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Can
Nigeria change the prospects of
Africa?
By
Jonathan
Power
September 11, 2003
ABUJA, NIGERIA - If you want to find opposition to
the elected administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo
of Nigeria open any newspaper any day. Last week, for
instance, almost the entire press was up in arms against
his vice president, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, who too calmly
turned away as his bodyguards beat into unconsciousness a
photographer whose crime was to get too close at a
ceremony to crown the new Oba of Lagos, or so the
reporters present unanimously say. The state governor
shouted himself hoarse begging them to stop but to no
avail.
Cruelty and cold feelings remain part of Nigerian
political and social culture 5 years after the fall of
the ruthless military regime of General Sani Abacha who
purged and pillaged until there was practically nothing
left in the treasury, and those that prospered were the
most corrupt. It became a dark satanic society more in
the mould of Conrad's Congo that in the cultivated spirit
of the absorbed values of the Enlightenment and the sense
of fair play that the first generation of post colonial
leaders had imbibed in pukka British boarding schools and
Irish mission stations. Obasanjo himself spent three
years in a large and dirty prison where, finding peace in
rediscovering his Christian faith, he became the
unofficial chaplain to depressed inmates suffering
torture and convicted murderers about to be executed and
still found time, farmer that he had been, to develop a
piece of prison land into a thriving source of vegetables
and vitamins for guards and prisoners alike. In Nigerian
society at large, whether the Christian south or the
Muslim north the earnest and active religious spirit of
kindness and brotherhood, which Obasanjo himself in his
personal relations very much epitomizes, acts as a
vigorous counter to the brutality, poverty and corruption
that still pervades so much of Nigerian life.
It is this struggle between light and darkness that
beguiles an observer. One day one is seduced by the sense
of new governance, as when last week I traveled to
Liberia with Obasanjo and watched the Nigerian
peacekeepers in action, professional and disciplined, in
marked contrast to the peacekeepers deployed in the same
country 8 years ago by Abacha who gained a deserved
reputation as rapists and looters. The next day one picks
up a report by Amnesty International about the army's
killing of 250 civilians in the town of Odi four year's
ago and Obasanjo when questioned says he has nothing to
apologize for. An optimist would like to conclude that at
last Obasanjo is getting on top of the army and by
replacing the worst commanders of the Abacha era and
appointing types like the mild mannered commander of the
operation in Liberia is injecting a new tone into
military practice. A pessimist would say that an
underpaid, under trained army can still do terrible
things, whatever its commanders say, its emotions roused
when its blood is spilt by protestors, and that Obasanjo,
an ex general, backs up the army too readily.
Nigeria gets a bad press perhaps because the mood
music is still grim- Africa, and no more so than its most
populous country, Nigeria, is to most readers a dark
continent where AIDS, economic decline and ethnic warfare
dominate the news. Yet, as the IMF has just revealed in
its new report on Tanzania, there are countries bucking
the trend with healthy economic growth and a fast
improving administrative competence. And Nigeria itself
has many sprouts of success.
The last couple of years the cell phone revolution has
swept every sizeable town. Even street vendors use their
mobile. A Dutch telephone consultant I met in the
president's waiting room told me the Nigerians have done
in two years what it took 20 years to do in Europe.
Privatization is taking a country bogged down in red
tape, featherbedding and misuse of resources and shaking
it by the ears. The national airline that lost a fortune
has been simply abolished. Privatization has been
expanded rapidly to the banking, construction and oil
marketing sectors. Next will come the railways.
The police, a source of popular discontent, are being
are being challenged daily. Many corrupt officers have
been sacked and the taking of bribes from motorists is
under sustained assault. Only last week Obasanjo
personally intervened to kick the police into action
after two students were apparently murdered by a
policeman. The judiciary itself is becoming
increasingly autonomous and self assured- last year
making an authoritative and important decision on an
offshore/onshore dispute over oil revenue allocation
between the federal government and the states.
There is still a long way to go before the country
turns the corner and reaches its potential to become
another Malaysia. But with its oil and natural gas
reserves it has all the capital it can digest. If
Obasanjo before his second and final term of office is up
in four years' time can get more on top of the country's
culture of corruption and brutality no one should then be
foolish enough to belittle Nigeria's prospects. And where
goes Nigeria, so perhaps does Africa.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2003 By
JONATHAN POWER
Follow this
link to read about - and order - Jonathan Power's book
written for the
40th Anniversary of
Amnesty International
"Like
Water on Stone - The Story of Amnesty
International"
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