Dreamscape: Truancy presages abject failure

Why I was a truant

It is becoming like a haunting of my dreams, for in times past, I played truant. My absence from class could never be properly understood. When one school report included the word "truant," my mother, a secondary school principal at the time, took such offence that I had to check if we were sharing the same meaning of the word.

In secondary school, my truancy was borne of boredom: boring teachers, even more boring subjects, and a total lack of engagement. In my English class, for instance, the whole activity was pedestrian. I was probably not helped by the fact that English is my mother tongue, as opposed to a second language, even though it was the official language of Nigeria.

Later in life, I came to understand that while I naturally understood the language, I did not understand the mechanics of it. I knew why a sentence had to be a certain way, but not how the elements of language were arranged to make it so. This became evident when a Dutch teacher of English used my intuition as a native speaker to review his notes. I found myself learning about the scaffolding that gives English its structure and grammar.

The unpleasantness of bad English

Elsewhere, my disinterest was compounded by distraction. In certain classes, I was so clueless about what was going on that I drew a total blank. It would have been so helpful to have had a student affairs department that addressed emotional, mental, and psychological health; I might have been saved a lot of misery.

The worst culprit, however, was a lecturer in electrical materials. His teaching style rankled to the point of irritation, and how he ever became a lecturer in a tertiary institution baffles me to this day. If he had used sign language, I might have been more engaged. Nearly every sentence of more than two words contained a malapropism or a grammatical flaw, and I felt such an urge to correct him that I could barely listen.

I remember in primary school, a new pupil came to our class and announced, "Teacher told me to come to class." We all laughed, as it sounded different, strange, and odd. He ended up in another class, but we soon became good family friends.

Always found wanting in Maths class

The haunting that has invaded my dreams for a long time now is finding myself in an advanced Mathematics class with no idea of what is going on. The lecturer walks in expecting the submission of some homework and then continues a topic I cannot seem to grasp, with the final examinations only a couple of weeks away. It is never a comfortable place to be; in that dreamy world, you are left wondering how to avert the looming prospect of failure.

I do, however, remember one final Mathematics examination. On the Friday before, I was not convinced I had the wherewithal to tackle the subject to the best of my ability. I found a primary school blackboard and worked through each of the topics to fix the gaps in my understanding. By Sunday evening, I was sharing better proofs of equations and theorems with others. I got an 'A' in that subject.

Between the dreamland that occupies the present and the reality of old, where I got it all together, I think of copying my friend's notes to pay off the knowledge deficit. Yet, a niggling thought suggests that I will not be able to pull it off.

The dream never goes beyond the lecture class, but the foreboding of failure lingers. What is it in my life that is showing up as a parable of omission and unpreparedness in my dreams? That is the mystery, something to pray for insight about.

Commending the civic Nigerian

Arise, O Compatriots

First, I must commend ordinary Nigerians, for their longsuffering, unquenchable hope, infectious optimism and sense of civil duty.

The vote was arranged and despite the rotten lack of preparation and planning that would outrage any paying customer, they went out to their local polling stations queued up, waited and eventually some got served, they voted and moved on, they had done their part.

The next level of optimism is in expecting that single vote to count along with all other legitimate votes to produce the for majority will of the people, that person that has ministered the prospective best for Nigeria or the probably aspiration to improving the lot of Nigerians.

I got a feel of this expectation and hope when I spoke to my mum yesterday morning, she was half-hoping her vote would count and half-worried that whatever counts would not produce a mandate accountable to Nigerians, such that the elected once in office would go out to line their pockets as those before them.

The coverage

The BBC and CNN gave considerable coverage to the elections in Nigeria all through the day and I had a suspicious feeling that this was as a result of the shameless gaffe of the Chairman of the INEC when he let out on Friday that the ballot papers were still in South Africa.

It is interesting to note that Nigeria seemingly does not have the kind of facilities secure enough to produce sensitive ballot papers keep those under wraps till needed, for a country that has such a large number of law enforcement agents and armed forces, one would have thought; first a secret location for the activity would be found, then a rotation of personnel would keep the place secure.

However, one might surmise that those personnel could have been persuaded to turn a blind eye to highly place miscreants who want to steal the ballots, though printing the ballots in South Africa would only have put that out of sight of poor resourced bandits.

The wayward ballot

As the day began we heard about a failed attempt to blow up the INEC headquarters with a petrol tanker; I do not know the layout of the area, but one would wonder how such an important building could have be erected in such a vulnerable place at the foot of an incline. Ijebuman has a very interesting take on why the attack was not successful - it would have funny if it were not so tragic, said Chxta; it would have been tragic if it were not so funny, said I.

The ballot papers did arrive in Nigeria at 16:00 on Friday and there began the frenzy to get the ballots out to the polling stations which were to open 2 hours late. INEC even suggested the Air Force might to called upon to help get the papers out to the nether regions, well they should not have been on standby, they should have been engaged in the logistics process as a sure run.

However, a BBC correspondent only had to go to a polling station on the outskirts of Abuja to find that the papers had not arrived hours after the station were supposed to be open.

When some voters learnt that the ballot papers provided who not go round the number of registered voters, they went into a rampage, one of the violent reactions resulted in the death of a few policemen.

Forbearance and patience is giving way to frustration and that gets taken out on hapless officials who have to stretch resources to accommodate the criminal failings of the centre.

