The country is a long way from the dictatorships of old, but Saturday’s choices leave much to be desired. I haven’t seen so much despair in my country in a long time — not since the murderous dictator, Sani Abacha, was military head of state in the mid-1990s. The return of democracy to Nigeria coincided with my coming of age. I was 14 when Nigeria finally had its first successful elections in nearly two decades, and I remember how dark the future looked to almost everyone before then. And I remember the hope that coursed through the citizenry like electricity when the tentative steps toward restoring democracy proved successful. Back then, there were two candidates: Olusegun Obasanjo and Olu Falae. Obasanjo, the winner, was the candidate of the establishment, and Falae — while no stranger to that same establishment — was the face of something new, something different. I remember his ad declaring to a beaten-down nation that we needed change. “I present myself,” he promised, “as the candidate of that change.” Nigeria’s democracy has not been perfect. The economy has not fulfilled all of its promises. Corruption continues to define daily life, and a life-sucking elite continues to collude to keep a dysfunctional system running for its benefit. But over those many cycles since 1999, we have moved resolutely forward in many ways — from fighting polio and HIV, growing our GDP, moving to free and fair elections, and setting up judicial independence (though this last bit is now under assault). | 