THE challenge would have been met square and there would have been better results as far as government performance was concerned. A recent World Bank report confirms unequivocally that corruption is responsible for instability, violence and underdevelopment and that a weak government or a government with weak institutions cannot fight corruption effectively.

In a stable political system, progressive forces would make sure that the purveyors of corrupt practices did not get away with it, thus ensuring policy balance and accountable governance in the system. You need a system, whereby if someone in office is doing something wrong, or is taking a doubtful initiative then there will be someone else, equally in power, probably in a different arm of government who will call him to order. Or who could say: ‘Hey, wait a minute, let us examine this initiative more closely to determine its merits and demerits’.

During the Obasanjo administration there was no one who could checkmate him, so many things went wrong. For  that matter the situation remains very much so in many states, although it was a lot more acute during the Obasanjo days. In this respect one needs to be particularly wary of those states in which the relationship between the executive and the legislature is described by officials as ‘cordial’, an adjective used deceptively to mask a rubber- stamp assembly, a great conspiracy between the executive and the legislature to rip-off the electorate for personal gains on both sides.

An idea of what is meant by a balance of progressive  forces and conservative elements in a system is contained in an article titled, “A Gathering Storm” I had written just before the 2011 general elections was to commence on April 2, 2011. The article is reproduced hereafter at the end of this section.

In the article I was critical of the government and of President Jonathan’s recent moves in particular. Although I am pleasantly surprised that the elections have gone off much better than had been expected most of the points raised in the article, at least in my view, remain valid and pertinent.

*Provided that Dr. Jonathan remains steadfast and committed to pursuing and installing a stable and progressive order, I am not worried about the spate of violence in the North that greeted his election on April 16, 2011, not withstanding that those incidents were criminal, mindless, highly reprehensible, subversive and treasonable. They are in my view nothing but desperate rearguard insurgencies or will presently amount to vestigial insurgencies of a retiring order.

The message I want political leaders, particularly Northern political leaders to get is this: Although it is often easily forgotten, the most durable peace always comes from a process of peaceful resolution of conflicts. Even when violence has occurred you still need to sit down and talk it over and it is only then that there will be any prospects of peace. Violence as a strategy for resolving conflicts almost always begets more violence and in many instances results in cyclical waves of more violence.

Today, in  just over two centuries, after the formation of their union,  America has managed to become the world leader of stability and sustainable democracy, so much so that America is always the power of choice to resolve any conflict anywhere else in the world, a monumental responsibility that usually requires a highly capable as well as an enlightened, competent leadership.

The  reason America is so  stable and sustainable is because it has over the last two centuries mastered the art of resolving its own internal conflicts and contradictions more or less peacefully. What makes America so unique in this respect is its abiding faith in the force of peaceful advocacy and persuasion and a rejection of coercion as the primary tool for making state policy.

(The United States Constitution expressly forbids the deployment of the country’s war machinery within the continent and when deployed abroad must be backed by an Act of Congress and that is usually after intensive deliberations).

*Nigeria’s commentariat is suffused with doubts as to the compatibility of its different  ethnic nationalities and major religions as well as the sustainability of what is often referred to as the Nigerian project. It is also generally agreed that what was inherited from Britain in 1960 as a nation was a very imperfect job and there were indeed in many quarters, especially among those who should know (those in the corridors of power at that time), that the budding nation would even remotely justify the rhetorical optimism of October 1, 1960 and that the attainment of independence was anything more than a blind leap of faith.

However, the greatest argument against these fears of the nations incompatibilities and unsustainability of the Nigerian project is that the country has somehow survived the last 50 years, including a civil war. To me that suggests that Nigerians by and large do have some faith in their common destiny and do need each other at least by instinct.

Imagine the devotion, faith and enthusiasm of members of the NYSC, in the face of fatal danger, even as their numbers were being murdered while on election duty.

The commitment, courage, effectiveness and sacrifice of the NYSC members in this election should be a very strong argument against scrapping the scheme or restricting the deployment of members to their zones or states of origin as some reactionaries seem to be suggesting.

The patriotic role which the NYSC members played in this election is the greatest vindication to date of the vision of Gen. Gowon’s government which founded the scheme in 1973.  In other words, the problem in Nigeria is not really whether we have a common destiny and should therefore stick together, but how best to get about it.

The Soviet Union  eventually broke up after some 70 years not because of ethnic, religious or cultural differences but rather because of unsustainably wrong-headed political ideology that resulted in untenable economic and social realities for the country’s teeming populations, regardless of their specific ethnic or religious origins. Nigeria’s contradictions are neither irreconcilable nor peculiar.

Lt.Col PETER ULU ,  rtd, wrote from Lagos.