Elections Without Purpose

There are certain people who keep saying we all must vote, and who keep insisting that anyone who doesn't vote will by definition lose the right to criticize the governments (all three tiers) after the vote.

But what are you supposed to do when the political system is designed to present you with different versions of the same thing you do NOT want as a citizen?  Different versions of the same future disappointment? Are you supposed to keep wasting your time "voting"? By padding the turnout numbers, are you not merely granting the toga of credibility to the very thing you do not want? By picking one of the bad options presented, are you not empowering the bad option to claim that the things he does are done with your permission and approval?

In fact, why do we complain about "rigging" (and even about coups) when we are still going to be forced to stomach a type of government we do not want, even if there is a "free and fair" vote? It is not just that the same type of person will occupy political, bureaucratic and technocratic positions, but very often is is literally the same people.

Please, don't do that thing we sometimes do in Nigeria of looking at the name of the person speaking, and then interpreting everything he or she subsequently says from an ethnic or regional prism. Yes, I am Igbo, but the structure and fundamental nature of Nigerian politics has never made sense to me.

The first political thought I recall having was as a child during the Second Republic. The election was coming up, and I was excited by the pageantry of it all. But then I realized that underneath the facade, the election boiled down to little more Igbos vote NPP, Yorubas vote UPN, and Hausas/Fulanis vote NPN. The regional/ethnic chess game did not stop with the three legs of the so-called "tripod", but as a little child, and as an Igbo, it didn't make sense to me that I was expected to support a party (and the politicians within it) simply because I was Igbo. I wouldn't have been able to properly articulate it at the time, it just seemed to me that it was a stupid way to choose leaders of the country. I would later learn about the 1950s, the First Republic, the Civil War .... and all I could think of was how different it all could have, and should have been. All I could see were the errors and mistakes of people who were, and still are, surprisingly popular considering their decisions set us on a path to the kind of politics we still practices .... and the kind of violence our federal republic is still plagued by.

If we are honest with ourselves, we would admit our method of choosing leaders has not progressed much since the Second Republic, and political figures are wildly popular in specific regions for reasons that have nothing to do with whether they actually understand what our problems are, first of all, before we even ask if they understand the solutions. Actually, and more depressingly, not a lot has changed in our politics since the 1950s. In fact, if there is a so-called "national question" then it is comprised of several dozen questions (plural) that should have been answered in the 1950s, but have not been answered up till now, and do not look like they will be answered any time soon.

It is interesting that we are still being treated to the sights and sounds of people trying to break up the federal republic. There are those who advocate this openly, those who hide their real intent behind euphemisms, and those who aim to create enclaves within the country where the laws of the country do not apply. The biggest problem in Nigerian politics since the 1950s has been the absence of a basic understanding of the strategic interests of the various ethnic nations within the Nigerian federal republic. We would have interacted with ourselves differently, approached our continent differently, and (especially) approached the rest of the planet ... much differently. As it stands, it is 2017, and people are still talking about destroying the best platform from which we can protect ourselves and advance ourselves on this planet that has been designed to function with hostility to our interests.


Anyway, all of this is just rhetoric. Let me say something practical.


The All Progressives Congress (APC) goes on and on about how the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ruined Nigeria over the first 16 years of the Fourth Republic. But have you noticed something about the APC? The APC is comprised almost entirely of the people who ruled Nigeria in the first 16 years of the Fourth Republic. Some of them were PDP, some were AD/AC/ACN, some were ANPP/CPC, and some were APGA/PPA, but all of them, in one way or another, held significant power at the federal and state levels between 1999 and 2015. When they describe the first 16 years of the Fourth Republic as a time of failure, they are indicting themselves as well as their rivals who are still in the PDP for the time being (pending their eventual decamping to the APC. If they couldn't fix Nigeria's problems of Nigeria under their previous incarnations, why are we supposed to believe they will do so as old wine in a new bottle? In fact, is anyone surprised that they are not doing so?

By the way, President Buhari himself may not have held power in the Fourth Republic prior to 2015, but he has served at the highest levels of the Nigerian federal government since the early 1970s, in a variety of powerful portfolios, including that of military Head of State. There are a lot of things his supporters say he can and will do, but he has had more than 47 years in "politics" to do these things, and not only did he not do these things, but realistically he never showed the signs that he could.

