict outbursts, youth militancy, weak institutions and leadership, disunity among racial, religious, and ethnic groups, corruption and poor governance, even after over five decades of self-rule across the continent. to recognize that Africa should not be only about resources, between 11 and 32 countries, yield to the strength of agitation, and make significant strides towards free and fair elections. Hence, a need exists for coordinated agitations across Africa to make the leadership stock awake and steadfast on the need to promote and respect the universal human rights of its citizens. A continent of Africa with deep-rooted democracies is achievable if the states and their peoples strive to have an effective conflict resolution modality, find the will to live together amid religion and ethnic diversity, strengthen the rule of law, and allow free media and effective social criticism. To get there, the nations must embody effective campaigns during electioneering, generate functional grassroots outreach machinery, and allow the media a free rein in the drive to democratization of the nations of Africa. The right of the citizens to change their government must be made paramount by allowing duly scheduled elections to take place as scheduled. The police should be trained on the need to act with restraint before, during, and after elections, to cut short the rampant cases of arbitrary and unlawful killings and excessive use of force that characterize their actions. The judiciary should be reinforced, strengthened, and empowered to consistently ensure due process of litigation, before, during, and after elections. The influence of the executive arm of government on the judiciary process should be removed. That is, the judiciary should be fully independent of the executive arm of government, both in administration and financial capability. For the judiciary to perform its expected role in the uplift of Africa from the shackles of autocracy, there is a need for it to free itself from corruption and inefficiency that is its prevailing lot at the moment. The nations of Africa, as a matter of exigency, need to locate the nerve center of the transitional election process, the protection of minority rights, and the respect of human rights to international best practice. For the democracies of African nations to attain the height as demanded by democratic nationhood, the populace, especially the youth of the continent, must wake up to the reality on the ground, that the present ruling cabals have failed the continent, and take the direction of tomorrow of its democracy into their hands. Hence, there is an urgent need for mass enlightenment of the population on how to make political cartels that dot the landscape of Africa give way to competent and patriotic leadership. Time to wake the collective psyche of the people to the reality that representative multiparty democracy is the only way forward for the governance of the nations of a well-endured Africa is now. Time to drive self-serving political robbers out of state houses of Africa can’t be a better time than now, as the transitional trains across countries of Africa edge towards the seventh decade of self-rule. The people should be enlightened, motivated, and encouraged both by local agencies and international pressure groups through the instrumentation of free press and vibrant engine of civil society, to know their right, act on their right, and actualize their right at every turn of the journey to societal emancipation. The cabals gather themselves, groom their replacements, and perpetuate themselves to cornered powers from one generation to another, to the detriment of the good of the nations and their people, who were purported to have elected them to rule. Time for the youth, the blood in the veins of the society, to stop complaining and start asking, insisting, and fighting for the right direction and progress of democracy in Africa is now, since the bulk of the nations of the continent have come to accept popular democracy as the preferred mode of government for their states. That will invariably imply that the people will be fighting to insist on the system of government that the world has come to accept as the most stable and most representative of known forms of governance. The youths of Africa must unite and use their numerical advantage to insist on a democratic culture in their different nations. The prolonged docility of the masses has so far failed to lift up the society. For far too long an era, the self-ordained few have lingered too long in the corridors of power across the lands of Africa, such that the luxuries of offices have blinded these leaders to the common good of the nations. The resources of the nations that they have been stealing for over six decades have become the instrument they harness to raise, train, and arm thugs to suppress all forms of opposition to their perpetuation in power. As subtle agitation has failed to change the tide of Africa’s political destiny, the time has come for dynamism of engagement to change; it is time to play the only option left, to take the agitation from the pages of the newspapers to the streets of African nations. And give the elected official a reason to believe that ultimate powers reside with the electorate in a popular democracy. This sixth decade of freedom from colonial rule should be closed with a message to the selected few that the vibe of a democracy lies with the numerical strength of the voters, not only at the campaign for office and making the office, but more importantly, to stay in office as elected by universal adult