“Trust is a matter of bets about future actions based on experience. A track record of keeping promises is a good predictor”. Rosabeth Kanter, Editor, Harvard Business Review; Sept-October 1992. (VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS p 252).

“Let me seize this opportunity to assure all Nigerians that I feel the pains that you all feel”. President Goodluck Jonathan’s address to the nation after subsidy removal. Permit me, Mr President of Nigeria, on behalf of my constituency, the “Area Boys of Nigeria”, to wish you a pleasant 2012 – if you deserve it.

To this Barbara Tuchmann, the leading authority on thirteenth and fourteenth century Europe had added: “History does not repeat itself; man does”. President Goodluck Jonathan and his government on one side and the Nigerian Labor movement as well as civil society groups had just taken the entire country through the same rigmarole we have experienced before each time a government had increased the price of petrol.

“When those in office regard the power vested in them as personal prerogatives, they inevitably enrich themselves , promote their families, favour their friends. The fundamental structures of the modern state are eroded Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s Prime Minister.

Last Sunday, January 1, 2012, the first part of this series of articles ended as follows: “SUBSIDY IS GONE. Hardship begins!!!!” The next day Nigerians woke up to discover that, while they slept, the government they elected in April 2011, had stabbed them in the back.