article on nigeria

[Mira Tanna <mvtanna@artsci.wustl.edu>]

  Just thought you all would find this article interesting
  --------
  from Africa Confidential  4 July 1997  vol 38 no 14
  (reprinted with permission)
  
  
  Nigeria: The General's Labyrinth
  
  Failures at home and abroad are bad news for General Abacha's plans to run
  in presidential elections
  
  	All the ingredients are there: political uncertainty (about
  General Sani Abacha's candidacy in next year's elections), economic
  collapse (fuel shortages and worse poverty than 25 years ago), armed
  political rivalries (Niger delta war) and regional crisis (Sierra Leonean
  coup-makers who have humiliated Abacha)> However, there is no effective
  opposition able to make political capital out of Abacha's travails; for
  him, the most threatening opposition still consists of serving and retired
  army officers. As things get worse, such officers believe, their chances
  of succeeding in a bid for power improve.
  
  	Certainly things look bad. Two months of chronic fuel shortages,
  in the world' sixth-largest crude-oil producer, demonstrate a degree of
  administrative incompetence that makes Nigerian seethe. As criticism
  mounted, Abacha finally stepped in at the end of June with promises to end
  the problem with massive imports. The trouble had begun in the four badly
  maintained refineries, under Minister of Petroleum Resources Dan Etete.
  Finance Minister Anthony Ani says that Etete's ministry received US$2
  billion in 1995 and 1996 to repair the refineries, among other things. No
  more had been released, said ani, because "government was yet to see the
  impact of this huge expenditure so far."
  	
  	Etete called Ani's comments "a deliberate falsehood," claiming
  that the Finance Ministry had denied him funds to repair the refineries;
  of Ani he said: "As soon as the so-called almighty minister stops
  interfering in my ministry...if would be best for the country."
  Significantly, the popular military administrator for Lagos State, Col.
  Mohammed Marwa, also clashed with Etete and called for the state Nigerian
  National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to explain the fuel crisis. Etete
  dismissed this as "childish." Abacha has not bothered to call his
  ministers or his military men to heel; some in Abuja suggest ministerial
  rows make him feel more secure.
  
  Fuel shortage - what shortage?
  
  There are, too, embarrassing reports that NNPC has overpaid by some $20
  million for deliveries of Saudi Arabian crude to its Kaduna refinery this
  year. Unsurprisingly, the supplier companies (notable Mobil, Brentsol and
  Nigermed) have been lobbying for an extension of the contract, which nets
  them an average margin of $4.35 a barrel. Senior NNPC officials say this
  year's contract has been restructured after "high-level interference."
  
  	Just as controversial is the latest oil-products supply contract
  negotiated between Swiss-based traders Glencore and Nigeria's military
  leadership in late June. We hear that the contract - 33 cargoes of fuel
  products on highly lucrative terms - includes commissions of some $10 mn.
  for the trading intermediaries, including Lebanese entrepreneurs Jack and
  Gilbert Chagouri and George Miranda, a Brazilian commodities trader who
  got to know Abacha when he was Chief of Army Staff a decade ago. In
  overall charge of the Glencore supply contract is the director of the
  state-owned Pipeline Products Marketing company, Ibrahim Abubakar Harouna,
  who was formerly Maryam Abacha's lawyer. Such highly profitable supply
  arrangements are blamed by many (along with smuggling) for the shortages
  in the first place.
  
  	Etete will have none of this. The oil sector is more accountable
  than ever, he says, and criticism of it amounts to an attempt to
  destabilize the Abacha government. Etete, whose political demise has been
  wrongly predicted almost as often as Abacha's, regards himself as an
  "ultra-loyalist"; he supports utterly the idea that Abacha should succeed
  himself by standing (preferably unopposed) in next year's presidential
  election. Also keen on the idea are: Tom Ikimi (the abrasive Foreign
  Affairs Minister); Lieutenant Gen. Jeremiah Useni (Federal Capital
  Territory Minister); Wada Nas (Minister for Special Duties); Sule Hamman
  (Abacha's political advisor); Ismaila Gwarzo (his Chief Security Advisor).
  Nor should Abacha's most loyal supporter, the increasingly powerful First
  Lady, Maryam Abacha, be left out of the equation. She seems even more
  determined than her husband that he should continue in office.
  
  	Ultra-loyalists argue the best conclusion to the fractured
  transition to civilian rule, which is scheduled to culminate in National
  Assembly and presidential elections in mid-1998, would be for Abacha to
  "unify the military and civilian constituencies" by standing himself. Yet
  even loyalists are rethinking the transition plan wondering whether the
  General began too soon to ready himself for an elected presidency.
  Abacha's team is not coherent enough to redraw the regime's priorities but
  its members feel that, to quote a well-placed source, "something must be
  done to stem the tide of disaffection."
  
  	Their problem is to find outwhat the soldiers want. Abacha has
  said that his decision to run will largely depend on opinion in "his
  constituency." Some military sources say their fellow soldiers are against
  self-succession and that the two service chiefs have privately reported
  this as their officers' opinion. Ahead of what Abuja sources describe as a
  "transitional review conference," Abacha's ultra-loyalists advise him to
  hold on to his uniform to keep the military on board. An interim position
  suggested is for Abacha to head a "national security Council" made up of
  senior officers who would then supervise the transition to civilian rule.
  
  Opening politics, opening the gaols
  
  Much riskier would be a political opening and the setting up of a
  transitional government, even extending to the release of some political
  prisoners. Such a plan was floated in an article in veteran journalist
  Stanley Macebuh's _Post Express_ newspaper, citing Abuja sources. Its
  essence, _Post Express_ said, would be to bring in goaled Chief Moshood
  Abiola, winner of the 1993 presidential election, as head of a
  transitional government and so neutralise National Democratic Coalition
  (Nadeco) activists and head off pressure for more sanctions.
  
