Throughout February I was in Sudan for the CAF Nations Cup Championship. On the fabled fourteenth of that month, I got a mail from Ikeddy Isiguzo, who to you, is the Chairman of the Editorial Board of Vanguard Group of Newspapers.

WITH barely two weeks to go to the presidential election of April 9, 2011, it’s time to begin facing reality. This article is not meant to canvass votes for anybody. It is a candid attempt to convey what I think will happen given the trends observed from the campaigns.

Please, turn off that radio. I’m tired of all these campaign jingles,” said this mother to her teenage undergraduate daughter.

Earlier this year, February 7, precisely, I had gone to speak at the University of Houston, Texas. The English and History Departments, the Houston Fund, and the good folks at the Voices Beyond Boundaries in Houston had made it possible for my visit to talk on a subject I called “Imagined and Transitional nations: matters arising in African Literature” and give readings from my collection of poems, The Horsemen & Other Poems. In the audience, both at the university and later that evening at the reading at the Houston Institute for Culture was a group of Nigerians.

The term ‘democracy’ was originally ‘demos’ and ‘krasi’; Greek for ‘people’ and ‘rule’ -or ‘rule of the people’. But over time, it has etymologically evolved to mean different things to different people. In our own part of the world, the transformation is breathtaking.