In 1066 AD, Norman Frenchmen invaded England at the famous battle of Hastings. The French defeated the English army and subsequently began French rule of England. The French Duke of Normandy, William the Conqueror, became the King of England. He appointed his lieutenants the dukes, earls, counts, marquis etc of England. These folks, the Plantagenet, more or less, still constitute the English aristocracy in the present. Since the aristocracy in France itself are of German (Franks) and Scandinavian origin, the English aristocracy has Germanic origin.

The emergent kings of England had a tendency to claim a right to participate in French politics after all they came from France. If the monarchy in Paris was vacant, the English King, himself a French man, would vie for it. Failing to get it he could go to war with his cousins ruling France for the right to rule France. Thus England and France had numerous wars.

The English kings spent the treasury dry fighting wars with France. During one such war, the king of England, John, had less money to prosecute his foreign ambitions and called together his dukes, earls, counts etc to a council. His intention was to get them to support the war and puny up with the money to fight it. The Lords managed to get the king to sign a contract with them to henceforth consult them before he makes decisions involving spending of money. This was the famous Magna Carter of 1215. This date is deemed the origin of the English Parliament (the word parliament is French for council, those making legislative decision in a community).

Subsequently, the Lords met and advised their king on assorted array of issues. It came to pass that when the Lords met to advise the king, they were said to meet in Parliament. In the English world which, ip so facto, Nigeria is a part of, Parliament began in 1215?

The King did not have to accept the advice of the Lords but it was a good start to have a belief that the king needed others input in the making of laws and policies affecting his realm.

Subsequent developments in England led to the rise of the House of Commons. We shall not recount English history here but suffice it to say that the House arose to accommodate non-hereditary aristocrats who were by now becoming important in English economy. Gradually, the House of Commons displaced the House of Lords as the main policy making body in England.

Today, the House of Commons rules England. The House of Lords is essentially ceremonial and has no real power. The House of Commons makes decisions, send them to the House of Lords for input and may or may not accept the input of the House of Lords and sends its decisions to the Queen who is obligated to sign the decision into a parliamentary Act. In effect, the Queen is as ceremonial and nominal as the House of Lords.

England is now ruled by the people, not by the king and his Lords. The King and his Lords, apparently, are retained for historical purposes and otherwise are irrelevant in contemporary English politics. Indeed, the present British Prime Minister, Tony Blair has reformed the House of Lords and gotten rid of hereditary peers. Henceforth, only life peers, those the prime minister recommended and the queen honored can serve in the House of Lords; and do so during their lives but cannot pass such privileges to their children. Again, the House of Lords can only advice the House of Commons, but are not a co-policy making body with the House of Commons.

England established effective control of Nigeria in 1914. She bequeathed to Nigeria her parliamentary form of government.

The first republic of Nigeria was parliamentary. In understanding how the English made laws, we understand how laws were supposed to be made in the first era self governing Nigeria.

In the British Parliamentary system, elections are held. Many parties contest elections. At the end, votes are counted and whichever party wins the majority is invited by the Queen to form Her Majesty’s next Government. In England of today there are many parties but only two are relevant in real political discourse: the Labor party and the Conservative Party (we might also mention the Liberal party and the Social Democratic party). English governments are these days formed by either Labor or Tory (Conservatives).

The leader of the winning party becomes the Prime Minister. His lieutenants assume the posts that they had been shadow ministers of when they were in opposition.

The Prime Minister and his cabinet essentially rule England. Each minister is given a ministry to supervise. In real life, the permanent secretary of a ministry, a civil servant, rules his ministry, but in political terms, the “perm-sec” merely advises the political minister, and the later is supposed to be the one who makes decisions regarding his ministry. The minister, in turn, works with his fellow cabinet members and the prime minister in making the decisions affecting the Realm.

