by Abimbola Orogun

Created on: May 02, 2008   Last Updated: April 06, 2012

"Obama 08, the change we need"; this is one of the few things you will find on my husband's laptop immediately when it opens up. Why Obama you will wonder on a laptop belonging to a Nigerian that lives in Nigeria and has no right to vote but alas, he is not the only one. At least more than half his friends have the same thing on their laptops to the extent that you begin to wonder if there are no other candidates running for the election.

This is now the trend in Nigeria; there is this madness about "Obama" "Change" to the extent that you will begin to wonder what stake these people have in the US Politics when they cannot even vote during the election.

It is very interesting that even some people in the Nigerian Cabinet have gone to the extent of opening a web site for Obama Campaign and even making donations to support the campaign that has nothing to do with them. I visited the website (www.obamanigeria.org) The design theme is quite similar to that of Senator Barrack Obama's official campaign website but one could see Nigeria's flag displayed beside Nigeria for Obama at the lower right corner of the web site's homepage. Other things on the website included the names of the honorable members of the Lagos State House of Assembly who had come together to register an organization (Obama Nigeria Initiative) to publicly push their support of Obama as President of the United States of America, soliciting for donations from Nigerians and souvenirs to help facilitate the campaign. It appears the Assembly members are using public funds to oil the machinery of their "Obama Nigeria Initiative". How? What official business of Lagos State House of Assembly is it, as to who wins the US presidency?

Well one can say that there must be a great reason for this but all these can go to show how much some Nigerians rate Senator Obama, some have even taken it as a forgone conclusion that he is already the president. On this website some reasons were given as to why there is this fanatical support for him as a presidential candidate. An excerpt from the site states that,

"Though without a voting right in the ongoing party primaries of the Democrats in the USA, like everybody around the world, we are very much involved because of the global implications the outcome of the elections would have on the world. We are particularly thrilled by the feat of Barack Obama because for the very first time in the history of the USA, he has successfully broken the color barrier. We are even

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