Again, I am not an ethnicist and this is not about President Buhari's region of origin. I began this essay by asking whether there was any point to "voting" when there is never anyone on the ballot worth voting for. My critique of Buhari is applicable to all of his predecessors, to all of his would-be predecessors, and to his would-be successors. I started this blog during the Obasanjo Administration, and if you read my posts from the beginning, through the Goodluck Jonathan Administration, up till today, you will find my views are consistent, and are consistently applied to everyone. There may not have been an Igbo president during the Fourth Republic, but figures like Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Charles Soludo (among others) have had strong influence on the direction of Fourth Republic (and on its predictable economic woes), and I have never hesitated in objectively critiquing anyone.

Okay, now that I am done with the unfortunately necessary disclaimers ....

Our politics have always been disconnected from our practical problems. Our politics follow an internally consistent logic that produces recurrent outcomes to "elections" and "coups". The thing is, the internal logic of our politics was never about ascertaining the source of the country's problems, deducing solutions to the country's problems, or vetting potential candidates according to how well they fit into the framework of problem-definition and problem-solution. If anything, your success in Nigerian politics is dependent on convincing "stakeholders" that you have no intention (perhaps no ability) to fundamentally change anything in a way that will put Nigeria on the path to having an economy like that of Germany or Japan.

But in 2019, we will be told we have to vote.

Why? For who? For what?

I'd like to say that before we hold another pointless "vote", our federal republic first needs to have a conversation about .... our federal republic. But in the real world, there would be no point to such a conversation, as it would be dominated by the same personages and voices that we would need to do away with if we are going to have any chance of having a meaningful discourse.

Something has to change.

An Investigative Report on Exam Malpractice

In places where law enforcement and judicial system are perceived (rightly or wrongly) to have some degree of effectiveness, people do break the law in blunt and undisguised ways ... but a much larger number of people (and corporations) contrive of ways to break the spirit and intent of the law, while positioning themselves to be able to argue that their actions could reasonably be construed as falling within the "letter" of the law. The wealthier you are, as an individual or corporation, the more capable you are of organizing your "law-breaking" and eventual legal defence in such a way as to avoid a conviction, or at the very least to ensure that you are convicted of a lesser or even minor offence (often following a plea deal). The poorer you are, the less access you have to these particular tools of "law-breaking".

In Nigeria, the police do arrest people, and the courts do convict people, but Nigeria's people, polity, economy and society operate in a context where the quality of law enforcement and the judiciary is presumed to alternate between involuntarily ineffectual, deliberately dysfunctional and consensually corrupt.

I do not think we Nigerians as a people are "worse" than anyone else when it comes to crime, however, there are certain kinds of crime that are committed bluntly and openly in Nigeria, whereas in other places anyone who wanted to commit the crime (and trust me, many do) would have to be more "sophisticated" in their criminality, or would have to dream wistfully of what they would have done if the risks of getting caught didn't outweigh the possible gain.

There is also the issue of compensation. In certain countries, officialdom are frankly overpaid. Yes, they are paid far more than would be economically feasible if the world's economy was normal. In this context, it is easier to uphold certain standards that are perceived to be beneficial to the society at large.

In Nigeria, where civil servants and pensioners can be owed more than a year's arrears of salary, it can be .... difficult for people with rent due at the end of the month to listen to their conscience. I am not making excuses for their behaviour, but it has long depressed me that Nigerian policy-making does not take into account basic economics. Our governments, at all three tiers, keep coming up with macro-level policies that they claim will lead to particular outcomes, while leaving in place all of the economic realities that effectively force people at the micro level to make decisions that in aggregate will negate whatever it is the macro so-called policy claims it is going to achieve.

Anyway, all this is a set up to get you to read this investigative article from The Punch newspaper. The stats at the bottom of the page indicate only about 450 or so people have read the electronic version of the article, which I think is unfortunate. This is exactly the sort of investigative reporting we all want (or say we want). Yes, I know most Nigerians still get their newspaper news from actual "paper" newspapers, but those get replaced each day and anyone who didn't read it on the day (a year ago) it was published on paper will have missed the news anyway.

A reporter went undercover to expose blatant, unashamed, criminal examination malpractices. I am not one of those people who assumed "everyone" in Nigeria is a criminal (I am a Nigerian, and I am not a criminal), but the exam malpractice problem clearly extends far beyond the single centre the reporter exposed.

