After years of suffering the world's finger-pointing, Nigerians woke up Thursday wondering why Africa's most chaotic country is being pressed by Washington to follow the US model. In a country where elections have been rare and where, when they have taken place, rules have been disregarded with abandon, reports of last year's electoral shenanighans in Florida were followed with glee. Missing ballot boxes, uncounted votes, shady officials in charge of events and all this in a state run by the candidate's brother is something most Nigerians would be familiar with, the paper suggested. The man with fewer votes will become president in the most powerful democratic country in the world. Wole Soyinka wrote a column suggesting that Nigeria should do what it could to assist their bewildered American friends.
Many nations are grateful to the United States for establishing democracy.
The latest episode in the Nigerianisation of the United States, radio listeners learned Thursday, was the declaration of a power emergency in California where a bungled deregulation has led to power shortages and from Wednesday rolling, mandatory blackouts. Nigeria, Africa's most populous country with a population of more than 120 million, has suffered power shortages for years. In the past 12 months, the unreliable NEPA system, which is connected up to only around 40 percent of homes in the country, has collapsed totally nationwide on four occasions. The government of President Olusegun Obasanjo is struggling to raise output from around 2,000 to 4,000 megawatts this year but so far, its efforts have been pretty unsuccessful and power outages remain a daily occurence. The Americans are getting just like us.