wesley80:

The best part of this entire episode is reading the reaction of ordinary South Africans to this apology, so refreshingly funny.

www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2012/03/08/south-africa-apologises-to-nigeria?filter=all_comments#

The president is behaving like agama lizard who fell from an iroko without hurting and started praising itself

"Right now, no one can tell you exactly how much of our crude is extracted from our soil," said Orji Ogbonnaya Orji, who sits on the board of directors of NEITI. "We depend on records from the oil companies. That clearly has to change."

The new Nigerian "intellectuals" (the type that sport motivational speaking gigs on the week-end, mostly pentecostal christians and often work in consulting, banking or energy) by contrast talk too damn much and do too little.

a country where most they sell Sharp Cutlasses, Axes and other murder-able weapons in Hold ups,

kodewrita:

Well there may be a way out.

if people are not able to judge accurately a candidate's ability, they can at least judge an incumbent's performance very well.

I envision a hierarchical system whereby you can only aspire to higher office if you have held some sort of lower post e.g governors can only be former lg chairmen or state house of reps members. That way, your performance can be tested using a lower-impact portfolio and if we can prove you are a thief while you were managing 30m monthly as a LG chairman, we can safely prevent you from handling 6bn as a governor and 9trn as a president.

That ensures that people can end up making the smart choice since they know the ones that didnt perform.

Any risks you foresee with this idea including potential opposition?

Regional governments, with more control over their own resources and revenue, with a weaker central democratic government. Each region could implement its own version of local goverment and resource sharing, similar to the current LGA. The North already has Sharia - other regions could do the same and traditionalise their democracy, but with more economic teeth.

ekt_bear:

India honestly is not really a country I admire. It is just basically Nigeria.

Second, despite having many ethnic groups, they have some national things that unite them (the Hindi language, Hinduism), and have been united to some extent by history (previous empires on the sub-continent, struggling against Pakistan, etc.)

Nigeria on the other hand. . . just some big piece of land the British conquered and smushed together.

ekt_bear:

In addition to this average intelligence assumption implicit in democracy, I suspect that democracy is less effective in ethnically diverse countries like Nigeria.

The US for example would probably be a pretty much worse country if there were three significant ethnic groups rather than just one powerful clan (essentially WASPs and those co-opted by them.)

On the other hand, I suspect that a LKY sort of figure wouldn't work in Nigeria either if he came from one of the 3 major ethnic groups. And probably wouldn't work if from a minority group either. . .

OAM4J:

Nigerians have always  been voting on sentiments. But the military brought corruption and poverty to an unprecedented height and 3 things happened:

1. Peoples' orientation changed. Many people are now after what they can get from the system for themselves rather than what is good for the whole community.

2. It became really difficult for honest/sincere/good people to contest and win elections

3. Peoples' vote rarely counted

OAM4J:

I agree with the bold. This was working well with us before the military introduced the unitary system and later dumped a faulty democracy that lacks true federalism on us. Then each region was progressing well.

bittyend:

@Nnenna1

I can tell you authoritatively say that Obama is going to be a one-term President - he was just selected to calm the polity down, after Iraq and Afghanistan debacle. the US of A would be on the march again soon, and Mitt Romney is going to be selected come the next election - to champion that cause.

US of A a la Amerikkka as we call it, is not a country to emulate - emulating it is a precipe for disaster, that's why Nigeria is so phucked up.

Their (democracies) advantage over dictatorships or other forms of government is merely that they "effectively prevent lower-than-average candidates from becoming leaders"

Men and women have not evolved yet to adapt to the new relationship rebalancing of women being financially independent and sex being blasted at us left, right and centre by the decadent liberals.

Relationship culture has not caught up and stabilised with the rapid change and it is currently in a turbulent flux.