An aspirant for the office of National Secretary of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in February’s national convention of the party, Barrister Owolabi Salis, has posited that the incoming year holds the steam and indices to make or mar the nation. According to him, the transformation agenda of president Goodluck Jonathan, which has been at the incubation stage, will hit the ground running, exhuming both positive and negative convulssions. Salis is not alone on this.

A second Republic politician and chieftain of the PDP, Chief Guy Ikokwu also contends that it has all the potentials of an “action- packed year.” These insights are easily admissible. Nothing less can be expected from a year where proponents and antagonists of the oil subsidy removal are bound to clash; a year where governorship elections will hold in, at least, five states with all the attendant judicial interventions; a year of an imminent deepened conflagration with the Boko Haram menace; a year of the ruling party’s first post-election convention with the concomitant zonal controversies and a year when the mercurial Biafran warlord and incandescent leader of the Igbo ethnic group, the late Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu would be laid to mother earth.
These upheavals have the indices to exhume heat and talks and the nation may likely be enveloped in a dust of words.

Words
Words, will rule the nation’s political firmament until the ghost of oil subsidy removal debacle is laid to rest. On this score, experts on the subject on both sides will go to battle to energise their positions.
The late American President, John F. Kennedy, once said “Churchill mobilised the English Language and sent it into battle.” In the opinion of historian Arnold Joybee, “Churchill’s speeches spelled the difference between survival and defeat.”
In America, during the WW II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt kept America going and battle ready through his inspiring speeches. “December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy,” and his fireside chat radio broadcasts.

When Margaret Thatcher became prime minister of Great Britain in 1979, her nation was on the brink of economic collapse and soviet style communism was advancing menacingly. Her vibrant speeches in favour of a free market economy and her defence of tyranny and totalitarianism were a major factor in saving Britain from collapse and in defeating global communism. Prior to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush was pounded in the media for his mangling of the English Language and his dour speaking skills. But his Churchillian speeches in the aftermath of the attacks changed the minds of his critics.
Repeatedly, those who disparaged him avowed: “The president has found his voice.” In like vein, President Goodluck Jonathan is likely to discover his voice in 2012, as he grapples with the challenges.

Oil Subsidy removal
Oil drives the wheel of the nation. It ricochets in t he nation’s daily endeavour and engages the people’s passion consummately. Fittingly, the removal of oil subsidy in 2012, will rebound not only in the people’s Psyche but the very essence of the nation’s survival.

Constitution review
The review of the 1999 constitution has dogged this democratic dispensation all the while. So far, about three amendments have been carried out. But the government is planning a wholesale review in 2012 for which a presidential committee has been set up to liase with the Joint National Assembly Review Committee. Issues begging for attention include creation of states, fiscal federalism, revenue allocation formulae, amidst other contending issues.
The debates on the new constitution will take the centre stage of national discourse if it takes off.

Shrapnels will fly about
The battle line between government forces and the media and labour is drawn. Should the government win the war, the socio-economic implications would be so daunting as to create spasms of involuntary resistance and combustions. But if government chickens out and allows anti-oil subsidy removal vanguard, to overrun it, then the battle will wait for another day and, as the economic doom sayers have been mouthing, the nation may finally come crashing on its belly. The die is cast.

Election
Every election year is dicey. In Nigeria, nightmarish elections had severally stood the nation on edge, dredging up rancorous bitterness, confusion and tension.
Bayelsa, Sokoto, Adamawa, Cross River and Edo States promise no less.
The nation will reel under a cacophony of electoral and political gymnastics, which will, in turn, emit both hot and cold air. The isolated dynamics of the contest as oppose to a general election has pulled knit-tightly, the various combatant forces in the stages into a contagious atomic unit. According to a political analyst, Dr. Theo Mgbealulike, “the ding-dong of the elections will bring out the never say die spirit of the Nigerian politician. And will avail them the opportunity to excavate their inordinate ambitious tenderncies to preposterous levels.”

Battle against corruption
In words. Yet, President Goodluck Jonathan has given indication that the battle against corruption will enter a critical stage in 2012. This affirmation could be glimpsed from his myriad of public speeches and the central position of the battle in his transformation agenda. To give more vent to it, he had sent the erstwhile boss of the crime-cracking Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mrs. Farida Waziri, packing with a promise to reposition and make it the centrre piece of his anti-corruption agenda. If this pulls through, Nigeria may be awash with a seamy exhumation of buried scandals, counter ripostes and a raving public.

PDP convention
As the ruling party, any convention of the PDP is ranked as a national event, which affects both governance and the people. But next February’s National Convention retains much more than this. It is coming with the stench of the zoning controversies that propelled both Jonathan to presidential power and Aminu Tambuwal as the speaker of the House of Representatives zoning sputniks, especially in the North-east, geo-political, zone are already fine-tuning their arsenals. The convention is bound to put in place the shape of the 2015 presidential contest for which the North and the south-east are at dagger drawn. This explains why heavyweight politicians are reaching deep to their vast armory to secure a comfortable footage against some forces.
The storms it will generate and the likely effects on a people sandwiched on an economic pole line will ultimately rake up dirt and dust.

Boko Haram
From all indices, the nation is inexorably committed to sliding into a conflagration. The intransigence of the Boko Haram menace and the incipient resolve of the security forces to tackle it headlong will pull the nation to a screeching flame. Already the command headquarters of the dreaded group in Damaturu, Yobe State, has been raided by security forces amids unyielding advances from the sect, which has culminated in deaths. The crush may bring about testy moments of duel that may try the souls of Nigerians.
Like a cancer, the Boko Haram incursion has been spreading rapidly in the North, to the effect that normal armed banditry are attributed to it. The fears and anxieties are spreading fast and government is not losing sight of this.

The late Ojukwu’s burial
Nigeria’s history is incomplete without the late Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, whose trajectory is as awe-inspiring and visionary as in a fictional epic. His world, in life and in death, resonates with the essentials of greatness. Ojukwu, perhaps, in modern day Nigeria, has the largest fanatical fans and “secret”, admirers across all the ethnic divisions. He had charisma, courage, conviction and a brawly-brainy mix of avant-garde mind of progress.
Born to destroy sacred values, the late Ikemba led a stretched life, full of actions and trysts and would forever be a post-card of remembrances. He caught the winds of his rabid followership in his introduction to his book “because I am involved,” which he entitled, “unto the breach, dear friends.”
He wrote: “In Nigeria, it has become a ritual to preface every commentary on my public utterances with- “Ojukwu’s new song.”The fact remains, this cliché notwithstanding, that what I say today, I have been saying since Nigeria’s independence in 1960. My language may have changed but the substance has not changed because of the persistence of the problem.”
The proposed February 2 date of his interment will engender sentiments of the national question and regurgitate memories of a nearly divided state of Nigeria.
Again, his epithet on “farewell Angelina” underscores the strains of his life and the future of the Nigerian state.

The shape of 2012 in Nigeria