For a young country, Nigeria has an acute sense of history and its President, Olusegun Obasanjo, has a sense of destiny.
In 1979 he became the first Nigerian ruler to hand over power to an elected civilian leader. In May 2007, he will be the first elected civilian president to hand over to another.
The April 2007 presidential elections should mark the end of a long era of military dictatorship and clingy rulers. Yet there is little sense of optimism among Nigerians, who either remain suspicious that their president is not ready to go or fear that the build-up to next year’s elections — which will also bring a change of governor for most of the 36 states — will be fierce and bloody.
Four candidates for state governor have already been murdered, while the oil-rich Niger Delta grows more lawless.
Obasanjo has set dates for the elections and he is dismissive of talk that he plans to cling to power, even though he is urged to do so by hangers-on and admirers of his late-developing economic reforms.
In any case, such tactics would be unlikely to succeed. As evidenced by the Senate’s decisive defeat of a proposed Bill that would have allowed him to stand for a third term, a growing list of powerful presidential candidates is united by one common purpose: getting rid of Obasanjo.
Obasanjo had wanted to leave a legacy of lasting reform, yet the big-name candidates have emerged through “naira [the Nigerian currency] politics”, where money talks and policies are barely debated, and the line-up of leading candidates offers no sign that next year’s handover will mark a new era of good governance.
The current front-runner is Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, despite Obasanjo’s determined efforts to discredit him because he considers Atiku corrupt and unfit to succeed him. Atiku has strong support in the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), which he helped to create and which is the only proven electoral platform in Nigeria.
He can also call on the backing of the political elite in the mainly Muslim north, who monopolised power for years until Obasanjo, a Christian from the south-west, was elected with their support.
Another heavyweight is retired general Ibrahim Babangida. Babangida has a loyal following in the army and the backing of wealthy business people. The latter includes Mike Adenuga, whose empire of banks, oil companies and telecommunications investments emerged under army rule.
However, Babangida has never stood for office and it is unclear which party he would seek to adopt him. He is also a natural target for smear campaigns, such as the current claims that when he was president, he executed a close friend on trumped-up charges of treason.
The main opposition party, the All Nigeria People’s Party, is also led by a former army ruler, Muhammadu Buhari, an austere northerner who has little chance of outright success in his third election attempt, but could win enough votes to influence the outcome in what is still an unpredictable race.
Obasanjo will remain influential until the PDP chooses its presidential candidate. His political opponents could yet face arrest by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission — the anti-corruption unit within the presidency, which has taken unprecedented steps to tackle high-level corruption.
The commission is currently probing claims that both Babangida and Atiku hold shares in Adenuga’s phone operator, Globacom. Another threat is the plain-clothes State Security Service loyal to Obasanjo, which recently raided Atiku’s campaign office.
The president is said to prefer anyone to Atiku, but it is not yet clear who he will back. Like Obasanjo, representatives of the so-called south-south zone, a political backwater centred round the Niger delta, deny the north’s absolute claim to choose the next president.
The zone’s leaders are demanding more power at the national level to match their growing direct share of the oil wealth, but they have yet to put forward a strong presidential candidate.
Countering Obasanjo’s influence are two of his former top brass, Aliyu Mohammed Gusau, who recently resigned as National Security Adviser, and Theophilus Danjuma, the defence minister during Obasanjo’s first term. The wealth of both men and their influence throughout the country could be decisive in the outcome of next year’s elections.