Legislation in the House of Common goes like this. The prime minister and his cabinet introduce most of the Bills that are discussed and eventually become law. But on paper, all members of Parliament are entitled to introduce their ideas of what policy they want enacted into law. The Bill is handed to the Speaker of the House. The Speaker gives it to the civil servant clerk of the House to read. It is then routed to a parliamentary committee where it is studied, debated and hearings held. Ultimately, amendments are made to the Bill. Then the committee votes on it and if it passes it is routed to the Full House for further debate. If the entire House approves it by a simple majority, it is sent to the House of Lords for further debate and voting. As noted, the opinion of the Lords is not binding, for if the Lords reject the Bill, the prime minister can still submit it to the Queen for her signature (assent) anyway. The Queen must sign the Bill, she has no choice in the matter for she does not rule England and cannot reject the people’s will. When she signs it, it becomes a Parliamentary Act, part of the statutory law of the Land.

(Unlike the United States that has a written constitution Britain does not have a written constitution so her laws are essentially an accumulation of parliamentary Acts and the rulings of judges. Britain is a Common Law country. I should say that unlike the United States, there is no Supreme Court in Britain. The highest court in the land is the Privy Council, a committee of the House of Lords. This council acts as the final court of appeal in England.)

The above is a brief summary of how laws are made in Britain. It seems very simple but the devil lies in the details. For our present purposes, the relevant point is that Nigeria inherited the British parliamentary democracy system and for the first six years of her independence attempted to practice that mode of making laws and public policies.

It appears that the first Nigerian republic learnt well from Britain and from all available evidence was initially well behaved. The then Nigerian MP, apparently, was as good as the English MP. Then Nigerians listened to the call of the jungle and embraced lawlessness.

In 1966, the military intervened in Nigerian politics and scattered the politicians who by then had redefined their function as that of being thieves stealing from Nigeria’s treasury rather than leaders managing the Nigerian economy. (I must confess that one of the greatest joys of my life is sitting in the galleries watching British Parliamentary debates, particularly watching cabinet ministers and the Prime Minister Answer questions. Their mastery of the English language and knowledge of facts and figures on every facet of British life is something that one wished that Nigerian leaders had. The typical Nigerian politician would not know such a simple data as how many students are in Nigeria secondary schools, how many passed the O. L last year etc. But the British Prime Minister, on the spot, would give you data on most aspects of British life. That is real governance.)

Nigeria was ruled by the military from 1966 to 1979. During that time, the military ruling council, composed of the head of state, the military upstart that took over the government, and his appointed cabinet made decisions that governed the entire country.

At the state level, the military governor, appointed by the head honcho military leader at the center, and his cabinet made decisions that governed the state.

In 1979, the then military leader, Olusegun Obasanjo decided to hand power to a civilian government. Before doing so, he wrote a spanking new constitution for Nigeria. He embraced the American presidential system of government and discarded the British parliamentary system.

Shehu Shagari was elected the first executive President of Nigeria and governed until 1984 when the military returned to power. The military, playing musical chairs among them selves, governed Nigeria until 1999. In 1999 the last military strong man Abdul Salami handed the government to a civilian elected president, a former military leader of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo.

The 1999 constitution bequeathed to the nation by Mr. Salami is American styled presidential system. It is doubtful that this constitution is legitimate? A constitution is a set of rules that the people accept as how they want to play their political game. It is legitimate only if the people themselves wrote it, or wrote it through their elected representatives. In as much as the 1999 constitution was not written by the people, even if it is good on paper, it does not represent the people’s wishes and, therefore, strictly speaking, is illegal. Shall we then say that the present political dispensation in Nigerian is illegal? In as much as they rule under a constitution that was not written by the people they are not ruling, as Jean Jacque Rousseau would say, by the people’s general will.

That not withstanding let us briefly see what this Yankee constitution demands of legislators in Nigeria.

Whereas in the British Parliament the three branches of government: legislative, executive and judicial are fused and are in Parliament, the American system of government separates the three branches of government.

