Chido Onumah

As history unfolds in Nigeria, it does appear that “the more things change the more they remain the same”. As a military dictator thirty-two years ago, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) truncated Nigeria’s Second Republic which was reputed for its scandalous corruption.

These are perturbing times. On the eve of what promised to be Nigeria’s fiercest election, one that has set the country on edge, it is important that we sound alarm bells.

I do not think Nigerians have a difficult choice to make when they go to the polls on Valentine’s Day. It’s either they return the incumbent, President Goodluck Jonathan, or replace him with the candidate of the main opposition party, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.).

Forty-four years after the end of the Nigeria-Biafra War, Nigeria finds herself on the brink of another civil war. Nigerians have waited in vain in the last five years for those who should know to show some fortitude and speak out.Recently, a few of them did.

It is perhaps fitting that President Obama has called for a meeting with African leaders in Washington DC on the eve of a touchy presidential election in Nigeria in 2015. It is an election that many have said could make or mar Nigeria.

Nigeria’s celebrated novelist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, is an interviewer’s delight, whether she is talking about Nigeria, novels, feminism or hair.

I have always advocated for a full-scale socio-political restructuring of Nigeria. The reason is simple.

A few days after the figures of Nigeria’s rebased GDP were made public last week, “The Punch” newspaper carried a very frightening front page story about a young unemployed Nigerian, Sunday Omotayo, who wanted to commit suicide.

Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, will on Monday, 17 March, 2014, inaugurate the 494-member National Conference whose task is to redefine “the way forward for our nation”. The initial antipathy to the conference, it seems, has given way to cautious optimism.

I have refrained from commenting on the pact between the All Progressives Alliance (APC) and the “new PDP” because, to some extent, I am involved.