All lights come from CNN

When the vote ended, the shame of it all was exposed with an innocuous news item on CNN, the ballot enumerators were seemingly counting in the dark and the lights from CNN were used to help them do the tallies - Why? The most critical infrastructure problem in Nigeria which is the distribution of electricity had failed at a point where Nigeria's great democracy was being exposed to the world.

In secondary school we had lanterns for nights when the light were out, the enumerators could have been given high luminosity lanterns - the quip the the followed the report highlighted the long trail of un-preparedness that the Chairman of INEC would eventually come out to declare a success.

One Ambassador Young appeared on CNN in an interview and tried to equate the irregularities in Nigeria with happenings in Florida 2000 and Georgia, the interviewer did not buy any of that trash.

Religious men or men of integrity

This brings me another issue, about the vote and the progress of democracy. When I called home the undercurrent I received in terms of who people would vote for was that everyone wanted to vote for a godly man.

In fact, it was not so much a godly man because that is a representation of character but religious men, people who wear their religion on their sleeves, whose every waking word includes God vouching for their every deed but whose reality is probably a deceitful lip-service that counts for too much in Nigeria.

It occurred to me that what we really need are men of integrity, honest, truthful and with a sense of responsibility and duty regardless of if they go to Church everyday, pray at the mosque 10 times a day or make chicken sacrifices to animist gods in the deepest jungles.

Basically, religion does not make an honest man, however, if it forms the basis of the principles that guide a man of integrity that is fine. Unfortunately, a lot of religious people would be voted for and if there be a man if integrity amongst them, hopefully that person also has a deep sense of responsibility to know that it is call to serve the people.

Nobody is building Rome again

Rome was not built in a day we hear, time and again, my question is who is trying to build Rome again? That Rome has come and gone and new Rome exists hopefully built on the lessons of the Romes of the past.

In the same vein, nobody goes about reinventing the wheel; we take the same principle and apply to the unsophisticated push cart, the bicycle or expensive automobile.

Why is it that when it comes to democracy in Nigeria we cannot take lessons from other democracies and brains from the conduct of elections even in places like South Africa and Ghana, probably India or the new democracies of Eastern Europe, perhaps the young democracies of Spain and Portugal?

I left out America, Australia, Canada and the UK because the countries mentioned have hardly practiced democracy from more than 60 years, in fact, most have been doing so in the last 10 to 30 years.

Using the experiences of others

It is not as if we do not utilise the best technologies in our banks and business or use the best gadgets to make life easier in Nigeria, at least during the voter registration exercise some bloggers commented about the use of fingerprint technologies.

If for our individual and business good we adopt all these methods, process, procedures and technologies why should the most important common good of Nigeria be left to expectations of poor performance and everyone subscribe to the excuses rather than a clear determination to do things right having learnt lessons and acquired expertise from those who have done it successfully before?

We cannot continue to rely on the hopeful miracle of everything turning out right when adequate planning can do a lot to ensuring that everything does turn out right.

Meanwhile we wait for the legitimate count of the votes, but if 24 instead of 25 presidential hopefuls appear on the ballot papers, we would be doing this again very soon - If the keeps bottle anger permanently corked is another matter entirely.

INEC frustrates Nigerians with incompetence

Incompetence becomes INEC

Many Nigerian Bloggers have already reported on the elections that took place in Nigeria yesterday and I am not going to add much to that.

However, going to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) website, it would appear the time they should have spent sorting out their logistics was probably expended in the politics of disenfranchisement of Nigerians.

In all the time that they had to prepare for the elections, how is it that on election day some polling stations were only opening up 6 hours late or not at all? BBC.

Then the President whose total 11 and a half years in office represents a failure that history would most assuredly record has the temerity to suggest that the polling had gone relatively well.

Time and again, the ruling parties have frustrated Nigerians in order to obscure and manipulate the electoral will of the people and usually with success.

Indeed there are issues of safety and security for the precious votes of Nigerians and the polling officials who need to be able to do their work without fear or favour.

Trying us by trying

Nigerians have been longsuffering if not supinely docile to accept half-measures, incompetence and shoddy planning as sufficient even that the mentality of low expectations is translated into one phrase - They tried.

We should stop trying and start doing and from what happened yesterday for something so critical to the survival and future of Nigeria to be handled with such confusion and levity is a disgrace.

So when INEC announces that the law makers and journalists were happy with INEC's facilities and level of preparedness, I read that with an overdose of healthy skepticism - the use of the phrase, selected journalists is already a giveaway, sycophantic praise-singers who parrot the desired propaganda.

This entourage visited the INEC headquarters which had over 100 gun-totting mobile policemen - only in Nigeria can legally armed law enforcement officers be called gun totting - a phrase usually associated with militias, gangsters or a force under unruly or ill-disciplined command.

Proper investigative research required

In the end, the entourage was awe-stricken; read - easily impressed, but having a Central Depot does not a national election make, somehow, the entourage should have been visiting locations closer to the polling stations and I doubt if the sycophantic journalists would have had the conscience to relay what they saw.

This obviously makes the visit and views of two former heads of state in the persons of Dr. Yakubu Gowon (1966-1975) and General Muhammadu Buhari (1983-1985) rather immaterial as they pandered to the window-dressing in the centre rather than a proper research of the facts in the regions.

In the circumstances we are saddled with this atrocious service and might have to condone it for now, but if for once we believe that INEC's independence in conducting the elections as free and fair then it would definitely be time for Nigerians to rise and claim their country back from the petty tyrants who have committed this great country to a cabal of corrupt politicians.