For once, I would agree with Babangida on this. Military coups in West Africa are often caused by the excesses of the Politicians' unbridled greed and lack of unity to work proactively on behalf of the electorates they promised to serve. I don’t see how ECOWAS should deny recognition for this junta if it promised to put in place, within a reasonable time, a game plan to educate the public and the politicians about their respective roles and limitations b4 campaign for elections begin so the people have enough information to make a wise choice. Democracy in name alone does not necessarily guarantee freedom - case in point, Nigeria, under Emperor yarAdua.

As for Nigeria's Foreign Minister, Emperor yar probably needs to send Ojo back to Kuru School of Diplomacy to learn how to speak diplomatically - he was quoted saying "this Guinea thing" - how condescending!!! FYI, Mr. Foreign Minister, Guinea is not a "thing" but an independent sovereign country with human beings. A thing is an object. The good, peace-loving people of Guinea are neither objects nor subjects of Nigeria. So, please get a grip b4 you open your frigging mouth again to embarrass us any further.

THE RIDICULING OF DIPLOMACY. I am not (and nobody should be) surprise to see IBB endorsing a coup anyway. What else would one expect from him? I am rather concerned about the ignorance or disregard of diplomacy. The person to blame for this poverty of foreign diplomatic moves is first of all the man at the helm who chose a notorious Capone of coup plotting to go as an envoy of democracy. In the first place it is a ridiculing of our type of democracy. It is a caricature of image building. The chaos that IBB represents is hard to be ignored in any consideration of our foreign image. What are we telling the rest of the world by the appointment of IBB as emisary of democracy? This is Nigeria's big joke. But no body except us is fooled. IBB is a manifest emisary of rift. Come to think of it too, if IBB understood and or respect diplomacy, if he has respect for the government and the ministry under whose portfolio he traveled, his utterance that "the minister is on his own" should have been clothed with cultured-coat and civility. How could IBB utter such a mispeak that the Minister of foreign affairs is on his own. Under which ministry, if I may ask, should an envoy be sent to represent a country? And who apart from the president receives the briefing if not the minister of foreign affairs, on behalf of the president? There is an indication from his comments that this minister was not even briefed directly or indirectly by the "Team-Babangida" which included a junior minister in the same ministry. Were he to have been briefed, it is uncalled for to address him as "one on his own" by IBB in his speech to the press. We may further ask: which government is speaking through Ojo Maduekwe and how different is that government from the one IBB said he represented. Is there no way of harmonisation of messages even when divergence seem to have occurred? IBB's speech showed not only his utter neglect if not disrespect of such office but also the uncoordinatedness and the incoherency in Nigeria's foriegn affairs' image making, where both ministers sharing the same portfolio sent two irreconcilable messages. Only in Nigeria can such take place, where the uncoordinated (un)diplomatic voices arise in the name of diplomacy. That apart. Lets look at other issues. For Babangida and his supporters, things only work by the jungle style of the juntas. That is his message back from the "tea break" in Conakry. But that we have always known long ago from him. One does not expect him to be of another mind, unless he has recently received the OBJ-like "baptism of fire" (with the bible in hand from prison during the 1999 bid to return to power). These men!! Treat them with caution!! Well the last puzzle I would like to leave us battling with is actually: who truly sent Babangida? Nigeria or Britain? The answer cannot be easily reached through popular response. More like it: Where is the Thatcher-man and his men who plotted the first coup in Guinea but fate cut up with them? If they have been released by the juntas in Conakry then we must probe further to know who is playing the tune that we are dancing. Finally, we ought to look twice at issues and ask: which 'stolen goods' from Nigeria by Nigerians are being protected by these so called "mission to Guinea"? Whose investment is been guarded? And just one last comment about the international basket mouth called BBC. It not surprising how BBC grew cold in its reporting about Guinea-issue. Were it to be a coup plot against Mugabe, then the guess isn't anybody's about what BBC will do. Well, for you my and our Guinea accept my sympathy. Yours is like the fate of most cases in Africa: the song of a defeated man. These Men!! They are playing chess on your chest as you lie on bare earth. It happened to us before, it may still happen again but God forbid.