suffrage. In other words, to turn the lots of the nations of the African countries in the match to stable self-governance, the youths must constitute themselves as the engine of change that can make power change hands from corrupt and self-seekers, who reign at the moment, to another that will be genuinely interested in the uplift of the continent and its people. Africa must do away with the present ruling class that has come to be bigger than the entire nation, and have made themselves above the laws of the land, such that no instrument of the court can pronounce them guilty even when they are visibly wrong, as neither can the police dare to touch them as they have constituted themselves too connected to the ruling nerve. Only the populace owns the power, either through peaceful protest or violent agitation, to move the present impostors out of the comfort zone they have carved for themselves, since no human being voluntarily relinquishes self-preservation. Hence, the masses of Africa should not expect the powers that be to promulgate policies or strengthen the institution of state to the degree that it will drive itself out of power and reach of the resources of the state. A return to the account for the ills and crimes (in the fashion of south African’s truth and reconciliation commission of 1996 after demise of apartheid) of the past must be initiated with a view to heal those who are wrongly victimized so that the match forward would be free and fair, with guaranteed endurable tenet of democracy, in protected rights and relieve from suffering. African institutions need to be strengthened to meet the yearning of the people and international standards through the initiation of elections that meet international standards, aided by independent and professional media and a thriving civil society. In order to effectively mature democracy in Africa, the government at the local level must be strengthened through capacity building by organizing seminars for its officials and elected officials on public involvement in democracy on a constant Basis. The sixth decade of democracy in Africa. The commencement of the sixth decade of self-government in Africa is characterized by countries coming out of various kinds of conflict, conflicts that are inflicted by autocratic rules, mismanagement and misappropriation of resources, corruption in high places, ethnic dissatisfaction, and military intervention in statecraft. From Angola to Sierra Leone, Rwanda to Guinea-Bissau, and the democratic republic of Congo to Mozambique, we note various kinds of conflict consequences of bad governance. Across history, there existed various forms of legitimate government, but surely in the 21st century, the only system that has stood the test of time is legitimacy through democracy. Thus, multiparty elections should be the way to power in the countries of Africa, as in other continents of the world. The kind of election that Africa needs at this junction is such that can lead to the emergence of a government with the development of its state and its people as its projected output. Such that will banish tyranny, end corruption, and grow the economy. Good governance is the way for African democracies to strive and unlock the potential of their people for the match to stable and successful continent. In this century and this decade of African advancement, its constituent countries should create a climate where their people can start a business that can grow in a competitive environment. The present rule of brutality, tyranny, and bribery must give way to the rule of law and order. As at this decade of African nationhood, it is sad, that, Kenya had a conclusive election in 2008, and was forced to run a government of national unity, because the man, Mwai Kibaki at the helm of state affair during election feels that he should rule forever, by imploring the electoral body to withheld election result, threw the country into arena of bloodshed and destruction. The same story we have witnessed in Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe has made the presidency his personal possession. Despite these disheartening tales, Africa must locate the will and strength to send these men out of the state houses of its nation. Africa must be made bigger than its self-imposed big men in power. The need for accountable governments in Africa is put in place to serve the people of a nation. The government is expected to maintain law and order in a state. But unfortunately, across the nations of Africa, this notion is served in the opposite direction. What is in place as government is rather used to undermine the nation and its people. Cases of non-availability of infrastructure, such as roads, water, and electricity, remain the norm in most nations of Africa. Infrastructural failure serves as a constant reminder that a government, as desired by the people, only lives in the recesses of their psyche. Everywhere are the cases of failed institutions such as electoral commissions, water boards, electrical authorities, school systems, health facilities, banking systems, communication commissions, etc. The failure of these facilities is noticeable in the inability of the various states of Africa to sustain a functional educational system, where public schools can provide adequate, sound, and competitive training to their ever-bourgeoning school seekers. Rather, what is on the ground is a system that makes it impossible for low-income earners to be able to send their wards to school on account of a lack of school fees, plus bribes to pay their way through the compromised registration system of