I have sensed a disturbing complacency in our politicians and intellectuals as they try to enunciate democracy for the rest of us. They assume erroneously that democracy is its own justification — that simply being baptized with the moniker of democracy is sufficient. And that Nigerians, dispossessed they may be, will be satisfied with a political concept that, as currently practiced in Nigeria, stands empty of its substantive content.

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But for solid intelligence and tact on the part of the organizers of today’s Abuja “Enough is Enough” rally, led by the Save Nigeria Group (SNG), there would have been bloodbath, police sources say. Saharareporters has learned that the governor of Bayelsa State, Timipre Sylva and his Bauchi counterpart Isah Yuguda, paid for the mobilization of miscreants to clash with respected Nigerians who were organizing the rally to force Yar’Adua to resign.

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As the trial of James Ibori’s associates hots up in Southwark Crown Court, London pressure grows on his UK collaborators, with one of his lawyers Tony Baldry (a Conservative Member of the UK Parliament) being forced to deny that he had misused his position as an MP to attempt to get the Ibori trail quashed.

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2011 Elections and the Road to Nowhere: In the coming weeks and months there will appear to be feverish efforts and activities, all purportedly aimed at ensuring successful conduct of the general elections slated for next year 2011. This is against the infamous distinction that Nigeria has unfortunately earned as a place where free and fair elections cannot be expected.

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For Nigeria’s financial service and banking sector, 2009 was a tumultuous year that witnessed the revelations in the cooked account books of banks, the non-performing loans saga, the sack of bank chiefs by the current CBN governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the mass sack of over 7000 staff by banks who are now thrown into our overflowing jobless market, and the failed political leadership. Surmounting these challenges in 2010 will require navigating between former CBN Governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo’s exuberance, over-confidence, and much-talked-about “solution” to the banking woes, and Sanusi Lamido Sanusi’s approach to the monetary policy management and sanitization exercise embarked to clean the mess he inherited from his predecessor.

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