Nigeria's leaders offer a poor version of democracy

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By ROBYN E. BLUMNER

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 28, 2000

ABUJA, Nigeria -- To tell if a fish is rotten, goes an old Nigerian maxim, you must smell the head. That saying is particularly poignant now, as this fledgling democracy turns a year old on Monday. To the extent that leadership sets the moral tone for a nation, Nigeria has seen just how putrid the head of a fish can get.

President Olusegun Obasanjo ruled oil-rich Nigeria as a military dictator from 1976 to 1979 and is now Nigeria's first democratically elected president in nearly two decades. Regrettably, not much has changed. Recently, Obasanjo, 63, welcomed a group of American journalists into his oversized, oversecured home to preen and boast about Africa's newest democracy. He sat at the head of his long dining room table surrounded by plates piled with various meat dishes -- a scene richly symbolic of the bounty historically enjoyed by Nigeria's rulers while deprivation has gripped most of its people.

Obasanjo entreated the journalists to "look for the good things in this country" but didn't offer much of a list. He spoke of some glimmers of hope with the nation's religious conflicts. In recent months, when Christians and Muslims were slaughtering each other by the hundreds and possibly thousands in the northern state of Kaduna, Obasanjo claims that some Christians saved Muslims and vice versa. Yet, in a country where infant mortality is 11 percent, the average per capita income hovers around $300 and where the infrastructure is so underdeveloped that President Clinton just announced plans to scrap an overnight stay because the nation's telephone system was so undependable, a few cross-religious heroes doesn't seem like much to hang your hat on.

From nearly every vantage, Nigeria's democracy appears immature and precarious.

An innocent question about a budget dispute between the president and the National Assembly sends Obasanjo, a doughy-faced man with large glasses and a perpetual pout, into a rant against the nation's parliament. He calls legislative branch leaders "boys and girls," and accuses them of overreaching when they dared amend the budget he had sent them. "It's not that the 30- and 40-year-olds are not welcome in this democracy," says Obasanjo, "it's that they don't know the limits of power."

He could have been talking about himself.

Nigeria's yearlong experiment with democracy is barely limping along. Obasanjo may be a far cry better than the military rule of leaders such as Gen. Sani Abacha, who, before he died suddenly of a heart attack in 1998, was accused of diverting $4- to $6-billion of the nation's oil wealth into his personal bank accounts. Still, Obasanjo doesn't appear to be up to the challenges confronting Nigeria. He is a tightly wound megalomaniac who explodes with anger at the slightest challenge.

High-ranking Nigerians and international observers alike say Obasanjo is still a general in president's garb. They say he looks the other way while his incompetent and corrupt ministers follow the corrosive Nigerian tradition of using government service to amass a personal fortune. "The man has been in for only one year, yet we all know that we are sleepwalking into disaster," says Dr. A. U. Jalingo, a member of the political science department at Bayero University in Kano, Nigeria, and a former state government official.

Unfortunately, little more deftness and political acumen is exhibited by Senate President Chuba Okadigbo. Surrounded by a phalanx of Senate colleagues and Nigerian national media, Okadigbo loudly declares that his country's epic corruption is the fault of the West: "Corruption is not a Nigerian word," he insists, "it is English. . . . Someone taught Nigerians (how and where to hide extorted and stolen money)."

Asked by American journalists what in his view is most needed in Nigeria, Okadigbo callously responds: "We need offices," noting that only 100 of the 360 members of the House of Representatives have their own. In Nigeria, creature comforts for the ruling class have always come before the basic necessities for the rest of the population. Apparently, under democracy that hasn't changed.

In truth though, Nigeria isn't much of a democracy. The election of Obasanjo and the leaders in the National Assembly has been called little more than a financial transaction. Open government and accountability are still lacking. And while the people are generally pleased that they are out from under military rule, the average Nigerian in this well-endowed country is still suffering severe hardship -- fewer than half of the nation's 110-million people have access to potable water or sanitation.

In response, Nigeria's leaders cry for relief from the country's estimated $32-billion debt, but that isn't likely to happen until the oil revenues are fully accounted for. Foreign investment isn't likely to come any time soon, either. Nigeria's electrical grid, communications system and road network are so rudimentary and degraded that most international businesses cannot operate. Other than Mobil and Shell, it's rare in Nigeria to see a sign for an American company.

One year after Obasanjo's inauguration, it appears the best case for the country is that he act as a seat warmer until political leaders who are abler and more committed to good governance can be developed. The worst case is that the country implodes under its multiple stresses of tribal conflict, religious intolerance and desperate poverty -- a situation ripe for the military to come out of the barracks again.

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