And yes, it is a long article in a time when the internet has shortened people's attentions spans, and yes, I know "data" costs in Nigeria. Still, isn't it better to read the facts of a thing that we all know is happening, rather than basing our "knowledge" about it on the usual rumours that are never actually true, even if they are based on (and hint at) things that are true?

 PS: Is it the proper etiquette to say I was directed toward the article by the journalist Kadaria Ahmed? She posted a link.

A Return To Discourse

It has been a couple of years since I posted regularly on this blog. You know how it is with life. A lot has happened, and I have been busy.

There is a new president, but the issues remain the same.

I hope to restart regular commentary.

There is much to talk about.

I am embedding Sunny Okosuns 1980s hit "Which Way Nigeria". It is interesting that he references mistakes make during the 1970s Oil Boom, considering the mistakes we made during the 2000s Oil Boom.

It is also interesting that President Buhari is back for a second stint as Nigeria's Head of State. His first tenure, beginning in 1983, was separated from President Obasanjo's first tenure by a 4-year administration led by a lifelong civilian who took office as the 1970s Oil Boom ended and the emerging global economic environment of the 1980s turned problematic for Nigeria. Decades later, their respective second tenures in the Fourth Republic were separated 8 years, and two lifelong civilians who took over from Obasanjo just as the 2000s Oil Boom ended and the global environment of the 2010s turned problematic for Nigeria.

Many things have changed in our economy, notably telephony and the internet, but fundamentally nothing of real significance has changed.

Add to this a political system that never answered any of the questions raised in the 1950s, opting instead to recycle the same questions tediously without solution.  Back then, they worried about which Region was to produce the Prime Minister. Today, the argument is over which "geopolitical zone" should produce the presidents (and which senatorial zone is to produce the governor), with little or no discussion of anything that can be termed an issue of importance or substance. Let us be honest with ourselves; everyone who has served as president in the Fourth Republic did so based on "geopolitical zone" calculations, and not because they ever did or said anything that would lead anyone to think that they understood our problems much less had deduced a solution to any of the problems.

Anyway, enjoy the late Sunny Okosuns (RIP) singing "Which Way Nigeria".

Both the Economy and the Violence are growing

When I started this blog, my intention was to build up to the centenary of Amalgamation, which was this year, 1st January, 2014.

A lot of things happened in the interim, in my life and in the life of the Federal Republic, and as you may have noticed there was no blog post commemorating the date. In fact, I have not posted anything since last year.

And it is difficult to restart.

What does one say? Even in times when things are more predictable (for lack of a better term), it is always difficult to sum up the Federal Republic of Nigeria, in whole or in part, using something so simplistic as words or sentences. What do you say? If only it were possible to telepathically transmit the sense of something, but even then, how to make sense of Nigeria, Africa or even of the Earth?

Nigeria's GDP-rebasing project, which looked like it would never end, finally concluded and Nigeria leap-frogged South Africa to be recognized as the biggest aggregate economy (measured by GDP) on the African continent.  There are even suggestions (see video courtesy CCTV-Africa below) that the rebased figures still underestimate the size of Nigeria's economy:



On the other hand, I have frequently said on this forum that the Fourth Republic (1999-date) is the second-most violent period of our history behind only the years 1966-1970.  Think about that for a second.  The only period of our history more violent than the present one, is a 4-year stretch during which there was an ultra-violent coup, an ultra-violent counter-coup, widespread mass killings, and ultimately a two-and-half year Civil War.

What is particularly concerning is the violence of the Fourth Republic has been on an upward trajectory. With each passing year since 1999, it has gotten worse. What is happening now is just the worst part of a trend that has shown no sign of abating. It is all nice and good to blame Goodluck Jonathan, and I certainly think he has a big share of the blame, but this all started long before his "lucky" ascent to the Presidency, and to be quite blunt, every arm of all three tiers of the Fourth Republic administration share in the blame. Nor is the blame restricted only to those who govern; the so-called "opposition" are as much a part of the problem.

From time to time on this blog, I point out that I warned about this in an essay I wrote 11 years ago in 2003 -- even then it was already clear that the ever-rising violence was going to get out of hand, and that the various private armies and militia groups were getting dangerously well-armed and acquiring ever greater capacity for violence relative to the official security institutions.

