As the thirtieth anniversary of the earthly departure of Chief Obafemi Awolowo approaches, snooper has been ruing what went wrong between Nigeria and the man famously described as the best president the nation never had. Is there a nexus between structural compatibility and leadership genius? Except in revolutionary situations which smash all differences, a leader operating in a hostile habitat, no matter how greatly endowed, is bound to be eventually overwhelmed by political adversity.

A nation cannot be greater than the choice of conflicts imposed on it from without or within. It is possible that President Buhari is already ruing the day he decided to cut short his medical vacation. What with the recent Ife crisis which has introduced a frightening dimension to the National Question and the “mago-mago” we all witnessed in the Senate last Wednesday with respect to the second dismissal of Ibrahim Magu.

So, who exactly is deceiving who in this country? What was the point and purpose of the meeting between President Buhari and the leadership of the National Assembly on the eve of the confirmation hearing ? The senate president famously hinted to television correspondents that he was obviously not talking to himself. Somebody must have been talking to himself, Could it be General Buhari himself?

But they should have told Magu that he would not be talking to himself. As soon as he was summarily wrong-footed by the opening salvo, a flustered Magu continued to flip and to flop till the bitter end. The EFCC boss ought to have known that there is no mercy killing in this business. With the deadly DSS still on the prowl, Magu ought to have perished the thought of a soft-landing.

President Buhari deserves some respite and some rest. Unfortunately, this country, being a hostage itself, does not take hostages. This column will not add to his problems. This morning, the column takes a strategic respite from the Nigerian palaver by concentrating on nobler pursuits. Five years ago snooper monitored a seminal interview of a great leader on CNN. It was as if Lee Kuan Yew, the Singaporean avatar, knew his time was up and was biding the global scene a farewell . A few months later, he was gone.

In retrospect and with the benefit of historical hindsight, Lee Kuan Yew genius could not have flourished in a regionally, culturally, religiously and economically polarized nation badly in need of structural unbundling. A great unbundling had already taken place. Singapore was a product of forcible restructuring. The old colonial island-junkyard was summarily expelled from the Malaysian union. Had he ruled the old union, Yew, an ethnic Chinese and himself a monarch by temperament, would have unravelled in a violent confrontation with the rigidly stratified and monarchical Malays,

Half a century after, it is an engrossing paradox of history that both Singapore and Malaysia have achieved stardom through different routes and by harnessing the cultural and creative strengths of their individual societies.