Charles Montesquieu had recommended the separation of powers to avoid tyranny and the Americans listened to him and structured their government accordingly. Thus, the three branches of governing are separated and are in fact required to compete with each other; they are supposed to be in adversarial relationship. The idea is that their in-fighting would prevent one person from becoming too powerful, prevent tyranny and, that way protects democracy and liberty. The legislature is supposed to check the president , the president the legislature and the judiciary is supposed to make sure that all play by the rules of the game and punish whoever does not do so. (John Marshall, the first Chief Justice of America managed to extend the role of the judiciary by adding judicial review to it, even though the constitution did not specify that it do so.)

In America, Congress is parliament. Congress is composed of two houses, the House of Representatives and the Senate. Members of the lower House (Representatives) serve two years, members of the upper House (Senate) serve six years.

America is divided into 435 Congressional districts and each elects a Congressman to Congress every two years. The upper House, the Senate has each state electing two senators to the Senate every six years.

(As you know, there are differences in the population of American states and you wonder why large and small ones should have the same number oaf senators? California, the largest state in the union, has 35 million people. Alaska, although geographically the largest state in the country, has only 635,000 people. Yet each state has two Senators. Alaska has just one Congressman while California has 54. This is because representation in the lower house, more or less, is based on population; each representative represents approximately 500,000 Americans. Smaller states can have one representative, as Alaska and others do. The idea is to make the lower house democratic and the upper house aristocratic. The lower house represents the people and the upper house represents vested interests in the country. Moreover, the equal representation of the states in the Senate is a way of saying that all states are equal despite their population differences. It remains to be seen whether this structure is democratic or not, but we are not talking about American democracy but Nigerian’. We only referred to America for Nigeria has seen it fit to copy America’s system of democracy, a very problematic democracy itself. In America, the powerful and the rich rule the land. It costs millions of dollars to elect Congressman so that only the rich can run for political office. America is ruled by the rich, making what obtains in America either an aristocracy of money or Oligarchy, but strictly speaking, not a participatory democracy. Indeed, 50% of Americans don’t even bother going to the polls to vote on Election Day.)

In the American system, the House of Representative has 435 members, and the Senate has 100 members. Both Houses follow similar parliamentary procedures. The lower House is headed by the Speaker and the upper House is headed by a President (who is always the vice president of America…he is not always there in the Senate, so the senate generally has a president Pro Tem during its discussions; if there is a tie in votes, the vice president is shipped in to break the tie in favor of the president.)

Laws are made in America pretty much as they are made in Britain. Theoretically, each member of Congress can introduce a Bill but only Bills introduced by the administration and or powerful members of the House are likely to be acted on. A member writes a Bill, that is, writes on paper what he wants to see become law, or policy; he does so in the accepted legalistic format; there is a department of Congress that helps members draft their Bills in legal jargon. The Bill is handed to Mr. Speaker, if in the lower house, or to Mr. President, if in the upper house.

The Speaker/President reads the Bill to the House. Actually, his clerk reads it, usually to an empty House since members are not obligated to hear it. The Speaker/President then routes the Bill to the Committee that he thinks should handle the matter.

Congress has many Standing committees and Ad hoc committees. Standing committees tend to correspond with government departments, such as defense committee (overseeing defense matters), judiciary committee (supervising judicial matters, appropriation committee (supervising financial matters), international relations committee (supervising international relations matters etc). Ad hoc committees are set up to deal with temporary issues and end when the issues are resolved. Each committee is further divided into sub-committees, to deal with specific issues.

Each committee is composed of about 19 members. Generally, the committee is divided among the two parties, Republicans and Democrats. It is divided according to their representation in Congress. At the present, the Republicans have a slight edge over Democrats, so they generally have about two more members in each committee and have its powerful chair persons. Thus, there would be 11 republicans and 8 democrats in each committee, with the chair a republican.

(For decades, democrats ruled Congress before the Republicans took over control of it in the 1990s. It looks like the Republicans are going to be in control of Congress, Presidency and Judiciary for a long time to come. Why? It seems that the democrats have marginalized themselves; they have managed to alienate ordinary Americans by championing such absurd policies as homosexuality, abortion on demand, and other idiotic liberal courses that destroy the social fabric rather than strengthen the nation.)