the school authorities. On the other hand, those who manage to find their way into any of the schools are given half-baked education consequent of not enough classrooms and fewer than enough number of ill-equipped teachers, this sorry state is the same from the pre-primary to the tertiary institutions of learning. The same sorry story as illustrated for the education system is apparent in the health institution as other major infrastructure of the state. One of the most dangerous aspects of this institutional failure is the peculiar cases of non-functional electoral systems. This ought to be the base upon which the people decide the caliber of people that are to be elected to serve the needs of the nation and its people. What is rather in place are electoral commissions that are not accountable to the people who are to participate in the elections. The apparent lack of accountability of the electoral process is because the electoral bodies are in the hands of the ruling political party. Lack of financial accountability is a big setback in the development of democratic government in the nations of Africa. The people are aware that the continent is endowed with abundant resources, but the dividends of it are forever as a mirage to them. Everywhere telescoped in the vast land of Africa shows that few among many have easily been able to corner the resources of the state to the detriment of the nation. And this tendency makes corruption one of the biggest problems in the advancement of representative government in Africa. As the states are sapped by a handful of its citizens, who have no other source of income than the resources that are supposed to be used to smoothly run the engines of the state. In its sixth decade of independence, these are the issues of the people of Africa with its government because most of the countries of the continent have not been able to evolve a representative government that is accountable to its people, both in terms of elections of the leaders and the recall of erring elected officials. As stated earlier in this narration, the salvation of the nations of Africa lies squarely on the shoulders of its youth, who by good fortune, are in the majority. They represent the group that should agitate and dictate the state of affairs across the nations of Africa. The political bandits, who are at the moment enjoying the commonwealth, cannot be relied upon to release the nation from the shackles of underdevelopment. It’s indeed an unfounded expectation to expect the beneficiary of a manipulated system to wake up and put in place a policy that will unseat it from the very corridor of power it cherishes so much. Plenty of dirty deals, they do to get to power, so to expect the syndicates in power across Africa to willingly make statecraft accountable to the people will be like expecting a constant bright sunny day at midnight. Changes urgently needed, most start with insisting on the overhaul of the electoral process. African nations require changing the system of governance that favors the selection, hand-picking, of office holders in the name of elections by a privileged few through a compromised electoral process. Conclusion As Africa live in the sixth decade of democratic statehood and moves towards the seventh decade, it should be prepared to put behind it the failed system of the past and put in its place a right value system that will enhance the voices of the people, in the making of ‘the peoples constitution’, that guide living together, in the border of law and order. Institutionalize a functional electoral process-from getting started for elections through the elections of representatives to the removal from office of a faulty representative. Africa must embrace tangible political reforms that guarantee the people of basic political rights. A right value system needs to be put in place that will encourage the advancement of the state above the incline of the party in power. The case that occurred in Nigeria in 1993, the annulment of the upheld as free and fair election of Chief MKO Abiola, by a handful of military adventurists in politics, should be made impossible in the new direction for African governments as it edges towards its seventh decade of self-rule. Bibliography Berkeley, Bill. The Graves Are Not Yet Full: Race, Tribe, and Power in the Heart of Africa. Apollos, O. Nwauwa. Concept of democracy and democratization in Africa revisited.

IN FLOW OF RED

2010-04-19T16:05:00.000+01:00

In the flow of red

I see the surface of tomorrow.

Tomorrow in hands by untrained minds.

Minds denied of learning culture by educated illiterates

Illiterate but educated rulers bake the cake.

Cake shared as a national cake within a cartel

Cartels of man-know-man write the policy.

Policy on education that builds inadequate schools

Schools crafted of compromised classrooms

Classrooms as caters for overpopulation

Population of teachers provided not as go-round

Round the globe, though, they trek.

They do trek to secure a sound school.

Sound schoolsshould train their children.

Their children envisage tomorrow's Nigeria.

Nigeria now trains ninety-eight of one hundred to fail.

Fail is the coming to meet of their past-trained children.

Trained as an armed robber, they come home to meet

Meet, I wish be for commonwealth.

WELCOME! WELCOME!! WELCOME!!!

2010-04-13T01:43:00.008+01:00

WELCOME! WELCOME!! WELCOME!!!

Welcome to my world, where we aim to engage in discussions about romance, real life, and politics, with a special focus on talks about Nigeria as it struggles to emerge from the slumber imposed by the political cabals.