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Nigeria
starts to move again
By JONATHAN
POWER
July 19th, 2000
LONDON - Olusegun Obasanjo has now spent fifteen
solid working months in office as Nigeria's
democratically elected president - and it shows from the
moment the visitor arrives at the once chaotic, and
dangerous, airport of Lagos. Gone are the pick up boys,
pretending to be welcoming taxi drivers who rob you and
dump your body by the road. Gone are the requests for
bribes by custom officials. Gone is the air of disorder
that made the simplest check-in a lengthy drama.
In my first conversation with the president for just
over a year I asked him at once how things are going. "I
underestimated two things. First the degree of
corruption. Of course, I knew it was bad. But I never
guessed how deep and wide it went. The second is the
chaos in the electricity supply system. As far as I can
see it was set up in a way to make sure it didn't work.
These are my two greatest problems. If I can get on top
of these then Nigeria will start to move forward". He
didn't mention the ethnic tensions between Christians and
Muslims which already this year have claimed over 2,000
deaths in inter-communal riots. Nor did he mention the
unrest in the Niger Delta, where the country's fabulous
oil wealth is a source of envy and bitterness to the
impoverished local people who see the oil being whisked
from under them while they receive barely any benefit.
This is a nuts and bolts president who knows that part of
the answer to placating this tension is to get the
country moving again. Not for a day can he forget he
inherited a country from his military predecessors which
had been looted blind. Moreover, they left behind a
country not only in economic chaos but one whose
resources, scarce as they are, had been poorly and
inefficiently utilized. There were simply no standards to
speak of, either administrative or personal. It was every
man, every tribe and every religion for itself.
So far one can say Obasanjo has changed the tone.
Political debate is open. People are no longer afraid of
the government. The billions salted away in foreign banks
by General Sani Abacha and his cronies are gradually
being recovered. The army has been purged of its most
corrupt and violent leaders. Government contracts are
being bid for openly. Pay-offs, although still made, are
not so blatantly in evidence. It is, says the president
with some justification, a much more transparent
administration.
"Don't make me try and run. I'm walking, sometimes
crawling", says Obasanjo when pressed on why things don't
move even faster. For example, human rights standards in
the armed forces and the police service need more
application than they receive. Obasanjo's own background
is a military one and for him the morale of the army and
police takes precedence over human rights although, to be
fair, he is a man who takes reports on misbehaviour and
torture very seriously.
Only three weeks into his term of office Obasanjo had
to send the army into Warri in the Niger Delta to impose
a curfew. Around two hundred people were killed by
intertribal fighting over confused land ownership. A
local newspaper reported that thirty people died in a
boundary dispute sparked by a single palm tree.
Obasanjo flew in himself and started negotiations
between the fighting groups. As part of a longer term
programme aimed at redressing the years of neglect of the
oil-producing communities, he promised to increase the
allocation of revenue accruing from oil to the local
regional administrations by 10%.
Shortly after, underlining the paucity of skilled
manpower capable of putting the Niger Delta region
upright, Obasanjo's office took out advertisements in the
overseas press inviting tenders of "regional
masterplanners of international standing" to plan out a
pathway to the future, to embrace every aspect of
development from education to electrification to rural
banking. It is a bold step to invite back a sort of
localised colonial administration.
The violence in the Niger Delta simmered down, only to
be replaced towards the end of last year by tribal
fighting in south east Nigeria and in the predominantly
Muslim north around the ancient Islamic capital of Kano
and the old British administrative centre of Kaduna. In
February and in May of this year it blew up again.
Fighting erupted during a demonstration called by
minority Christians, angered by Muslims calling for the
imposition of Sharia, Islamic criminal law, which
mandates amputations for theft and stoning for
adultery..
Many see a political motive in the push by northern
Muslim politicians for Sharia- an attempt to undermine
the southern "Christian" presidency of Obasanjo or even
provide conditions for a comeback by the more
northern-orientated army. "Religion is a very sharp
weapon in the northern part of the country", says Shehu
Sani, a local civil rights activist. "It is being used to
subvert the democratic process". Nigerian newspapers,
prone to hyping most of what they cover, have talked of
the conflagration spreading out of control as it did in
the mid 1960s, igniting a bloody civil war. Wole Soyinka,
Nigeria's Nobel laureate for literature told an
interviewer, "the roof is already burning. Obasanjo
thinks it is not. He thinks that some act of accidental
rain, which is an act of God or Allah, will put out the
fire".
Despite the chidings, Obasanjo seems determined to
play it cool, refusing the advice of those who told him
to stamp on the agitators. In a telling statement he
said, "neither the Christians nor the Muslims of Kaduna
need to resort to violence in defence of their positions
on the Sharia issue since God, whom they both claim to
worship, is quite capable of upholding his own
causes."
Obasanjo's quiet diplomacy engineered a compromise and
the northern governors agreed to hold off introducing
Sharia until passions had cooled. But now some of them or
their legislatures seem intent on trying once again to
push it through. It remains to be seen whether the
reassurances they have given that Sharia punishments will
not be applied to non-Muslims will be enough to keep the
resentment of the Christian half of the country under
control.
This new democratic government is very much a two
steps forward, one step backwards operation. Obasanjo is
a gradualist, but the problems have a way of going at
their own speed, which can be exceedingly fast on
occasion. Meanwhile, the signs of economic recovery are
slowly becoming manifest. Nigerians, who have always
exhibited high levels of energy, are rearing for their
country to go places. For now Obasanjo remains a popular
president. If he can at least sustain a walking pace he
may have a chance of putting Nigeria back on its
feet.
I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172 and e-mail:
JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright ©
2000 By JONATHAN POWER
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