A Bill comes to the committee and the committee chair decides when to hold public hearing on it. In the meantime, he sets his civil service staff to study it, particularly to cost it out; that is, show the financial aspect of the Bill, figure out what the proposed bill would cost the tax payers. If you want to give the entire country medical coverage, how much would it cost to do so and where would we obtain the funds to pay for it? Bureaucrats come up with these figures for the chair. It might take these bureaucrats many years to obtain the required information.

The chair then decides what to do with the Bill, and if he judges it frivolous, kills it by not wasting time on it by having public hearing on it. If he decides that it warrants public hearing, he sets a date for such hearing and publicizes it in Congressional reporter (journal).

All American citizens who wish to testify, for or against the bill, have the right to call and ask to come and testify. In reality, it is mostly interest groups that have the ability, information and other resources who come and testify.

On the scheduled day, folks come and testify for and against a Bill. The testimonies may last weeks, months or forever. When hearings are done, and amendments are made to reflect the consensus of the committee members desires…it is at the committee that real politics takes place, Bills are changed, amended to obtain other members support…Bills are bargained, trade offs made, and compromises reached, this is real politics stuff, not idealistic politics…. the chair then calls for vote.

If members approve the Bill by a simple majority, it goes to the Full House. But before the vote, party leaders, through their whips make sure that their party members on the committee vote as the party requires them to vote. Whereas each member has a right to vote independently, a member who ignores the party’s wishes may not be reelected come the next election. Indeed, the party leadership might marginalize him and get him out of the loop, the backdoors where real decisions are made, not in public hearings where members grandstand for the press and public.

If the Bill passes committee it goes back to the Speaker who decides when to have the full House debate it and after debates (here further amendments are made to the Bill) a vote is called for. Again, party leaders remind members how they are expected to vote on the Bill. If it passes the entire house and passes the other house (Bills are introduced in the two houses concurrently, if it originates in one house, the person introducing it must find some one in the other chamber to introduce it in the other house), the two leaders of Congress, the Speaker and President pro-tem, appoint a conference committee to reconcile whatever differences there are in the two Houses approved versions of the Bill. Then the final version is voted on again and approved by the two Houses.

I must add that the Senate has an added procedure that the lower house does not have, filibuster. Here, a Senator can talk for however long he wants to on an issue and thereby prevent bringing the Bill to a vote. He represents a sovereign state and no one can ask him to stop speaking if he decides to talk. He could bring a novel and read it aloud to the House. He may talk for days, weeks and years. Whenever the Bill is brought up, he takes the floor and talks his heart out and takes up the entire time scheduled for the Bill hence prevent voting on it.

Senate Procedural rules stipulate that a Bill will not be voted on until all senators have talked all they want on it. In the past, Southern Senators used to use this mechanism to kill voting on any civil rights Bill. That way, they did nothing to end segregation.

Frustrated, blacks bypassed Congress and went to the judiciary for help. The 1954 Supreme Court landmark ruling on Brown versus Topeka, Kansas School Board, in effect, ended segregation in schools. Congress had refused to integrate schools and the NAACP had to use the court system to change the Jim Crow laws of the land.

Using the Court in this manner is a double edged sword, for all kinds of radicals now use the Court to legislate their views into law, rather than have the people’s representatives do the law making. Thus, judicial activist judges in either the right or left use the Bench to make laws, rather than construe the constitution strictly. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe versus Wade made abortion legal even though a majority of Americans oppose abortion on demand; the courts are on the curve of making homosexuality legal.)

If the conference committee reconciles the differences in the Bill, it goes to the President to sign it. If he signs it, it becomes the law; if he refuses to sign it, veto it, it dies. If it is vetoed, Congress can revote on it and if two thirds vote for it, it overrides the President’s veto. No party has two-thirds majority in Congress so it is near impossible to override the president’s veto.

