From Saxone Akhaine Kaduna, Kodilinye Obiagwu, Wole Shadare and Chika Ezeokoli Lagos

While Makarfi admonished Nigerians to take the prediction as a challenge, Tinubu said that it was a bad omen for the country. He said the U.S. had all it takes to gauge the political direction of Nigeria and should not be condemned for promptly alerting its leaders of possible threats to its stability.

In an address to mark the nation's Democracy Day yesterday in Kaduna, Makarfi told journalists that Nigerians need to be united to stave off any threat to the country's stability and disprove the American prediction.

Tinubu who spoke to reporters at the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos on Sunday night on arrival from a foreign trip, observed that the report stemmed from inequality in the polity.

Makarfi said that there had been such reports by the West and other countries against Nigeria in the past but "we can judge whether those reports were true or not."

The governor said he had taken the report as a challenge and was prepared to work against its fulfilment.

He faulted the report's classification of Kaduna as one of the volatile states in the North where the unity of the nation could be threatened.

Said he: "I don't know why states like Plateau or Benue were not mentioned in the American report, where conflicts are still going on. Probably their assessment was based on the most critical states when you take up what will be the implication over the entire country."

"May be what the Americans mean by that report was that these states (Kano and Kaduna) are so central to the heart of the country and events there should not be handled lightly and effort should be made to deal with them, because not dealing with them could have far-reaching effects on our unity. That is my thinking, not a kind of condemnation that there is nothing, which has not been done."

The governor recalled his meeting with the Americans, members of the War College who said they were surprised that other states in Nigeria were not copying the state's model of peace building."

The governor said that the National Political Reforms Conference (NPRC) was capable of addressing the problems facing the nation and asked the delegates to be true Nigerians in their thought and action. "They should feel for one anther and anything that is very contentious, in the spirit of give and take, should come to some kind of recommendations, which would be generally acceptable to Nigerians."

To Tinubu, the U.S. prediction was prompted by the double standard and deception of the highest order by Nigerian leaders, stressing that the law had consistently be flouted and broken by the powerful.

His words: "The amount of power in our possession determines the level of freedom of this country. We abuse law at will because we are powerful, so any external broadcast of doom is unfortunate. That is the reality on the ground."

The U.S. report had received scathing criticisms from the Presidency and the National Assembly, which viewed it as mischievous and inciting.

Despite the condemnation of the report, the U.S. embassy's Counsellor for Public Affairs, Mrs. Claudia Anyaso, advised the Federal Government against treating the report with kid gloves.

She cited an example of a report done in the U.S. on national security. The report, she noted, was submitted and kept on the shelves, with nobody really looking at it seriously until September 11, 2001 serial bombing of the country by terrorists.

Tinubu said: "We don't have democracy yet, we have a semi-kind of democratic regime. We don't have the type we fought for. There is no complete freedom of choice, no proper election to bring the right people into office. Our human rights record is extremely poor. We deliberately disobey court orders, and refuse to adhere to the rule of law. All the tonic and necessary ingredients of democracy are not there, so there is no cause for celebration."

He spoke on the celebration of Democracy Day yesterday. The day was declared as public holiday by the Federal Government.

He asked: "What are we celebrating. There is more level of poverty in the society than even before. You have high degree of robbery, you have double standards in the judicial system. You have all sorts of inequalities in the society, so what are we celebrating, we have no cause to celebrate."

He accused the Federal Government of frustrating the second phase of the Independent Power Project (IPP), claiming that the Federal Government discouraged investors who wanted to stake their resources in the project.

Also, Afenifere has said that the only way to stave off the U.S. predictions was for the confab delegates to take decisions that would strengthen Nigeria's federalism.

The pan-Yoruba group asked the delegates to formalise the structure of the six-geopolitical zones as the federating units;

adopt the less wasteful parliamentary system;

accept the principle of resource control in order to remove the impression that some sections of the country are being held in economic servitude; and

effect concrete electoral reforms that will see the end of rigging.
"There is nothing fresh in the U.S. report. The way and manner unconscionable elite have ruined federalism in Nigeria and its substitution with over centralised planning and collectivist ideology can only in the final analysis lead to nothing but a break up," the Afenifere declared in a statement by its publicity secretary, Mr. Yinka Odumakin.