Speak to any Nigerian and you will hear the familiar complaints about Nigeria’s sorry plight.  About the waste, mismanagement, corruption and lack of environmental sanitation.  Nigerians yearn for a Government that will tackle these problems head on.  Nigerians although supporting democracy believe that the institutional checks and balances it imposes would inhibit even a well intentioned government, and would prevent it from pushing through the punishing reforms and hardline policies that are necessary to change Nigeria.  As one acquaintance put it to me: “Nigeria missed its chance with the military”.   The acquaintance is no apologist for military rule but his point was that Nigeria needs a tough, authoritarian regime to tackle its problems and implement the unpopular but corrective policies that a democratic government cannot afford to take for fear of being voted out of office.   Yet while Nigerians complain about the problems all around them, they seem to have collective amnesia and never refer to the fact that almost two generations ago, they had a regime with a programme to tackle all of the problems they always complain about.