The above is pretty much how laws are made in America, be it at the national, state or local level. At the state level, the state legislature follows the same procedures and when a Bill is passed goes to the governor for his signature or veto. Governor Arnold Schwasenegger just vetoed a California Bill that would have made homosexuality legal in that state. At the county and city levels, the same process is followed. The County council is the legislative body and the County Executive is the executive arm of government. At the city level, the city council is the legislative body and the mayor is the executive. The same process is followed in making laws at the local level as at the state and central levels.

As we pointed out in our lecture on interest groups, laws in America are made by a confluence of parties including the President, Congressional committees (particularly the chairperson), top bureaucrats and interest groups. Some argue that in fact interest groups rule America. Socialist scholars tend to argue that America is ruled by elite of powerful interest groups. There is some merit to their views but as I pointed out before, it seems that America is a pluralistic democracy and many groups affect law and public policy.

What is self evident is that the rich and powerful have more access to influencing Congress than the poor. African Americans, who are generally poor, have little or no influence on legislation. (In Louisiana, the average black makes less than $1000 a month, an amount not even good enough to for renting a good apartment.) Blacks are poor and do not affect public policy. Until last year, there was not even one black man in the Senate. Barrack Osama, whose father is from Kenya, was elected Senator from Illinois.

It is simply self-evident that whites rule America and that blacks are marginalized. But this is real politics and one is not being sentimental about reality. It is for blacks to get their acts together and figure out a way to play an effective role in the governing of America. Consider that at present all Western Europeans can come to America without visas. But Africans are required to have visas, which they seldom obtain, to come to America. The result is that America preserves its European majority. Why not encourage more Africans to come to America and that way reduce the domination of whites over blacks? Politics is war by other means, so Africans must fight their war to make themselves given the same opportunities, as others are given. In war as in politics people do not get what they want without struggling for it.

MAKING LAWS IN NIGERIA

I took the trouble to describe how laws are made in Britain and America because Nigeria’s legislature is supposedly patterned after them. If you have understood what I described above, you have an idea of how laws are supposed to be made in Nigeria.

Let us recapitulate the legislative process in Nigeria. The 1999 constitution gives Nigeria a bicameral legislature: a lower house and an upper house, a National Assembly and a Senate. As in the U.S, the lower house is elected democratically (supposedly) and the Senate is elected on equal basis, each state sending five senators to Abuja.

The legislative process in both houses is supposed to work as in America. When the new political dispensation began, Nigerian legislators came to America to understudy how Congress works. They went home and, as expected, “Nigerianized” the new system. What does it mean to be a Nigerian?

To be a Nigerian is to have the genius for figuring out ways to steal. So the Nigerian National Assembly is nothing but an outfit for figuring out a way to rob the country.

Bills are introduced in the house and sent to the respective committees. The chair of each committee is supposed to study the Bill and have public hearings. Here, the real Nigerian rises to the occasion.

Those who introduced a Bill usually go to work and bribe the committee members…if not the Bill dies. Even government ministers, as testified by Mr. Fabian Osuji, the former minister of education, (my cousin, Fabian Osuji, the real Fabian Osuji, I hope that you read this lecture) have to bride the committee chairs to see policies introduced by their ministries voted on. If you have money to bribe someone your bill sees the light of day, voted on and passed.

If you have the money to bribe the executive branch of government, at least, those working there, if not the president himself (?) the president signs it into law. The chances are that the president would not be shown the Bill unless some one bribes the lower echelon persons working for him.

It takes bribery to even obtain supposedly free government forms. If so, you can only imagine how much it would cost for the minions and sycophants working for the president to bring a Bill to his attention.

Obasanjo claims to be fighting corruption. Fighting corruption indeed. Let us see. He jets around in a publicly funded plane. Does he refund the public when he uses that plane to fly to his home for pleasure? In America, the president can only use Air Force one for official business. If he uses it for personal business, such as fly to raise funds for his party, he must refund the public for the cost. If a public official uses a government vehicle for non-official purposes he must refund the public for such exercise.

