"Well, a man who has shackles on his mind is not going to have a free body. Until we are shorn of our superstitious and fetish ways, we still have a long way to go." A scholar, Ken, a member of Transparency Forum, a group of Nigerians at home and in the Diaspora think-tank just wrote this morning. Ken, a professor of Biology at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife identified some of Nigeria's development problem, but I want to add more.

I am worried about some of us our colonial mentality often manifested in our writings which tend to show or prove our knowledge of the West, the United States in particular more than the Westerners or the Americans themselves. Some of us talk and write about the United States as if it is our motherland, yet all they know about the United States is through the media and literature some of which is propaganda. Having read so many of these articles both from the main stream media, from blogs, e-mail and internet, I postulate that removing the shackles of colonial mentality is a way forward to our backwardness. But most important to our development is looking at the positive sides of the United States and copying them to suit our culture and traditional heritage.

In fact, with all due respect, some of us need to be informed about the West - the United States, and its political-economic systems are such that the more we look, the less we see. So let us not fall into the trap of writing or commenting about the United States politics and economy (for example) from what the media tells us or from hear-say. Similarly, let us not write as if we know the country too well or that it is our own when in fact the person writing has not crossed Lekki Beach. Lived experience is the best lessons for a person who wants to know more and that is why comments from people such as great commentators (we know them) should be more authentic than what we read or hear from the media and other sources.

We should start learning these lessons by first of all, not evaluating or measuring life in general based on monetary values or by making comparisons between our country and the lifestyles of Americans. This is because, the United States has built a fast economic track that confounds scholars and even people who have lived 10 - 20 years in that country and have become part of the decision- making process. Also let us not measure lifestyles of Americans in comparison with our people based the lifestyles of oil and corporate executives, diplomats and missionaries. This is because, there are poor people in United States, some of them so poor that all you could see are dead men and women working. Some of them are homeless (my son's school goes every Sunday to feed the homeless) who have no places to run to even when US economy was good and things are now worse with the current foreclosures of homes. Like me, most of us have been somehow brainwashed into perceiving the United States from the lifestyles we see on the television, the lifestyles of the oil executives, corporate executives, diplomats and missionaries who are top on the hierarchy of the elites in the United States. These are the people we encounter on the streets in Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt. Because the average American, rarely travels outside the United States and to afford a trip overseas, must save over a long period.

It is also important to inform our brothers and sisters in Nigeria, that life generally is not what we were told by missionaries who colonized our grandparents and parents' minds. With respect to the early missionaries, there were gains that they made in our lives and the Nigeria system in general by their presence. We cannot just dismiss their roles (missionaries in development of Igbo land for example). However, lessons learned from politics, economy to religion indicate that political, economic, social and religious lives of the Americans are after all different from us. What we were told that they were is not entirely the truth. It is more than what we know it is.

On a more positive side about United States, and for those of us that are not involved in the current campaign to elect a new president to the White House this November, the adverts in Ohio - one of the swing states in 2008 election (if it were to be aired in Nigeria are troubling). As a swing or must win state for either Obama and McCain to be in White House, the level of politicking in Ohio has degenerated to low, low (emphasis mine). The political environment is so tensed, yet both parties are cautious of its consequences of their actions to supporters going into street fights.

In fact, the level of "bad politics" going on right now on the airwaves as I write in small villages such as Findlay and Bowling Green in Ohio - where I have another home is such that if practiced in Nigeria, our country will fragment politically. I mean negative adverts by Republicans to the level of personally attacking Obama's life and on issues with no truth in them. As a full time Obama volunteer and with connections to the headquarters, the number of Republican negative adverts some of them racially motivated and personal attacks continue to dominate the airwaves. It is so troubling that you don't know which already-running Obama paid advert airing on air that one has to rush and withdraw and replace to challenge Republican dirty negative commercials on Obama. The TV/Radio stations in this dying minutes of the election is so bad and tainted with messages that you cannot air in Nigeria or cannot be accepted by any station - even your opponent's stations, yet they are allowed under the Freedom Act to be played unchallenged by McCain's and the Republican party.

My conclusion as an Obama campaign volunteer is that if it is in Nigeria that the kind of negative adverts on Obama is airing, the whole streets of Ibadan, Ondo or Onitsha would have been ablaze with tires burning and lives lost. But United States being a "great' civilized nation that it is, opponents of the parties hardly fight each other on the streets. As I am writing now Palin is about 500 meters from me - Arena Hall at Bowling Green State University, Ohio giving her final speech to huge audience (not any way compared to Obama). However, (believe me), hecklers are everywhere. What she did was just to pass them and headed to the podium to give her speech. Compare these situations to what I witnessed in Anambra State when I worked under the office of the Press Secretary to the Governor - Eddy Onyia (and I learned that the situation is worse now), when Onoh was attempting to stop Nwobodo from a second term re-election, you will realize that the "shackles in our mind" needs to be cast off.

*Igboak wrote in from Bowling Green State University, School of Communication Studies Ohio, 43403