The two-facedness of the politicians was also clear then -- they refused, and still refuse to deal with vulnerabilities and weaknesses of the security space, because they themselves maintain illegal militia and private armies (not to mention alliances with private armies on contract around election time ).  One of the great problems with law enforcement reform in Nigeria is the people constitutionally responsible for reforming law enforcement are people who would be in jail if our law enforcement worked. The same is true in the public security space writ large -- it is like asking a fox to make sure the henhouse is secure.

This isn't really a problem unique to Nigeria. Many, probably most global and national institutions are run by individuals and interest-groups whose individual and group "strategic interests" ensure that the institution in practice facilitates whatever it is that it was theoretically set up to prevent.

But let me not digress to far off the point of this my "return" post.

The good news is good news because if we ever get around to the process of decreasing the amount of bad news, we are going to need to stand on the strong platform provided by the good news.  And there is no stronger leg to stand on than the leg of a large and growing economy.  That is the thing about the Federal Republic of Nigeria .... even in our darker moments, you cannot but notice that the potential good things are so extensive that if harnessed properly they would swamp the bad things.

But there is much to talk about, and hopefully I will speak more frequently.

Brief Comment on South Sudan

As I always say, it is difficult to know what is actually going on in the world. Politicians, the media, academics and other so-called analysts, so-called "experts" in general, they all like to talk as though they know what is going on, but a lot of the time they don't, and even when they do they tend to tell the rest of us an edited (at best) or blatantly distorted (at worst) version of what is happening, with the intent of getting us to come to certain conclusions (i.e. the conclusions supportive of their agenda, whoever they happen to be).

There has been a lot of "low intensity" conflict in South Sudan since its separation from Sudan. Of course, no conflict is "low intensity" to the people who get killed, to the families left behind, or to the communities negatively impacted by whatever metric.  The current political impasse may or may not lead to a bigger civil war (and one suspects outside players, regional and global, will bring pressure to bear on the key leaders to avoid open war), but it is likely that the state of low intensity conflict will continue.

In this, both Sudans are the same.  The erstwhile "North" Sudan is also a place of constant, ceaseless, simmering conflict.

As a Nigerian, I am used to people who claim dividing a country will somehow solve the country or countries' problems.  I have always wondered why people think that. It doesn't make any sense. If you divided Nigeria, each new piece will inherit every problem is already has ... and will also inherit the same useless political leaders that have already proven useless at solving the problems.

There is this tendency to point to the Czech and Slovakian republics as some sort of example. I am tempted to ponder whether the example is as great as is portrayed, but the fact of the matter is even if it were the most perfect example of separation ever recorded, it would still remain the case that both subsequent countries inherited status quo ante conditions from the preceding Czechoslovakia that are absent from other areas that are often portrayed as potential beneficiaries from the same outcomes.

Besides, the European continent is an odd place. Every few decades, there is a dramatic adjustment of internal borders that is hailed as a sign of great statesmanship, and is treated as though it were not only permanent but also a solution to all the problems that had existed before the realignment of borders.  After some years, or some decades, there is another upheaval, whereupon borders change dramatically again. With all due respect, and meaning no offence to either country or to the citizens therein, but there is no particular reason to believe the Czech or Slovak republics will remain as they are indefinitely, or even that the future citizens of both countries will remember the separation fondly.

Heck, contrary to popular belief, the entity "Nigeria" as currently constituted might outlast the current European borders; as it stands, we have already outlasted the USSR, the GDR, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia. It seems Belgium is under stress, the Scottish National Party is flirting with a referendum, and one wonders if the much-ballyhooed European Union has more staying power than the Nigerian Federal Republic.

Look, I am not trying to offend anyone, but problems are problems. You either solve them or you don't. I am not overly fond of Felix Houphouet-Boigny's politics, but there is a statement credited to him (I don't know if he really said it) on the topic of uniting all former African colonies of France into one country.  He asked whether they were all supposed to unite and share each other's poverty.

Uniting two poor countries won't make a rich one. Dividing a poor country will not create two rich ones.  Dividing a violence-prone country creates two violence-prone countries. Dividing a lawless country creates two lawless countries.  The Czech and Slovak republics did not become relatively wealthy because they were divided, and they would not have been relatively poor if they had stayed together.

That is all I am saying.

Continuing the focus on Fiscal health ....

If you haven't done so already, peruse this brief report from Business Day (Nigeria) on the fiscal implications of the 2014-2016 Medium Term Expenditure Framework.

