Nigeria will this week begin its first elections since its return to civilian rule, but, barring some kind of last minute political upheaval, its next president will be a former general.
The four leading candidates in a field of 20 running for the chance to rule Africa’s most populous country are former generals, and the top two of those once ruled as military dictators.
President Olusegun Obasanjo, who has led Nigeria as an elected civilian head of state since 1999 and is standing for re-election on April 19, ruled west Africa’s troubled giant as a dictator between 1976 and 1979.
His main challenger in this election is the authoritarian general Muhammadu Buhari who seized power from a civilian government in 1983 and ruled for 18 months until he was toppled in his turn.
The next two most prominent candidates are ex-general Ike Nwachukwu, who was foreign minister under a military regime, and ex-general Emeka Ojukwu, who led the secessionist Biafran forces in Nigeria’s 1967-1970 civil war.
Nigeria has spent 28 of its 43 years of independence under corrupt and often brutal military rule, most lately the 15 years preceding Obasanjo’s 1999 election in an army run poll.
”The pre May 1999 situation was characterised by several human rights abuses and national angst,” Obasanjo himself said at a February press conference to launch his party’s campaign.
”The nation was held very loosely together, with the future being very uncertain … and the economy retrogressed in a state of pervasive corruption,” he said.
On Saturday more than 60 million voters will be eligible to vote in legislative elections. One week later they will be able to vote in an open presidential poll, with several non-generals to choose from.
But four years into what Nigerians call their latest ”democratic experiment” there seems little sign that the ex-military elite are losing their grip on Africa’s biggest oil exporter.
Daniel Bach, head of France’s Centre for Black African Research, explains the generals’ continuing influence by pointing to the ”tight overlap between Nigeria’s civilian and military elites”.
Gani Fawehinmi, crusading lawyer and the best known of the civilian candidates challenging the generals for the presidency, is more forthright.
”They are looters!” he declares, to anyone who
will listen.
In the ideology free zone which is Nigerian politics, loyalty is owed to wealthy regional and political chieftains.
The leaders who became rich under military rule have remained powerful under the new regime.
That regime in turn has kept a hold of the profits from the Nigerian oil industry, Africa’s biggest and the country’s sole significant export earner, allowing the military’s successors to reward their supporters.
”There’s an elite at the heart of politics that is enriching itself,” says a leading Lagos lawyer. ”They know that the government will make $70- to $90-million per day without doing anything.”
”As long as they manage to get their hands on enough, they’re happy,” he says.
But does the continued dominance of the ex-generals imply a risk of further coup d’etats? Not immediately, most observers agree.
Firstly, as former putschists themselves, the ex-military leaders know the dangers of a powerful independent army, and have accordingly overseen a scaling down in their former comrades’ influence.
”The army is a shadow of its former self. The senior officers just aren’t top class minds, and the government has seen to it they pose little threat,” a senior foreign diplomat says.
Secondly, the former officer corps has done well out of life on ‘civvy street’, and has no need to risk international opprobrium by rsing up.
In these circumstances, and despite their terrible record, the generals are unashamed.
”We are citizens of this country and have the right to stand for the presidency,” Nwachukwu told reporters last week. ”I think collectively we have the right experience for governance.” – Sapa-AFP