Hear the forces of backwardness, re-emerge from nowhere. Babangida is an epitome what went wrong with post-independence Africa. After he got helping others make coups he made his own.

Nigeria has moved on. Hmmm, let's see, between an envoy and a foreign minister, who carries real clout ? Yes, no doubt, ofcourse the latter.

Besides Camara is supposed to, through a democratic rpocess, to hand Guinea back to civilian rulers.

As much as I abhor Babangida and all that he stands for, we cannot absolve the Nigerian politicians' greed and lack of vision as justification for the resulting coups. We are witnessing another one of those civilian politicians in action. There is always a causal relationship with outcomes. If you dont want military coups, then civilian politicians should govern wisely with the public opinion serving as barometer of their performance. Emperor Yar rulership is even worse than some military juntas we've had. I applaud Babangida for his reasonable comment on Guinea. As for the envoy versus diplomat “thing”, I stand by my assertion that Ojo Maduekwe needs more diplomatic training. I wonder what Maduakwe's academic and professional background was b4 he became FM but he reminds me of the round-pegs in square-holes that dot Emperor Yar's choice of Ministers - Agronomist serving as Defense Minister, or a Pharmacist serving as Minister of Information amongst many others under-utilized or miss-utilized skills. No wonder we are not making any progress.

I prefer substance over styled superficiliaties, nicities and platitudes of diplomancy which are always suspect. Look at what Mbeki's vaunted experience in quiet diplomacy has done to Zimbabwe's election debacle ?

Experience is over-rated and is always advanced by losers or frustrated careerists stuck in a career rut.

Besides I would rather listen to new and substantive political views than flowery tales from monsters of the past.

Your point made no sense. Perhaps you could rephrase your assertions to fit the issue at hand, i.e., justification for Guinea's gameplan to develop its unique democratic process. Who knows, 5 years from now, with adequate gameplan initiated by this coupist to design their democratic process, Guinea may surpass Nigeria in its democratic performance and economic growth pattern, as Nigeria continues to pretend while running a sham to follow-follow, copy-copy others, blindly with no vision of its own that is endemic to fit our unique culture, on the premise that one size does not fit all.

Let me try to break it down in simple terms. To me the Babangidas represent the failed (monstrous) past whereas the new Nigerian leadership or adminstration represents a more democratic the future.

If Guinea becomes more democratic that would be for better for Africa. My contention is that the notion that juntas will bring that about is a fantasy, a pipe-dream as history has shown.

Nigeria's (and the rest of ECOWAS) job at this importune moment is not to cuddle, placate, and appease coup makers in the false hope that they will somehow be any different from the failed juntas of the past. It is simply a wrong way to go.

For example: a good professor or teacher is the one who wants his or her student to do better .. even better than him or her. They are not insecure or paranoid about being outdone by their pupil.

The Babaginda school not surprisingly prefers the coup to stand whereas the others, rightly, do not want the coup to stand.

Coups, if they are of any worth, are transitional, to prepare and pave way for civilian order.

I hate to be an apologist for the likes of Babangida but where in his statement did he say that he wants the juntas to stay permanently as you claimed in your last statement. His observation was for ECOWAS not to impose unnecessary sanctions that eventually will harden the junta and thereby punish the good people of Guinea, inadvertently. After all, the people of Guinea applauded the juntas, anyway, and that is their right and what should matter most, not some foreign invisible hands telling them how to think & run their country. The point been made here is; if the junta is given adequate time to educate the public and the politicians alike so the people have adequate time to create political parties, study each party's manifestos and the character of each political party's flag-bearers so they can make a wise decision about whom to chose to be their next leader - that way, ECOWAS may not be blamed for stampeding the good people of Guinea into making a mistake that they will in the long run regret. Is that idea too complex for you to comprehend or are you simply throwing words around to appease some foreign interests who have no clue as to the internal forces within each country?

