| AP |
Nigeria
A nation in waiting
The people are watching the new president to see which way he will go
DESPITE the stench of April's elections, described by many observers as the most fraudulent they had ever witnessed, the new president, Umaru Yar'Adua, has been enjoying a honeymoon with the Nigerian electorate. For a country that has known little but corrupt military or civilian rule in the past 40 years or more, Mr Yar'Adua at least looks and sounds different. But now Nigerians are waiting for him to take the harder decisions that alone may sort out some of their country's more intractable problems. Only then will they be able to tell if he is truly up to the job.
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| How much time does he have? |
The “servant leader”, as he styles himself, has made a fair start, even if it amounts so far mainly to promises and gestures. Mr Yar'Adua has announced several plans to boost Nigeria's economy, root out corruption, get the power-grid working again and stem the rising violence in the Niger Delta region and elsewhere. He has avoided meddling in a corruption scandal in the National Assembly, as his predecessors might have done, leaving the legislature's committees to sort it out. And, just as significantly, he has refused to intervene on behalf of former state governors from his own party who have been indicted by the country's anti-corruption agency. The tribunals set up to challenge the election results have also been allowed to operate freely; on October 10th, one called for fresh elections in Kogi state.
The economy is in better shape too. It is growing at about 6% a year, while inflation is down to single figures, about four times less than the rate in 2000. Better fiscal management has meant more foreign currency in the banks and more foreign investment. Nigeria is now the 32nd most corrupt nation in the world, according to a Berlin-based anti-corruption watchdog, Transparency International, down from the top spot in 2000: progress of sorts.
Yet Nigerians know that enormous problems persist; their patience may soon run out. In the Niger Delta, the biggest militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, declared a ceasefire for a few months after Mr Yar'Adua took office. But last month it returned to its customary kidnappings and sabotage. Moreover, the violence has got nastier and more indiscriminate. The kidnappers have begun to nab children, as well as foreign oil workers, politicians and ordinary Nigerians. To flush the militants out of the creeks, the new vice-president, Jonathan Goodluck, a local man, has begun meeting representatives of the various Delta groups. But peace still seems a long way off.
The increasing violence stretches far beyond the Delta. A report by Human Rights Watch, a New York-based lobby group, details how political parties armed rival gangs to rig elections and intimidate voters in 2003 and again this year. Many of the politicians have failed to cough up for those services, so the gangs have been venting their frustration on the streets.
Despite being Africa's largest oil producer, Nigeria still fails to provide enough power for its own people. Electricity is sporadic in towns and almost non-existent in the countryside. A closet industry of private generators fills the gap at a price sometimes ten times that of state-generated power. The president created a National Energy Council last month and told it to come up with a plan to solve the power crisis in six months. But he himself seems to have few firm ideas how to do it.
One constraint on Mr Yar'Adua is that most of the revenue from Nigeria's oil goes to the 36 states, which are then meant to provide the desperate people with their local services. These local governments are often the most corrupt. So the president will have to find a way of ensuring that the huge sums of money available actually reach the people—for instance, in the Delta. To do that, he will have to free himself of the political networks and alliances that he inherited from previous administrations and which still ensnare the country. Nigerians are waiting to see which way he will move.
Nigeria
The good, the bad
and the president
A doughty fighter
of corruption is sent away for re-education
NIGERIANS are painfully aware of how much corruption has cost their country—over $400 billion, according to official estimates. That is the equivalent of about two-thirds of all the aid given to the whole of Africa since the 1960s, and more than anything else explains why most people in this oil-rich country still live in poverty.
Yet in recent years the government had started a belated fight against corruption. And if one man has become the symbol of that campaign it is the crusading young head of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Nuhu Ribadu. Since 2003, Mr Ribadu has attained almost mythic status among his countrymen by charging and prosecuting the politicians, and particularly the state governors, who are responsible for most of the fraud and looting of public funds. For the first time, he gave Nigerians hope that their country could actually be different. So the news on December 27th that Mr Ribadu is being forced to resign on a technicality has caused deep dismay among his supporters. It is also very worrying for the future of Africa's most populous country.
In short, Mr Ribadu finally got too close to the top. His anti-corruption agency, once accused of prosecuting only the government's political foes, has under the new president, Umaru Yar'Adua, been pursuing the former state governors who lost their immunity from prosecution after leaving office last May. He had some big successes. The EFCC has arrested seven governors, including two of the most notorious, Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State and James Ibori of Delta State, both of whom spent Christmas in prison. Another round of arrests was planned for early January.
The prosecution of Mr Ibori was the boldest. The former governor of the oil-rich Delta State received a salary of less than $25,000 a year. Last August a court in London ordered a freeze on $35m of his worldwide assets. Despite this, he was thought to be untouchable in Nigeria because of his political connections. He is a prominent leader of the ruling People's Democratic Party and was a major funder of Mr Yar'Adua's election campaign. So when Mr Ibori was arrested on December 12th many Nigerians gasped—and then cheered. Among other charges against him was an attempted $15m bribe of the EFCC to drop the case against him. “He didn't realise that it was being recorded,” said a commission official.
It was also the arrest of Mr Ibori, however, that tipped the scales against Mr Ribadu. Two weeks later came the announcement that Mr Ribadu would have to resign to attend a one-year course of study at the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies in Jos. Technically, a man of Mr Ribadu's senior rank has to have done this as part of his qualifications; the head of the police said that the “transfer” was only to make Mr Ribadu “a better officer”. In fact, Mr Ribadu could probably teach the course himself; the former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, did not insist on it. In any case, few are in any doubt as to the real reason for Mr Ribadu's sudden obligation to go back to school. Nervous former state governors pressured—and blackmailed—Mr Yar'Adua into letting the police chief sack Mr Ribadu to spare them any more prosecutions.
For, right now, Mr Yar'Adua needs all the political support he can get. The president is soon to face a legal challenge to his own election in a tribunal. He cannot afford to lose friends—and the ex-governors are among the strongest in his People's Democratic Party. They also have the president's ear because several of them, not least Mr Ibori, could probably produce damning evidence of the widespread election rigging that brought the president to office.
Yet sidelining the head of the EFCC in this way is terrible news for Nigeria. The commission is popular—the second most trusted institution in the country, according to a 2007 poll. The agency's more than 200 convictions over four years have resurrected international confidence in the country. With a soaring stockmarket, investors have poured into Nigeria in the hope that the country was at last getting on top of its problems, such as corruption. Now some of that progress is at risk.
For Mr Ribadu, there may still be a way out. He could resign. Or he could refuse to go until the orders come directly from the president. That would leave room for Mr Yar'Adua to back down, and save himself as well. But if Mr Ribadu is forced out, as Chris Albin-Lackey of Human Rights Watch, a lobby group, puts it, “the message is unmistakable. The credibility of the EFCC and the president, someone who is genuinely interested in fighting corruption, will be destroyed.”