Quote from Ndubuisi Ekekwe on December 13, 2017, 6:33 AM

Alabama voted yesterday on a senatorial special election and a better man won. The anything-goes thrower, Roy Moore, was defeated. I lived in Alabama, as a student of the historic black college, Tuskegee University, and it remains a dear second home. But this Forum piece is not about Alabama: it is about Nigeria. In the Alabama election, the principle of cause and effect played out. The outcome of the election was based on the causes fed into the inputs.

Professor Kaoru Ishikawa created Cause and Effect Analysis in the 1960s. The technique uses a diagram-based approach for thinking through all of the possible causes of a problem. This helps you to carry out a thorough analysis of the situation. (Source: Mindtools)

One man came insulting everyone along the way, degrading women, and ignorantly praising slavery: his causes. Another came as a uniter, a visionary for a society where all men (and women) have the same undeniable rights to freedom, liberty and dignity: Doug Jones won.

But flip to Nigeria. we may not be as lucky as the Alabama people. There is no correlation between our causes and our effects in politics. A man steals his country, makes tons of money, and goes into politics. He becomes a senator, House member, etc. A woman on trial goes to markets, throws money to people, and next week, she is a senator.

The fact is there: if there is no relationship between what is fed into a system to the output that comes out of it, that system cannot be improved. Nigeria will not advance until our political system can experience cause-effect politics where defective inputs can never result to winning senators and leaders.

Congratulations Alabama. And Roll Tide.