By the way, the directive was not even to bring Osama ‘dead, not alive’! It was to cast him ‘dead, at sea’! What civilized way to actuate a ‘suspect’! Ironically by the ‘most democratic’, most ‘law-governed’ nation, America, that prides herself as the ‘conscience of humanity’. Clarence Darrow, America’s pre-eminent trial lawyer of his time said of the psychology behind state killers: “before you can get a trial to hang somebody… you must first hate him and then get a satisfaction over his death.”

After the arrest of Finance-House-dupe, Umana-Umana in 1993, some journalists asked the amphibious IBB’s Second-in-Command, Admiral Augustus Aikhomu -known sometimes for comely, imitative terrestrial calmness of his Army boss and most other times for a tempestuous aquatic anger that was uniquely his- “what’ll government do with Umana Umana?”

Niger State is famed, on the one hand, for Power -on account of two contradistinctive sources of power and noted, on the other, for history -on account of two opposing causes of history. As Power State, she is the source of two voltages: one political, being the birth place of two former Military Heads of State, (IBB and Abdulsalami), and the other hydro-electrical, -being home to the nation’s only two hydro- dams, (Kainji and Shiroro).

Towards the 2011 elections, three opposition parties in Niger were up in arms –albeit each on a lonely furrow- against Talba’s re-election: CPC, ACN and the bitter, grudgy old horse, ANPP. And, although CPC’s promise of rough time for the ruling PDP was a virtual fait accompli, the stealthy encroach into the state of ACN was no less threatening.

When I wrote “Talba: Beware the gathering storms”, forewarning my Niger State Governor Dr.Babangida Aliyu, of the imminence of danger ahead of 2011, I was neither metaphysically prophetic nor in my prognosis of the elements was I premonitively predictive of what precisely held for the boisterous Governor of the hydro state famed for his surefooted trudges and verbal jabs that are as self-reassuring to ‘power’ as they often are terribly self-harming to it.

What was Lai Mohammed’s response to the accusation that the ACN had, with ethno-regional bias, betrayed its presidential candidate, Nuhu Ribadu, by voting a non-performing, manifestly retrogressive party, the PDP?: “It is simply unimaginable and highly incongruous that a ‘progressive’ party like the ACN will work for the victory of the PDP which has put Nigeria in reverse gear in the past 12 years”.

Let’s face it: ACN’s claim that the South West voted Jonathan, not PDP, is not any less morally compunctious than say former British Naval Commander, Lord Mountbatten’s apology: “Actually I vote Labor, but my butler is Tory”.

And yet even the harangue of political conscience should be less prickly in a politician apologizing to Tory sentiments because he voted Labor than in a politician apologizing to a righteous public opinion for deliberately voting to support bad governance; and worse even, in repudiation of his hard-earned ‘progressive’ reputation.

These are truly interesting times interesting democratic times, I should say. And, such that one actually wonders what exactly to be analytical about: ‘democracy in action’ or the ridiculous actions of politicians in democracy. ACN’s Akande said that the South-West did not vote PDP.

Literary Author Henrik Ibsen, in most of his works has advanced cogent philosophical rationale for supporting the ‘righteous minority’ -as against, that is, what he described as the “damned compact, liberal majority.” Ibsen was in fact one of few Western literary writers who created and promoted an antithesis to the popular so-called democratic refrain ‘the majority is always right’. He argued on the contrary that it is the minority that is always right “because the minority is usually at some point where the majority is yet to discover”.

I think it is time we put these elections behind us! They are becoming highly distractive, especially to Mr. President. Nothing can be more distractive for a sitting and ‘performing’ President than being asked to tarry awhile so that some routine electoral imperatives of the democratic process are fulfilled. Mandate renewal, they call it. But I call it what it is: ‘waste time’ –and money!