Did you read the article or are you close minded ? The article says IBB endorses the coup and called the coup patriotic. Like Madueke said there is nothing patriotic about coup detats.

Guinea is part of the Africa Union and a member of ECOWAS so they must be subjected to the rules and laws of these bodies if they want to be part of them, which I think most Guineans want to be. If they think they rules trample upon their interests they can opt out of these organizations. Even an idiot knows that the coup makers are craving for recognition from ECOWAS and AU.

And by suggesting that somehow people who are advocating for democratic civilian rule are acting on behalf of some foreign interest is just an old and tired excuse for criminal African dictators, like Mugabe, to murder, rape, pillage, and exploit fellow Africans.

I am glad ECOWAS has taken the right route, the democratic route and did not cave in to interests of backward and unprincipled forces of undemocratic despotic rule.

In the end the stronger ideas and principles will win and prevail.

Everybody, especially Africans (including Guineans) knows if Africa became one free and demorcatic country it would be stronger and formidable.

And guess what: I (and ECOWAS) won and you (the coup makers) lost.

Ecce Femme, Schizo-bipolar SYVIA OLAYINKA BLYDEN, the mother of monikers, the soupist supreme spouting SPECTACULAR NONSENSE on an issue about which she knows zilch, nada.

NEVERTHELESS, nonsense, all the same.

To us, it is irrelevant whether ANY CIVILIAN SOUPIST supports or opposes the coupists in Guinea.

Contrary to the steely nonsense from femme soupist and others cut from the same bovine cloth, THE DISTRIBUTION OF POWER, STATE POWER, UNDER the soupist structure, is indifferent to any and all political formations, be they democratic, albeit 'african' democracy, facism, benign aristocracy or autocracy, which includes slavery.

And, the form of British and French Imperialism was AUTOCRATIC SLAVERY, period and out.

This theoretical construct is falsifiable, and we invite reasoned refutations, not NONSENSE from femme, schizo-bipolar soupist Slyvia, the gal of West African soupists and beyond, for we cannot refute what would inevitably be a MOUNTAIN OF NONSENSICAL BABBLE.

WE URGE CAMARA TO DENOUNCE THE SOUPIST STRUCTURE; TO DENOUNCE EACH SOUPIST HEAD OF STATE IN WEST AFRICA; TO DISAVOW THE RUSE OF SOUPIST ELECTIONS.

WE URGE CAMARA TO TAKE THE MATTER DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE OF GUINEA: the dissolution of the soupist parliament was a bold and correct step in the adumbrated gesture.

WE URGE HIM TO DESTROY THE SOUPIST STRUCTURE and, with that Guinea would make history, the vanguard of a movement to assert the genuine SELF-DETERMINATION of Africans.

DOWN WITH THE SOUPIST STRUCTURE, ITS PROXIES---WEST AFRICAN SOUPIST HEADS OF STATE---AND THE STRANGLEHOLD OF BRITISH AND FRENCH IMPERIALISM IN WEST AFRICA!

THE REVOLUTIONARY WEST AFRICA ANTI-SOUPIST MOVEMENT.

I simply want to put it straight.The December 23,2008 coup was not the best thing that could have happen to Guinea.The Camara led junta have neglected professionalism and followed sentiments.No matter what the military has nothing to do with politics even if the country is turned upside down. Given that the late Conte had imbibed the sit tight doctrine and only God knew what would have happen if death had not come,the military could have ensured that there was peace and saw to it that the constitution was obeyed in the period of vacuum.It could even have seen to it that elections are held and that a democractically elected leader emerged.Camra made have good intentions but his approach was wrong. To be frank for a change to be implemented in such a corruption ridden society such a move was he best.