One group of people in (southern) Nigeria I will always feel sorry for are the folks with N250M houses and Range Rovers and N23M in the bank who think that these things make them part of Nigeria's establishment.

I'll always be thankful to my dad for disabusing me of such notions

It is possible to live in the same neighbourhoods, eat in the same restaurants, attend the same schools, fly to the same destinations and have the same social graces as the owners of Nigeria, without ever being close to being one of them.

So many of us do not understand this.

In my lifetime, I've seen so many of said southerners rise and fall, all the while desperately keeping up appearances while the ground under their feet gives way, all the while not understanding what was happening and why.

The establishment is small. It is ethnic. It is filial.

If you understand what Nigeria is and accept it, you will be under no illusions. IBB did not liberalise some sectors of the economy and give out mining and trade licensing favours to benefit southerners so that we could later challenge his children.

Know this and have peace.

The establishment - the real establishment, not the 55 year-old drinking clubs in Lagos - understands the concept of controlling people by giving them something to lose.

You're not one of them because you have those things. They simply *let* you have them. As long as you behave.

The day M.K.O. Abiola stopped playing ball, the establishment had no more use for him and it mothballed him in prison to the end of his life, and machine gunned his wife.

The establishment is small. It is ethnic. It is filial.

You will never be part of it.