The air is hot here in the deep beyond of Nigeria. So is the talk, as happens at election time in any vibrant democracy. Yet the heat is measured, as one would expect from the retiring, rather cerebral, president, Olusegun Obasanjo, and his chosen, would-be successor Umaru Yar’Adua, a former university lecturer in chemistry, who prefers to speak as if he were in a class room rather than on a podium surrounded by a cacophony of banner-waiving enthusiasts, bussed in mainly by the local churches, even though he is as Muslim as they come.
This is the heartland of the old Biafra, the province of the mainly Christian Igbo people, who in the 1960s tried to breakaway and start their own country. The commanding Nigerian general who secured the Biafran capitulation after a very bloody defeat was Obasanjo. But that was before his days as an earnest Christian, which began when he was imprisoned by the dictator, Sani Abacha. Now, given what he has learned about life, Obasanjo says that he would find another way short of violence to have ended the secession, just as he did recently when he gave the disputed oil-rich peninsular of Bakassi to the Cameroon rather than fight for Nigeria’s claim to it.
“Biafra” is now at peace, and quite prosperous. Driving into the town, along past the rather grand Deeper Life Bible Church, the German Language Center, the dozens of cyber cafes and the local synagogue, we pass row upon row of well-built two story houses. The mud hut seems to be of a bygone century. Electric pylons dot the landscape and gas stations without queues are on every corner. Nigeria has shaken off its sloth, its economic malaise, at least some of its maladministration, faced head on its culture of corruption and is now moving forward with a handsome growth rate of 7 percent a year (8 percent in the nonoil sector) with, according to the International Monetary Fund, a good chance of achieving an “Asian miracle” growth rate of 10 percent within five years. Now Yar’Adua, steps forward and speaks to his “class”, as he does every day as he crisscrosses the country. “By 2020 I want to see Nigeria becoming an industrialized state. I want it to be by then the 20th industrialized state in the world. With the foundations that have been dug deep into the ground over the last 8 years there is no reason why we can’t do it.”
Yar’Adua is 56, governor of a northern state, Katsina, who won Obasanjo’s respect because he is one of the few governors of Nigeria who has not been tarnished by corruption. He doesn’t have the charisma, worldliness or command of detail of his mentor but he is thoughtful and straightforward in what he says. “All religions are corrupted. But all religions are about love, kindness, justice and tolerance. These virtues are difficult for government to put in practice. But this is what I have tried to do in my state.” Many of the northern governors tried early on to embarrass Obasanjo with a strict imposition of Shariah law. Yar’Adua resisted this strongly and is known as a conciliator, rather than a confronter. When I asked him how he was going to deal with the armed insurrection in the oil-producing Niger Delta, he replied, “By patient negotiation”.
Yar’Adua is up against two hardheaded opponents. The first is Muhammed Buhari, a former military dictator, who when in power killed off dissenting journalists and locked up corrupt businessmen, but who in the last two elections has tried, not unsuccessfully, to prove he is now a reformed democrat. The other is Vice President Atiku Abubakar who broke with Obasanjo and formed his own party. Last week he was indicted by an investigative committee of the Senate for serious corruption and this week the government’s anti-corruption body, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, will present before the Federal High Court, detailed evidence of his corruption. It is likely that this will lead to his disqualification as a candidate.
Nuhu Ribadu, the clever and brave lawyer who leads the EFCC, told me that he now believes that he is within reach of decapitating the mafia’s hydra that has so deeply corrupted Nigeria.
A lot hangs on this election. If all goes well — which means if the election is honest and Abubakar doesn’t try to extract political revenge — Nigeria could be launched as one of the 21st century’s up and coming great democratic powers.
