Document

On tonight's Document on Radio 4, Mike Thompson will be looking at Harold Smith's allegations that the Brits rigged Nigeria's independence elections. Today broadcast a preview.

Elections hit by problems!

Nope, not the Nigerian elections, but the Scottish elections. I had to lay this on thick for all the Nigerians who insisted that election malpractice and incompetence was not a strictly Nigerian disease. Delays in counting because a helicopter couldn't make it to the counting centre, computers not able to count some ballot papers.

The key difference is that there is no "Maurice Iwu" type character telling the world that the electoral commission should be patting itself on the back. Everyone has said what a disgraceful state events are in. There is also no deliberate attempt to disenfranchise voters, as occured in Nigeria.

And one of the main issues I had with the Nigerian elections was the scale. Too many things being contested at once for it to be a manageable affair. Britain has a far smaller electorate, yet elections for different offices take place every year. In every four year period of the electoral cycle there are general elections, municipal elections, local council elections, mayoral elections, assembly elections, European elections. This allows for every election to be on a manageable scale, and much more easily monitored. You'd be hard pressed to find another country as big as Nigeria which elects everyone at the same time. It's just a bit much.

Obamania to Obamination...

Anyone who wants to run for president of the United States, should expect to be scrutinised intensely. How old was he/she when they stopped bed wetting? Did they inhale? Have they had any affairs? What colour underwear do they like? And of course, what denomination of Christianity? JFK made history by becoming the first Catholic president of America, and the country had no Catholics candidates until John Kerry in 2004. For the 2008 elections, there will be some strong contenders with interesting religious backgrounds. There's Rudy Giuliani, who's Roman Catholic, (not to mention his several divorces); Mitt Romney, who's a Mormon; and there's flavour of the month Barack Obama, who's a Christian - and if you believe some of the reports, he belongs to black separatist almost heretical church. Read more...

Dreams

Last night, I dreamt that Ngozi Okonji-Iweala won the elections in Nigeria, Except, she's not running. My friend has advised me to stop taking hallucinogens before going to bed...

So...

So, I've just walked into the lobby at Bush House, shivering slightly from the November cold, carrying a plastic bag from Tesco (I'm tightening my belt, even though the stuff cost me just over four quid). I go through the rotating security doors, and I see a familiar face. Dimunitive as ever, it's BEN's Jide Iyaniwura, but as I stretch out to shake his hand, I see the man beside him is none other than Frank Nweke Jnr (Minister of Information, the man I call OBJ's rottweiler-in-chief).

Mr Nweke Jnr, (or should that be Jnr Nweke), isn't baring his fangs this time, he's smiling. I tell him that I'll be undertaking a tour of Nigeria around election time, and that hopefully, we'll meet. I'd like to ask him some tough questions, I say. He chuckles, charm itself, then hands me a card, before he's whisked off to be interviewed by the Africa's widest reaching news programme, Focus on Africa. I reckon he's in town to woo diaspora donors for the PDP, try and get some Goldmann Sachs and PWC Queen's heads to strengthen the PDP's war chest.

The games have begun.