  	Three key Abacha opponents - retired Gen. Alani Akinrade, a former
  Chief of Army Staff; exiled Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka; and veteran
  politician Anthony Enahoro - say they have received messages from Abuja
  offering to drop treason charges against them and floating the idea of a
  government of national unity. This would meet some opposition demands but
  dismays Abacha loyalists, who ask whether he really needs to make risky
  concessions to his civilian opponents. Nevertheless, some of his advisors
  have been sounding out Western diplomats on what benefits Abuja might get
  if he released Abiola this year, at the end of what would have been his
  four-year presidential term.
  
  	There are signs, though, that the political class is finding its
  voice again. The securocrats may have successfully dissuaded Abacha's
  potential rivals from standing, such as former Oil Minister Don Etiebet,
  ex-senator, Olusola Saraki and millionaire publisher Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu;
  but other potential contenders Adamu Ciroma, Maitama Sule and Umaru
  Shinkafi, all of whom have worked with Abacha, are now openly critical of
  the transition and of any notion that Abacha should succeed himself.
  
  	So, too, has been former Biafra leader Chukwuemeka Ojukwu,
  formerly a strong supporter of Abacha's, who said the transition programme
  was hopelessly confused and that it was time for his Ibo people to vie for
  the presidency. Ojukwu is again claiming that he is being pushed towards
  extremism by his countrymen.
  
  	Abacha's image overseas is a disaster. Nigeria's paradoxical
  intervention in favour of Sierra Leone's civilian President Ahmad Tejan
  Kabbah, was calculated to win friends. Instead. it attracted even more
  attention to the regime's own defects. At June's Organisation of African
  Unity summit Harare, Nigeria's influence was visibly fading. Foreign
  Minister Ikimi complained to the Zimbabwean host government, when
  Commonwealth pro-democracy moves brought delegates from (among others)
  Eritrea, Ethiopia, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda together with Nigerian
  oppositionists.
  
  	Facing a host of questions on Sierra Leone, OAU Chairman Robert
  Mugabe replied by denouncing coups everywhere, emphasising that OAU
  support for peacekeeping in Sierra Leone did not mean support for
  Nigeria's undemocratic regime. Even some West African governments, usually
  respectful of Nigeria, pointed to the discrepancy between peacekeeping and
  Nigeria's own record on human rights and democracy.
  
  	In the wider world, Nigeria remains a pariah. The United States
  government, trying to decide between "constructive engagement" and
  "isolation," has announced a new review of Nigeria policy. The American
  Assembly, a policy forum with strong contacts in the administration,
  favours the review. Other US lobbies want to support "civil society" by
  isolating the Abacha regime.
  
  	A new bill introduced in Congress calls for an investment freeze
  and oil embargo. It will not pass in that form but significantly, it is
  spearheaded by Congressman Donald Payne, a former chairperson of the
  Congressional Black Caucus, all but two of whose members support the bill.
  Six cities - New York, Oakland, Cambridge, St. Louis, Amherst, and New
  Orleans - have passed resolutions or ordinances supporting freedom in
  Nigeria, some of which mention an investment freeze. At their conference
  last week, US mayors passed a special resolution calling on the
  administration to take "all practical steps, including economic measures,
  to achieve the early restoration of democracy and human rights in
  Nigeria." In President Ronald Reagan's time, sanctions against South
  Africa were forced on the administration by the cities and by Congress.
  
  	The human rights vigour of Britain's new government has stimulated
  debate in the USA, too. Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary Robin Cook
  insists nothing has changed and Nigeria must be kept out of the
  Commonwealth. This strikes a chord with Washington think-tanks, the Carter
  Center in Atlanta and the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
  
  Washington Wavers
  
  It is not clear who in Washington makes the decisions about Africa. In
  President Bill Clinton's first term, there was competition between the
  African Affairs directorate of the National Security Council, headed by
  Susan Rice, and the State Department team under Assistant Secretary of
  State for African Affairs George Moose. Rice - well-regarded but lacking
  political weight - is about to start work as Assistant Secretary of State
  for for Africa while Under-Secretary of State Thomas Pickering may take
  charge of the Nigeria policy review. Pickering was Ambassador to Lagos in
  the early 1980s and remembers what is at stake. A more influential figure
  in Congressman Bill Richardson, Clinton's man at the United Nations, who
  was once the President's Special Envoy to Nigeria and has strong opinions.
  Yet Nigeria is no longer high priority; US policy, whoever is in charge of
  it, will probably be formed in consultation with other governments.
  
  	The European Union will maintain its (very mild) sanctions against
  the regime. Nigeria's relationship with the Commonwealth has been under
  consideration for 18 months by a Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group,
  whose next meeting is due on 10 - 11 July in London; it will report in
  time for October's Heads of Government meeting in Edinburgh. Lifting the
  suspension is out of the question as long as Abacha is there and some
  think Abuja may withdraw from the club (as Pretoria did in 1961) rather
  than face a fresh snub.
  
  	In the short term, there is talk of a new "technocratic" cabinet
  to replace the present team of opportunists, political jobbers and
  military apparatchiks. That, together with Abiola's release, may go some
  way to fend off further sanctions and also buy the regime more time. Yet
  anything short of a decisive move towards serious elections next year will
  not help restore the foreign confidence necessary to rebuild what should
  be Africa's second strongest economy.
  
  ---------------------------
  
  Reprinted with permission from Africa Confidential, 73 Farringdon Road,
  London EC1M 3JB, England. www.africa-confidential.com