Victory of sorts

Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, the ruling People's Democratic Party candidate, wins a landslide victory in Nigeria's presidential election.

NIGERIA is preparing to witness a successful handover of office from one civilian President to another for the first time since independence in 1960.

The elections held in the third week of April were chaotic and violent. Over 200 people lost their lives in election-related violence. Before polling started, there was an attempt to blow up the headquarters of the electoral commission in the capital, Abuja. The elections to the presidency and Parliament were preceded by gubernatorial elections. The opposition alleged widespread fraud in that election too.

However, the very fact that the presidential election was held on schedule is in itself a victory for democracy and the rule of law. At the eleventh hour, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had to print new ballot papers to add the name of former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar to the long list of candidates standing for President. A federal court overruled the decision of the INEC debarring Abubakar's candidacy on the grounds of corruption. He has been accused by federal agencies of siphoning off $125 million from the state exchequer for his personal use.

Democracy Nigerian style has always had its own characteristics. Ideology is invariably relegated to the back burner as sections of the elite jockey for power in winner-take-all elections. There was much at stake for the ruling party - the People's Democratic Party. The PDP has been accused of monopolising power and distributing patronage on a mass scale. But the fact remains that the opposition remained disunited and could not agree on fielding a single candidate to challenge its might. Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, the PDP candidate, was handpicked by President Olusegun Obasanjo after the latter failed in his bid to get the Constitution amended to allow a third term in office. Obasanjo's rationale for seeking another term was that the reform process he had started was incomplete.

The new President's older brother, the late Shehu Musa Yar'Adua, was Vice-President under Obasanjo during his avatar as a military ruler in the mid-1970s. Umaru Musa Yar'Adua has a reputation for being incorruptible and is known for his socialist leanings. He was the Governor of the northern Nigerian State of Katsina. Muhammadu Buhari, the candidate of the main opposition party, the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP), also hails from Katsina.

Northern Nigeria is predominantly Muslim and is presently experiencing an Islamic revivalism of sorts. Twelve States in the north have implemented sharia law though Nigeria is a secular country where Muslims and Christians form the majority of the population. A group calling itself the Nigerian Taliban engaged the security forces in a pitched battle in the city of Kano in the week preceding the presidential election. Buhari is said to harbour Islamist tendencies.

Maurice Iwu, chairman of the INEC, described the election as "largely successful". He went on to add that a "jinx" had been broken. This is the first time that Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, has had eight uninterrupted years of democratic rule. Since the mid-1960s, the country has been wracked by military coups. The democratically elected government of Shehu Shagari was overthrown in a military coup at the beginning of a second four-year term in office. Shagari was in office from 1979 to 1983. Buhari was the man who briefly took over after the military coup against the civilian government. During his brief stint as military ruler, he was known for his authoritarian ways. Many other civilian politicians of today, including Obasanjo, have a military past.

The government has acknowledged that there were many problems all over the country in the conduct of the elections. Obasanjo, while defending the way the elections were conducted, also admitted that there were shortcomings. "No elections in the world will be ever considered perfect. You cannot use European standards to judge a situation in a developing country," Obasanjo told the BBC.

The results showed a landslide victory for Yar'Adua and the ruling PDP in the parliamentary elections. Iwu announced that Yar'Adua got around 24.6 million votes; Buhari came second with 6.6 million votes; and Abubakar came third with 2.6 million votes. The other candidates in the fray, such as the former secessionist leader Odumegwu Ojukwu, were far behind. There was a shortage of ballot boxes in opposition strongholds. Even before the votes were counted, Abubakar came out with a statement rejecting the elections. He said that the elections were the worst ever held in the country.

Most of the election observers and monitoring groups described the elections as flawed. The Transition Monitoring Group, an independent monitoring group comprising Nigerians, called for them to be annulled. It alleged that voting could not be held in many of the country's 36 States. The group claimed that in the States where voting was held many people could not exercise their franchise because of the late arrival of voting material. The opposition demanded that the polls be annulled and that Parliament install an interim government until new elections could be held.

