Papa,

You know what, one day I'm going to have to ask why you and mama came from the Niger Delta! Relief, sir: Not today! But, honest, I go ask una o.

First, the update. Sent a memo to mom already...finally breaking your long standing monopoly... hahaha. Point is she understands (mothers!) and I imagine she enjoys our more regular rendezvous in my dreams. Yes, she is a virtual constant....want your share of the turf? Then you must negotiate, dad, it is now the in-thing in Nigeria and around the world. Mama and I are liberal, and you know it. So come to the table soon. You will always be dear to us. At 52, I should be trusted (and I will cherish!) chairing the confab...hahaha. Your boy is grown!

Back to negotiations. The militants in the Niger Delta are currently negotiating with several interested parties regarding the oil workers hostage saga. Remember that such things never happened in your time? Yes. But that was because the economy then was based and run on agriculture and solid minerals - both of which have been criminally and conveniently neglected, even today. Too much trouble, I guess, for our own leaders. So, without meaning to depress you, dad, I'm sure you won't like to know that we now import palm oil (yes o, red palm oil!) from Malaysia (oh papa, no frown now: na the same Malaysia wey dem come here come collect our seeds for 1960s!). Our people now go there to negotiate mouth-watering import deals, creating jobs and huge plantations for the wise malaysians. Our lands are lying waste and fallow, while our foreign reserves from high global oil prices are brimming over in foreign banks/lands. Stranger than fiction.

The whole world is now going for cassava for animal feeds (to avoid foot & mouth disease), starch, drugs, cosmetics, nutrition, etc. Nigeria is the world's largest producer, as we once were and should be for palm oil. Instead of creating huge Farm Settlements (like Pa Awo did in your time), our government people and their hangers-on are going all over the globe negotiating marketing and supply deals! No-one is negotiating how to grow the crop, with our legions of idle hands and unemployed youths . To justify the expenses and such blatant incongruence, they have been raiding and commandeering the domestic stock. With all sorts of committees (oh, you'll hear about that someday: the virus of committees, and their obsession with it!), associations that are dominated by elites rather than actual farmers, as well as numerous middlemen and political jobbers, garri and all other local cassava-based staples have become scarce, pricey consumables. It's a pandemic!

Negotiations are also going on for and against the tenure-extension saga termed 'Third Term". There are allegations and counter allegations as to whether or not pecuniary and material inducement is at play. There are denials and there is defiance. We wait.

Negotiation. That term, dad, is not a layman's term, or an ordinary word. These days, when people hear it , they take cover! George Bush will soon be talking to the Iranians, he claims, over Iraq. See? He says it will be a narrow mandate/agenda for his negotiators at the meeting: Iraq, and no more! No, there must be no talks about the nuclear issue. Not important enough. He has more time-bound stuff to clear with Congress, Dubai, the opinion polls, and post-Katrina souls. Anyway, the US will now negotiate or talk with Iran. They are currently negotiating with North Korea. Soon, there might be full light negotiation with Syria. So you can see what I mean, can't you?! No, I won't speculate, daddy, on whether that profound theory has been renegotiated: that ''Axis of Evil" coinage. That frenzy? It's usually a question of politics, period.

Next post, if nothing more negotiable intrudes, I will educate you on the numerous meanings of the term negotiate in both official lexicon and political terminology.

Stay well, dad
Dayo