In Nigerian, government ministers have publicly paid drivers drive them around for non-official business. In America, they would be fired from their jobs for such an act. Members of Congress do not have public vehicles assigned to them and fly commercial planes when they travel.

The point here is that on paper Nigeria has a system that is supposed to make laws in a democratic manner but that is not what happens in reality. As a master of fact, the National Assembly has a broken record. As I pointed out on the lecture in public policies, the Nigerian government is solving no problems. One cannot point to any serious policy by this government in six years in office. What exactly has Obasanjo and company done to benefit Nigeria?

Nigerian school leavers cannot obtain jobs; we have over 50% unemployment. If an American president has over 6% unemployment he is out of office. But it is only in Nigeria that folks are placed in office to do nothing. So what are Obasanjo and the members of the National Assembly doing for Nigeria other than “eating bribes” and growing fat bellies?

The outstanding educational system Nigerian inherited from Britain has fallen apart. Those of us who went to secondary school in the sixties and early seventies found American education a joke for our secondary school education was as good as the first two years of university education in America. But now, university graduates in Nigeria cannot even do undergraduate work in America. So why did the government permit our school system to fall apart.

Do we, in fact, have leaders in Nigeria or is it the case that what we have are animals governing Nigeria? One wonders. From what jungle did the leaders of Nigeria crawl out from? These people are an insult to the term human beings. They are beneath contempt. Here we have a situation where the rest of the world thinks that Africans are subhumans and are unintelligent and our leaders give them the ammunition to have that belief.

Look at the streets of Onitsha and Aba: garbage is on them. What fools govern these cities? Have they not heard about city administration, about how to tax citizens and their properties; obtain the funds to run city. The primary function of city administration is to provide water, electricity, collect and dispose garbage, pave roads and run elementary and secondary schools. So how come our city leaders are not doing these things. Are they men or animals? Ah, they see being elected to offices as opportunity to be very important persons. But very important doing what?

You are standing in line to buy food at a MacDonald restaurant and behind you is your Senator or Congressman or Governor or Mayor. He cannot jump the line. You sit down with him and chat about politics. You relate to him as you would any other person. You ask him what he has done for the state, city lately. He tells you why he should be elected to office: because of what he does for you and the state.

By contrast, in Nigeria we have semi-illiterate politicians masquerading as very important men and women. In fact, when you talk to them…and I have had the opportunity to talk to many of them…you feel like you are talking to fools. They practically know nothing about management of public affairs. All they seem to care for is being seem as very important persons and stealing from the public. The governors’ specialty is to take their state portion of federal revenue sharing and come to the West and buy multi million dollar mansions.

So what are these people, human beings or animals? They are despicable. (Notice that I do not even bother mentioning their names, why mention the nations of criminals. I know exactly who is in the National Assembly and who chairs what committee but why bother mentioning their names if they do not do their jobs? These creatures are not even worthy of footnotes in books on politics.)

In the current Nigerian dispensation, the legislative system at the national level is replicated at the state and local levels. Nigeria is divided into 36 states. These states are essentially dependent on the center for their survival. The center goes to oil producing states, takes their oil and the revenue from oil and shares it between the federal government and state governments. This way the state governments do not have to generate their own income, as they should. Every state government ought to be able to fund its activities by itself. That is the case in America.

In America where the federal government has money to extend to states, states compete for it. Grants. States and or businesses apply to get federal rant money to perform specific functions and if they succeed in getting it, account for how every penny of it is spent.

Nigerian states are not real states. Folks talk of wanting real federalism; how can you have true federalism if the states are dependent on the center for funding? Whoever pays the piper calls the tune. Obasanjo controls the so-called state governors. The later, in turn, control their local government chairs.

The states are divided into Local Government Areas, LGA (as in counties in America). Each LGA has its own council and chair person. The council is the legislative arm and the chair is the executive arm of government. The chair person obtains money from the Governor (who is supposed to share the money he obtains from the center with the local governments). The chair person proceeds to do with that money as he wants. No accountability is built into the system.