Economic Statistics of the Nigerian States & Territories

I am not sure I trust our census results or any other "official" statistics. I don't just mean Nigerian government statistics, but the statistics produced by multilateral agencies, non-governmental organizations, academic researchers and even the mass media.

But you have to work with what you have.

Renaissance Capital did a report on the economies of Nigeria's 36 states and 1 Territory.

The Middle Eastern business site Zawya posted this table indicating some of the key findings of the Renaissance Report:

Still Talking About Nigerian Debt

Image from Ghana Business News

As you know, if you've been reading this blog (the stats tell me there are at least a few of you), I am not overly fond of the "debt cancellation deal" of 2005.

The future value of the $12 billion we paid was equal (at a minimal interest rate) to what our Paris Club creditors could have realistically expected to receive from us based on what we were actually paying at the time.  The opportunity cost, or lost value to us, was much greater;  those reserves could have been used to leverage even greater spending (greater than the reserves) on our infrastructure problems (or health problems, or education problems, or security problems, or etc), with economic effects in excess of the so-called billion-dollar-a-year savings.

And we were always bound to run up new debt, meaning we would resume paying the same amount (or more) in debt service that we were already paying, except with $12 billion less in our accounts. Indeed, in the years since the "debt cancellation" we have borrowed back about as much as we owed before the "cancellation", though nobody notices because it has been accumulated as "domestic debt" and not the more noticeable "Paris Club" debt.

The Federal Government's Debt Management Office says the Federal Government currently owes $45 billion in "domestic debt".  Most of this was borrowed after the "debt cancellation" deal, and it is 50% higher than our "cancelled" external debt was in 2005.  The DMO has data on the states' external debts, but if they have data on the domestic debt owed by the states, I haven't found it yet.  Most articles I have found on the internet that rank state debt in Nigeria only reference each state's external (i.e. foreign) debts, and don't acknowledge that is another set of debts they are not reporting on.  Like the federal government, the states' debts to Nigerian banks are likely much higher than their debts to foreign creditors.

The Vanguard columnist who writes under the pseudonym "Les Leba" has a tendency of pointing out that the debts are the result of our governments depositing oil revenues in Nigerian banks, and then borrowing back the government deposits as loans from the Nigerian banks at double-digit interest rates.  It isn't a new concept; the African continent's historic Paris Club debts were for all intents and purpose a function of African countries depositing their foreign reserves and export revenues in Paris Club countries and then borrowing back their own money from the foreign countries with interest tacked on.  The term "Paris Club" is apt, considering the fiscal and debt relationships between France and the CFA Zone are especially weird.

We tend to keep our eyes on the Federal Government when it comes to issues of debt.  Nevertheless, the 36 State Governments and the Federal Capital Territory are also borrowing, and it seems no one is paying attention.  There has been no legislative, political or democratic limitation to the borrowing of the states since 1999; our state governors (and the FCT minister) are far more powerful, relatively speaking, within their respective "domains" than the President is over Nigeria. 

I am unaware of any independent, credible studies of the sustainability of the growing debt loads of the states.  There are a few states where one suspects debt loads have passed the point of "comfort"; I have had interesting conversations with people who have praised their state governors for spending on certain projects, while simultaneously telling me they doubt their states can pay the contractors or the banks that funded the projects.

Truth be told, the state governors are in office a maximum of 8 years, winning re-election in part by rigging and in part by popularity bought with the debt, after which they leave office as wealthy men and leave the state's debt for their successor(s) to deal with.  What do they care?

Debt is unavoidable for governments, corporations and individuals.  It is not necessarily or inherently a bad thing.  But there are questions to be asked and answered. One of the most important questions relating to our 36+1 states is whether each individual state's ability to repay its debts. When the civil service minimum wage was increased by the Federal Government, most state governments protested their inability to pay; clearly their margin for new expenditures is thin to the degree of nonexistence. Yet their debts, and (by definition) their annual fiscal commitments to pay those debts, will continue to grow, eating and exceeding that nonexistent margin.

There are other questions, like what is this debt being used to do?  There are lots of things that either look nice, or feel nice, but which don't generate revenue sufficient to pay for their creation or for their maintenance.  Many Local Government Areas and States have nice new medical facility buildings but cannot not afford to properly staff, equip or resource the buildings to a degree that would have a real impact on the health of the respective communities. And as they commit ever more of their budgets to paying debts, they will have even less in the way of discretionary resources.

