Continuity has always been the name of the game in Nigerian politics and this time is no different.
The outgoing president, Olusegun Obasanjo, made much of the fact that he oversaw the first civilian-to-civilian transition in the nation’s history, but what does this amount to? The conduct of the elections, which were universally derided, suggests a level of desperation that the right person should succeed him. And not just anybody, but a member of the so-called Hausa-Fulani aristocracy from the predominantly Muslim north, whose “turn” it is now to occupy the seat of power.
The new President, Umaru Yar’Adua, fits the bill admirably. From the day of his anointing, which is what the elections were, he pledged to continue where his predecessor had left off. This means that there will be no let up in the privatisation exercise that Obasanjo oversaw for eight years.
On the surface there is nothing wrong with this. Nigeria had been burdened with excessive state interference in the economy. Government had a hand in everything, with the result that nothing much worked.
Consider Nitel, the telecommunications company. As a parastatal it never managed more than 750Â 000 lines in a country of more than 100-million people. Within months of assuming power in 1999 Obasanjo pledged to sell it off to private investors and proceeded to do so. Eventually an outfit called Transcorp acquired a 51% stake but immediately ran into problems with trade unions.
Controversy centred on the ownership of Transcorp, which touts itself as a wholly indigenous outfit but is generally considered to be a cover for the tiny elite who stole most of the nation’s wealth, and on the price paid, which was generally perceived as too low. Eighteen months later, there is still some doubt as to whether Transcorp actually paid in full despite its obligations to have done so within a stipulated period.
What happened with Nitel is not unusual. By the time you read this Nigeria may be plunged into darkness because electricity workers are threatening to strike. They are unhappy about the recent sale of Egbin thermal power station in Lagos to a South Korean company called Kepco. The union says the bidding process lacked transparency, with the result that the station, which generates one-third of Nigeria’s output, was sold off cheap. Worse yet, the company itself may well be fictitious.
If the electricity workers do go on strike the problems of the masses who live on less than a dollar a day may be further compounded by threats from militants in the oil-producing Niger delta to “reduce to rubble” the refinery in Port Harcourt, the oil capital, because that, too, was recently sold under questionable circumstances, this time to the Dangote group headed by Aliko Dangote. Everyone is taking the militants seriously because one of the more extreme among them recently bombed the country home of Goodluck Jonathan, the new vice-president, along with a neighbouring police station.
The point was well taken. Jonathan is an indigene of the Niger delta and widely seen as an insultingly obvious choice to play second fiddle to the cabal that is reckoned to have stolen the bulk of the estimated $700-billion earned from oil in 50 years of exploration, and which is now busy buying up the country’s assets on the cheap under the guise of privatisation.
There is no doubt that President Yar’Adua will continue where Obasanjo left off, because that is what he has been put there to do. But he won’t have an easy time of it. On the one hand the masses are becoming increasingly restive over the much-touted economic reforms that have only continued to pauperise them; on the other is the manner of his coming. Even the normally complaisant “international community” cried foul over the elections, which saw the police acting as storm troopers on behalf of the ruling People’s Democratic Party. Yar’Adua was foisted on Nigerians and Nigerians don’t like it and are saying so loudly, which was presumably why the inspector general of police vowed to “crush” any peaceful opposition in the run-up to his inauguration last Tuesday.
Yar’Adua could of course be bold and turn his perceived illegitimacy to his advantage. He could, for instance, acknowledge the crime committed against the people and head an interim government for the sole purpose of conducting fresh elections. He could then use the goodwill created by that singular act to sell his vision for a new Nigeria, which would put the country on the path of meeting the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
But to do so he would have to depart radically from the script that got him there, and which he has in any case already endorsed.
Adewale Maja-Pearce is an author and freelance writer based in Lagos