I have question: why do we need politicians, governors and chair persons of local governments handling money? In America, money is not handled by elected persons but by civil servants. Thus the state chief accountant could receive the state’s federal revenue share and work with his staff to manage it. As a civil servant he can be removed from office at any moment, so he has less leeway to mismanage the funds. At present, Governors have immunity from prosecution and cannot be prosecuted while in office. This way they steal all the money they want and nothing can be done about it. It is only in Nigeria that such an absurdity can happen.

The local government areas are composed of towns and cities. The towns and cities have their own town councils and leaders; these two obtain some money from the LGA and proceed to squander it in riotous living.

Nigeria is a country where the city council doesn’t accept that it is its function to pave city streets. So what is its function? Dress up in flowing robes and masquerade as ogas?

Last week, Governor Orji Kalu, that child in an adult’s body, was blaming the Federal government for the deplorable condition of the streets of Aba. As he sees it, it is for the Federal government to pave his city streets. If so, what exactly is his job, to visit America every week and stay at his several mansions? This man is an imbecile and is not worthy of being a dog catcher. But this brain dead nothing wants to become the next Nigerian president and plans to ride ethnic jingoism to that office. He claims that it is the Igbos turn to produce the next president of Nigeria and positions himself as the most qualified Igbo candidate. If the best that the Igbos can produce is this nincompoop, the Igbos are finished as a political force in Nigeria.

CONCLUSION

On paper, the legislative process in Nigeria is similar to what obtains in the United States of America. Understanding the legislative process in America enables one to understand how it is supposed to work in Nigeria hence I spent some time offering a summary of how this phenomenon works in America.

The legislative process is not working in Nigeria. One hopes that in time that Nigerians will gather and write their own constitution and make it work for them. I personally prefer the British parliamentary system. I wish that Nigeria has that system. But should Nigerians prefer to have a presidential system, as long as it is their choice, made freely by their delegates, so be it.

If Nigerians choose the American system of government, then let them make it work as it should. Let them make laws as they should.

No one in his right mind expects human beings to be perfect. We are not angels; there will always be corruption in the human polity. There is corruption every where in the world. There is corruption in America.

What realistic men expect is for corruption to be reduced to the absolute minimum. If, say, five percent of public officials in Nigeria are corrupt, we can manage to get things done despite them. But for the entirety of officials to be corrupt, well, nothing can be accomplished.

Nigeria is a pathetic country. It only seems to be doing okay because it obtains oil money. But when that source of revenue runs dirty, Nigeria will become another failed African state.

Imagine what would happen if 130 million Nigerians are starving. The world has never seen such suffering before. But Nigerians seem to insist on producing this catastrophe.

Nigerians destroy their country and run to the well ordered polities of America and Western Europe. Here, too, they embark on their nefarious criminal actives. Left alone, these lawless, wild men will destroy the honor system that makes America work.

In America, for example, you go to a newspaper stand, put in your money, fifty cents, and take one paper and nobody is watching you so you could take more than one. If it were in Nigeria, one person would take all the papers and go resale them. He would think that what he did is smart. It never occurs to him that if every person does what he did that chaos and anarchy would reign in the land.

In effect, Nigerians seem very unintelligent. May be they are less intelligent than other races, as white racists speculate? If these people were minimally intelligent, they would recognize the utility of making their house as orderly as it could be. If ones house is disordered, one is not likely to have peace of mind. But, like thoughtless children, Nigerians think that they can create disorder and have an orderly country, impossible.

Be that as it, we shall never give up on our mother hand. We will keep talking about the problems of Nigeria, though they seem intractable, until we fix them. We must fix them. We must eventually make our legislative body a real law making arm of government. Until then we do not have real legislatures in Nigeria.

Ozodi Thomas Osuji

Ozodi@africainstituteseattle.org

October 15, 2005

Next lecture, # 12, October 17, topic: the executive organ of Government in Nigeria.