The Nigerian media were generally critical of the elections. Editorials in newspapers used strong words to describe the conduct of the elections. "Nigerians who still care about the future of this country should now decide: should we allow the gang rape of our nascent democracy and the great insult to our collective sensibilities to continue unchecked," wrote Nigeria's leading newspaper, The Guardian. A similar situation prevailed in 1983. Many Nigerians were convinced that the elections held that year were not free and fair. The majority of Nigerians actually applauded the military for ousting the civilians from power in 1983.

Responsible Nigerians have been appealing to their countrymen not to lose faith in democracy. A commentary in the newspaper This Day said that "the fact that President Olusegun Obasanjo has made a complete mess of our democracy and turned Nigeria into his chicken farm doesn't mean that democracy is bad". Obasanjo, after his retirement from the Army in 1979, became a successful chicken farmer. An opinion poll taken in 2005 showed that 85 per cent of Nigerians had lost faith in democracy. At the beginning of Obasanjo's first term, the satisfaction rate was 84 per cent.

Obasanjo made economic reforms and tackling corruption his priority issues during his eight years in office. His economic liberalisation policies helped him score brownie points with the international banking fraternity but did not noticeably help the country's economy. During Obasanjo's second term in office, international oil prices were at a record high. The Nigerian economy should logically have benefited as did those of other oil-exporting countries such as Venezuela and Iran. Nigeria exports more than $20 billion worth of oil every year.

But the ogre of corruption coupled with government mismanagement has seen the economy stagnating. Nigeria's anti-corruption agency has estimated that around 70 per cent of the oil revenues are either stolen or wasted. Unemployment stands at a record 40 per cent. Foreign debt stands at $30 billion. Today, Nigerians are poorer than they were when British rule ended in 1960.

It is obvious that the government's much hyped efforts to fight corruption have not borne fruit. But a small beginning seems to have been made in the uphill struggle to combat corruption and nepotism. Obasanjo set up an Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) under the chairmanship of a senior police officer, Nuhu Ribadu. Under his leadership, the EFCC has recovered more than $5 billion and successfully prosecuted more than 82 people. It was the EFCC that charged Abubakar with fraud and embezzlement. Ribadu has vehemently denied that those being prosecuted for corruption are those opposed to the present power structure at the Centre. For the first time in Nigeria's history, highly placed persons in both the government and the private sector were investigated for corruption and brought to justice. The EFCC arrested a serving head of the Nigeria Police and prosecuted him for stealing government funds.

One of the first things Obasanjo did after assuming office in 1999 was to curtail the power of the military. He retired the military chiefs appointed by the preceding military regime. He followed this up by ordering the retirement of all military officers who had held political office in the more than a decade and a half of military rule. The message was loud and clear. Henceforth the military would have no role in politics and would have to remain confined to the barracks. But the Nigerian public seems to have a love-hate relationship with military rule. With the shenanigans of the politicians in full display in the past eight years coupled with the country's economic downslide, some Nigerians are now clamouring for a return to authoritarian rule.

The inability of the civilian government to resolve the crisis in the crucial oil-producing Niger Delta region is also an important issue the new President will have to tackle on a priority basis. The international community, especially the United States administration, is growing impatient with the Nigerian government's inability to prevent kidnappings of oil workers and acts of sabotage in the area that accounts for more than 90 per cent of the country's earnings from oil and gas. Nigerian oil is of great strategic interest to the U.S. and the growing economies of Asia.

The insurgents in the Niger Delta, who have banded together under the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend), issued a statement in February, threatening secession from the Nigerian federal state. In the past one year, more than 60 foreign workers, including a few Indians, were kidnapped.

The insurgents initially confined their activities to areas near the oil installations, but now kidnapping of foreigners is taking place in cities such as Port Harcourt. The government has admitted that it lost more than $4 billion in 2006 because of the activities of the insurgent groups.