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(From a personal archive)
Penultimate week, we  gathered at the Sheraton  Hotel, in Boston, Massachusetts in the United States, to, again, exchange ideas on the Nigerian crisis – often, by implication, the Nigerian possibility, which used to be signposted by the rhymes which we were taught in primary school: “a land flowing with milk and honey”! It was under the auspices of the African Studies Association (ASA) of the United States. As you will expect, Nigeria is always “over-represented” at such gatherings, given the fact that almost a half of our intellectual class reside in the West.
You can almost mistake the venue of the ASA conference for an hotel in Lagos, as you hear people belch out Igbo and Yoruba, in an attempt to catch up on the vanishing space of cultural validity. Some also use the occasion to reach for their cultural wardrobe, to display their latest acquisitions from “home”. Charles Abbot, the young and rising American Nigerianist scholar, is perhaps the major metaphor for the imprecision of “home”. He did his doctoral work on Nigeria. He had adopted a Yoruba name then, “Omowale”, which I guess he still uses when occasion calls for it. He always turns out in full Yoruba regalia at every ASA meeting. This day was not different, as he moderated the roundtable session on Nigeria, convened by the Nigerian Studies Association of the United States.
The speakers included the famous and respected Nigerianist scholar, Richard Sklar, who wrote the classic, Nigerian Political Parties. He was joined by Darren Kew, another young American Nigerianist scholar and a few Nigerians based in the United States, including Dr. Dauda Abubakar of the University of Maiduguri, who is presently on sabbatical at Iowa University, Athens. 
It was significant that some of the speakers on the table had sympathy for the current order of things in Nigeria. Kew and a lady from Columbia University, New York, among others, argued that the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) is a veritable platform for building a national coalition that would ensure that Nigeria does not succumb to the savaging of its existence and status by separatist elements. They gave the reasons why such a society of rodents - as some of us regard the PDP - could provide the needed national succour. For them, the overriding issue is how to ensure that Nigeria maintains enough stability to be able to continue to function as a nation-state. 
As would be expected at such a gathering, the issue of sovereign national conference (SNC) was again raised and debated. Prof. Aaron Gana, the fatherly and amiable ex-Jos university don, intervened strongly on the side of the advocates of the desirability of convening the SNC. He marshalled his arguments with a simplicity that almost hid the penetrating power of his insight. His conclusion was powerful: Even those who do not want to talk, should come and talk about why they don’t want to talk. I am putting it simply. Salvation lies in a national talk shop, Gana insisted, whether it is sovereign or not. 
Yours truly, who had moved from the somewhat static position of absolute trust in the remedial powers of a national talk shop, was ‘provoked’ to intervene. I asked Prof. Gana – and the other priests of SNC – to direct their minds to the present conditions of the Nigerian polity. Abacha had experimented with the possibility of the subversion of national aspirations through the convocation of the Constitutional Confab in 1995. As it turned out, most of those who attended were not the true representatives of the people. I will, of course, quickly concede that even under the debilitating conditions that were ascendant in those days, there was an attempt to set the parameters of national association organized around Dr. Alex Ekwueme. But this of course, was over-shadowed by the activities of those - organized around late General Shehu Musa Yar’ Adua - who wanted to set a limit to the tenure of the VIPs (vagabonds in power). While it was crucial to set a limit to the term of General Sani Abacha’s regime, these manoeuvres were more in the service of Yar’ Adua’s ambition (legitimate, though) to be president of Nigeria. As it turned out, the triumph of such a short-term goal over the more long-term goal championed by Ekwueme and others, is part of the mess we are witnessing today. 
However, the point I pursued was that given the evidence of the scandalously rigged elections that Nigeria recently witnessed, how can we be sure that those who would emerge from an election process for the SNC will be the true representatives of their people? Others added personal anecdotes that pointed to the deeper dimensions of the Nigerian crisis. 
As you will expect, there were no final solutions proffered. A Nigerian gathering is always long on the problems. At the end of the round table, one could still see compatriots passionately arguing hither and thither over the Nigerian crisis. Between, on one side, those who have become so frustrated with the country’s seemingly permanent romance with the perfidious and the odious, and who therefore would want the country balkanised, and those, on the other side, who, moving from the same frustrations, still devote themselves to the snatching of our country from the bleeding hands of the powerful elements who are running it, the passion for “home” is an undying passion. I count myself in the league of the latter. For me, Nigeria has always been a looming possibility from which we can construct a United States of Africa. As Prof. Amos Sawyer, the former Liberian Interim President, once told me over lunch in Bloomington, Indiana, Nigeria is not only important for herself, she is important for the region, for Africa and for the Black race.