Roger Cohen in Abuja
`Look, the human rights here in Nigeria are terrible,” Theodore Luttwak says, “but the opportunities are just fantastic … where else in the world do you have so much money?”
Good question. Abuja, Nigeria’s capital- under-construction, is full of the whiff of oil money, and not just at the exclusive golf course said to absorb 25% of the city’s water supply just to keep the greens smooth. Luttwak – “just call me Teddy” – is out to get his share of the $10-billion that Nigeria earns each year from oil.
His logic is simple. The military officers who have ruled Africa’s most populous nation for two decades, and siphoned off a good share of its oil revenue, are building vast mansions on their Abuja real estate. They want gold-inlaid basins for their bathrooms and jacuzzi baths, sophisticated water purifiers and huge quantities of Italian marble that Luttwak imports.
“One man from the national petroleum company just gave me $100 000, only for the marble in his house,” Luttwak said. “My company started three years ago, and I’m now the major importer of Italian marble. This is Africa’s land of opportunity.”
Somehow it is a surprise to find the older brother of Edward Luttwak, a former defence policy adviser to the Ronald Reagan administration and a senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, hustling imported marble in Abuja, Nigeria. But then this place is full of surprises.
There is, for example, the National Human Rights Commission “created by presidential decree”. It is just off Sani Abacha Way, an avenue named after the late dictator whose flouting of human rights, including the execution of writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, turned Nigeria into an international pariah.
Or, not far from Luttwak’s premises, the Sani Abacha Foundation, a palatial enterprise whose aim, its prospectus says, is “to immortalise the name, ideas and achievement of General Sani Abacha in relation to his efforts in promoting peace, unity, conflict resolution and the universal brotherhood of mankind”.
Abacha plundered Nigeria with single-minded zeal during his nearly five years in power before his abrupt death, apparently from a heart attack, in June. His wife, Maryam, was stopped trying to leave the country on a flight bound for Saudi Arabia with eight suitcases full of cash. Western officials estimate that the late general may have more than $3-billion stashed away in foreign bank accounts, a sum that Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire took decades to accumulate.
All this, for Teddy Luttwak, is no surprise. He deals every day with “the Nigerian factor” – the bribes needed to get anything done. “Abacha was tremendously corrupt, more than than any mafia you can imagine,”he said. “The general took a share in every contract, everybody, everything. He was a ruthless warrior. But the fact is, you probably do need a soft-spoken dictator here.”
Born in Transylvania in 1939, Luttwak has a scar on his head from the years of Nazi oppression. A post-war move to Italy brought a fortune in plastics, notably in the production of plastic beach balls, but the good times ended when he was kidnapped and held for ransom in 1972.
While his brother Edward made his way in Israel and the United States, Luttwak, an Italian citizen, washed up on Nigeria’s shores, where he has been wheeling and dealing for two decades. A day spent at his company Pated – “mirror polished granites and marbles at very, very, very, very competitive prices” – is instructive in the ways of this country.
As Luttwak, sweat glistening on his brow, blue eyes gleaming, rushes around his premises looking for a driver to make a huge marble delivery to the northern city of Kano, in walks Ahmud Agberankhe (34), who has a university degree in physics. He works for Nigerian Radio for a monthly salary of about $40.
Agberankhe’s assignment for the day is to work on a jingle for an advertisement for Pated.
“In the 1980s a graduate like me could have a car,” Agberankhe lamented as he played a proposed jingle focused on the “very, very, very, very competitive prices” for Luttwak. “But now it’s difficult to make ends meet. You have the knowledge, but there are no openings. If you strive, you should be given a chance.”
There are millions of downwardly mobile Nigerians like Agberankhe whose chances of making it have evaporated as this potentially rich country has succumbed to sweeping decay, mismanagement and corruption on a scale so vast that it has made people despair of a fair reward for a fair day’s work. Per capita income is now a quarter of what it was a decade ago.
Luttwak once spent several days in prison for refusing to pay a bribe, and has learned his lesson. His Nigerian wife Patience (28), formally speaking, owns the company. Under Nigerian law, majority ownership of corporations must be in Nigerian hands.
Looking on in admiration, and mild dismay, was Marino d’Ermo, a major Italian marble producer, visiting Nigeria to examine the business possibilities. “Teddy is fantastic,” D’Ermo said, “and the potential in this town is crazy.”
Of course, the town in question is supposed to be home to a democratic government by May 1999, under commitments made this month by Nigeria’s military rulers. If so, the boom in marble-bedecked mansions could evaporate.
As he sees it, a northern, Muslim ruling caste controls the country through the military and is unlikely to be budged. Disciplined, God-fearing and determined, this caste, for Luttwak, stands in contrast to what he sees as an impossibly unruly south. He is unconvinced that change is imminent. In any event, he is wasting no time. “There is no tomorrow at this company,” he shouts at a worker who has made the mistake of saying something will be done tomorrow. “Tomorrow does not exist.”
Nigeria has huge reserves of marble and granite. But, as in the oil industry, mismanagement has led the domestic industry to ruin. State-owned factories are idle. So Nigeria imports marble and granite, just as it imports petroleum. And disaster for the majority translates in to opportunity for a few. – The New York Times