Nigeria, Dec. 11 -- Quite often, when a nation is dire straits, it is resistance groups that rally to save that nation. Just as the "partagiani," the diverse coalition of Italian resistance fought fascist leader Benito Mussolini, NADECO, a diverse coalition of Nigerian partisans, fought the Abacha regime in order to restore democracy. In Italy, it was a populist working class movement of political and military elements that eventually freed Italy from fascism in the early parts of the 1940s. Despite NADECO's efforts, the propitious end of the Abacha regime in 1998 followed a distinctively different trajectory. But NADECO's role remains indisputable.

Since often life tends to mimic art, this may well be satirical essay that grapples with...