Obasanjo--the
Last Great Hope for Nigeria?
By JONATHAN
POWER
Feb 24, 1999
LONDON- Olesegun Obasanjo, the likely winner in Nigeria's
presidential election on Saturday, combines to a rare degree
brain, brawn and charm. Of massive build, his self assurance
and determination often compel others to bend before his
will. His detractors would call him ruthless; he does not
suffer fools, and many have withered before his unconcealed
scorn. Yet he is not a self-inflated man. Arrogance is not
his vice.
Only released from prison last June, after three years of
struggling to maintain his spirits in a dank cell, he has
moved quickly to regain the presidency he voluntarily
relinquished twenty years ago. It was the same
self-perpetuating clique of self-enriching military officers
who incarcerated him, who had turned to dust his earlier
effort, when he was president in the late 1970s--and himself
a military appointee--to return the country to
democracy.
Two summers back I went to visit his old and trusted
friend, former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, and we had
ended up discussing Obasanjo's plight and how to bring more
pressure to win his release from prison. "We've tried
everything", Schmidt said. "(Former British Prime Minister
James) Callaghan even got Thatcher to intervene. Abacha is
immoveable" "Frankly", he continued, taking a pinch of
snuff, "Abacha needs to be bumped off".
Last June, Nigeria's dictator, General Sani Abacha, did
unexpectedly die of a sudden "heart attack", although there
have been well informed suggestions that in fact it was
murder. Even his closest associates had had enough of the
way, for his own gain, he was bleeding Nigeria of its oil
revenues and running the country more into the ground every
day. The state has been looted almost to emptiness. As
Martin Woolacott has observed, "What remains in Nigeria is
pure predation, the seizure of national assets by those who
control the means of violence and the ruthless suppression
of any who oppose the process".
Yet despite sixteen years of military rule since the coup
that overthrew the democratically elected Shehu Shagari,
Nigeria remains Africa's most vital state, where a tradition
of tolerance, art and literature (it is the home of Nobel
laureate Wole Soyinka and fellow novelist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who
was executed by the regime) vie actively with the crassness
of an oil economy that became a drinking trough for the most
muscular and the most self-seekingly amoral.
Nigeria remains, even after Abacha, a hopeful paradox. It
has more problems than any other major African country, with
the exception of Zaire, yet it also possesses a vitality
second to none.
Although it sits only a few degrees north of the equator,
the visitor is inevitably impressed by the sense of immense
energy and entrepreneurial spirit. Lagos, its capital, is
built on an island swamp. In any other country its
multitudes would make it an impossible place to live. It
appears dirty, disarranged and, to the automobile driver,
anarchic. Nevertheless it survives, its millions of
inhabitants hanging together, the strong tribal and family
ties making the daily burdens of life just bearable.
Rank and file Nigerians often give the appearance of
living more on hope and good will than on immediate tangible
reward. This was how they managed to come out of the civil
war that consumed the country in the late 1960s. General
Yakubu Gowan, the then military ruler, moved quickly with
his policy of reconciliation, to bring the defeated Ibos of
the would-be state of Biafra back into the mainstream of
Nigerian life.
Now, one of his junior officers, Obasanjo, will try the
same task again, of bringing the alienated back into the
political and social fold of a democratic state. And
persuading Nigeria's powerful, and often secession-minded
tribes to pull together. Just as in 1979, when he engineered
the return to democracy with careful precision, he will need
today all the attributes he exhibited then--firm leadership
combined with personal sensitivity to bruised egos,
particularly in the military. But today he has more to give:
the confidence that comes from over twenty years of
reflection on Nigeria's problems--above all, as he has told
me repeatedly, the dangers of an oil economy which has
produced tremendous wealth but improved the well-being of
relatively few.
When he stepped down from office in 1979 Obasanjo turned
to farming. He wanted to prove to his country what he had
preached as president: that their future was in the land,
not oil--60% of Nigeria's people still work in agriculture.
He put on a pair of blue jeans and started a highly
profitable chicken and vegetable farm. Often, he used to
sleep rough in the farm's outhouses, watching over every
detail of the farm's early progress when he was still in his
late thirties.
Obasanjo has always said he sees a three or four
generation timetable for a transition to making Nigeria a
modern state. At the most he will now have ten years of that
hundred to give the country his guiding hand. But what he
does--or fails to do--will undoubtedly make or break the
timetable. Without exaggeration, after so many decades of
missed opportunity, it is probably fair to say he is
Nigeria's last great hope, if the disintegration of the
continent's most populous--and potentially richest--country
is to be avoided.
Copyright © 1999 By JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172 and e-mail:
JonatPower@aol.com
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