Colin Powell was scheduled to be in Nigeria Feb. 27 to join a bipartisan group of members of Congress monitoring the country's presidential election. May be he's trying to compensate for impolitic comments he made about the country in 1995. That was when he told Henry Louis Gates Jr., in an article for the New Yorker, that Nigerians, of whom there are 101 million, "tend not to be honest . . . as a group, frankly [they] are marvelous scammers. I mean, it's their national culture." That prompted the Congress of Nigerians Abroad and the Organization of Nigerian Professionals to release a joint statement saying Powell's comments were "the irresponsible tirade of a man who has abandoned his African heritage."
If Powell certifies the election, we're prepared to take his word for it.