And Just Who Are the Nigerians?

Abstract

I don’t recollect that this question was directly posed in any of the myriad of foreign radio and television reports and commentaries on Nigerian Elections 2007 that I heard; nonetheless, it was a question that was never too far from the surface details of the reports and commentaries: Just who are these Nigerians? Simply stated, it took the breath of many foreign journalists and pundits away that any nation could be so blatant and crude in enacting electoral fraudulence on such a massive a scale. The presupposition behind this was that even fraudulence requires some subterfuge, some competence, some finesse and a fraudulence which, by any standards in the world, was so inept, chaotic and open called for special understanding.