Speaking of which, as I said earlier, Nigeria at the Federal level has borrowed back as much in new debts as we used to owe before the "cancellation" deal. Much of this debt was not used for anything relevant to economic growth or citizen welfare.  There was a particularly large jump in the debt in the run-up to the 2011 Elections; effectively Nigerian citizens have to (re)pay the political/electoral expenses of the Jonathan Administration and the Peoples Democratic Party.

The debt situation is about to get worse, though the statistics will show that it has gotten better.

Let me explain.

Nigeria's Gross Domestic Product is currently being recalculated via "rebasing".  It has been almost 25 years since we last rebased the GDP calculation, and the expectation is we will either overtake South Africa and become the biggest economy in Africa, or will dramatically shorten the amount of time before we overtake them.

The new, much higher GDP figure will cause all of our macroeconomic ratios to change. It will mean the various governments' tax collections will be a smaller total share of the economy.  It will mean the various governments' total deficits will be a smaller share of the total economy.  It will mean the debt-to-GDP ratio will drop. It will also mean the number used to represent the estimated growth rate of the economy will change from the 6-to-7% range to the 3.5-to-5% range.

To make a long story short, the three tiers of government are likely to use the rebased GDP size as a justification to increase their borrowing.  One of the most annoying (to me) terms used by so-called experts (foreign and local) in relationship to Nigeria is "under-borrowed".  They seem to think there is a specific amount of debt, relative to GDP, that we are supposed to be carrying, and if we are not carrying that amount of debt, they insist that we borrow a bunch of money for no reason at all beyond their insistence that we need to owe as much as they think we are supposed to owe.

We should owe only as much as is necessary. If the necessary amount of debt is less than what the experts claim it should be, then ... so what?

And even if there is a necessity, an indisputable need to borrow for a particular thing, perhaps the first question we Nigerian citizens should ask ourselves is what type of governments, government leaders and civil service bureaucracies we want to be in charge of this borrowing. Because, if we maintain the current system, we run the risk of having, for example, an $80 billion need in an infrastructure sector, for which our governments borrow $165 billion, and mysteriously deliver only $20 billion of new infrastructure that is useless without the other $60 billion's worth of completion, and now we the citizens owe $165 billion in addition to capitalized interest in exchange for a situation that is not demonstrably different from the situation that existed before we borrowed.

There is also going to be a lot of talk about increasing government revenues from taxation and fees.  Some of this talk will be in terms of relieving the need to borrow.  Some of it will be in terms of raising funds to pay back loans already borrowed and loans to be borrowed.

There are two sides to this coin.  Whatever the real GDP of Nigeria is (I am not sure anyone really knows, rebased or otherwise), the citizens of Nigeria have long borne the fiscal costs of providing for themselves many of the things that are theoretically supposed to be provided by the public or private sectors of the economy.  Assuming the government can efficiently tax the people so as to increase government revenue and decrease the discretionary revenue of private citizens, is there not a chance that the private citizen will be less able to provide himself and his extended family with those goods/services without there being a replacement of those goods/services from the government (i.e. paid for from the increased taxes)?  Suppose the money just goes to pay debt?  Suppose the money pays for more PDP election "victories"?  Suppose the money goes to the right place, but $165 billion of spending in the right place mysteriously purchases only $20 billion worth of the whatever it is?

I am not being cynical (though I am sometimes a cynic).  These are the kind of debates we should be having in our political space, rather than arguing with ourselves which of the "geopolitical zones" deserves the next "turn".

We have borrowed a lot of money.  We are going to borrow a lot more, it seems. There needs to be more of a discussion about this ... before someone starts telling us it is a great idea to spend $24 billion to "cancel" $60 billion, only to borrow another $70 billion eight years afterwards.

Femi Aribisala on "Bigmanism"

If you haven't already, take a look at this funny essay in yesterday's Vanguard.

"Independence" Day 2013

Another year since 1960.

The big anniversary comes up in three months -- the Amalgamation Centennial on the 1st of January 2014.

I wish the Centennial was occurring in a different, better set of circumstances. As it stands, I suspect critical comments as to whether the Amalgamation was a good thing or not will predominate over celebratory comments.

The three tiers of government will probably put on glitzy shows, that will be more about expensive (as in contract-generating) excess. As per usual there will not really be anything that grabs at the heart and soul of who we are and why we are, nothing that really expresses our cultures or identities as distinct peoples or as a unified Federal Republic.