NIGERIA
Disastrous Failure of the American Model in Africa
Meaningless Polls in a Crude Transplant of Democracy
Hopeless and deeply rooted poverty. Population hostage of ruthless, armed gangs. Military protection of
colossal fortune islands in an ocean of despair. Poisoned coexistence of communities discharging social
bitterness and hatred to each other. Nigeria is the swelling tumor of a failed transplant of the Western
model of State in Africa, particularly the American capitalist system model. The fact that economic claims
- deep root of the Nigerian nightmare - are strangely absent of the ongoing series of electoral campaigns
is the most salient evidence that Western democracy is useless and dangerous to Africans.
Ndzana Seme
When the great flood of people rises or ebbs at peak hours in Lagos, the economic capital of no less
than 5 million souls, ants? nest endlessly struggling for the limited seats of private transportation vans and
bus-like reshaped trucks all yellow painted in bygone days, the tragedy of Western models in Africa is
palpable.
When potential tenants are submitted to paying years of rent in advance to win one of the very rare living
spaces, when rates of population below poverty line are more than 31% with 71% of the population
living with less than $1 per day, when adult illiteracy (people 15 and above) is as high as 37%, when
every day tens of dead bodies are found under bridges (the standard shelters for the poor), when families
have to barricade themselves home at 10:00 PM because of insecurity due to an endless war between
gangs and the police, the Nigerian President?s ethnic group town, like several other Nigerian cities, is a
hell.
Prior to the oil boom in the 1970s, Nigeria depended largely on primary commodity exports, such as
cocoa, palm oil, rubber, cotton and groundnut for its national income. The country at that time was
self-sufficient in food production and even a net exporter of agricultural produce. Also, available statistics
show that approximately 60 per cent of the labor force earned their livelihood from farming.
However, since early 1970s as oil became a major foreign exchange earner and contributor to GDP,
other sectors of the economy, especially agriculture were relegated to the background. Buoyant oil
revenue in the 1970s provided the basis for large increases in government expenditures.
A June 11, 2002 article of the IRIN made a light ?Focus on the scourge of poverty? in Nigeria when it
stated: ?Nigeria's pervasive poverty occurred in spite of the fact that between 1970 and 1999, the
country earned an estimated US $320 billion from the export of crude oil?.
"Despite its oil wealth, Nigeria has performed worse, in terms of basic social indicators, than
sub-Saharan Africa as a whole and much worse than other regions of the developing world, such as Asia
and Latin America," says a Situation Assessment Analysis published in 2001 by Nigeria's National
Planning Commission and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
"At the heart of the problem," the assessment adds, "has been a crisis of governance and public
management, which has its roots in the competition among rival elites and their ethno-regional
constituencies for control of the huge rents that accrue to the state from the operations of the petroleum
industry."
During the Biafra war ended in 1970, the Ibo secessionist uprising was bloodily crushed by the
Northerner-dominated army, with 2 million people having perished during the genocide. The following
years dominated by military and civilian rulers from the mainly Muslim north, the oil wealth was largely
mismanaged. Most of it was dispensed as political patronage through fraudulent contracts awarded by
those in government to cronies.
Violence, the discourse Western-like elites avoid to listen
The following abstracts of the story by Norimitsu Onishi, ?Nigerian Militias Wield Power Through
Intimidation? published in the October 6, 2002 New York Times issue, is a life painting of Nigerian
realities.
?Onitsha, Nigeria - Even by the standards of this most violent of cities, the killings at a busy junction one
recent evening got people shouting.?
?Armed men waiting at the junction cornered Barnabas and Amaka Blessing Igwe, a couple who were
prominent lawyers in this part of Nigeria. They pulled them out of their Mercedes, witnesses said. One of
the attackers cut off the wife?s left leg with a machete. He hacked at her back so that her body folded.
She breathed her last right there.?
?The men fired into the air to frighten away passers-by, though the witnesses, people living in the nearby
buildings, were able to tell later what they had seen. The killers pumped bullets into the husband?s body.
They got into the Mercedes and ran over him. But he was still alive and was taken to the nearby hospital.
His brother, Vincent Igwe, arrived in time to see him die.
??He recognized me,? Mr. Igwe, 45, recalled. ?He was in great pain. He said, ?What killed me was
government.? I shouted, ?Why is the government killing people??
?He asked me to pray for him,? Mr. Igwe continued. ?I asked God to save him, but then he gave up.?
Barnabas Igwe, 43, chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association for the state of Anambra, was executed
by governor Chinwoke Mbadinuju?s militia because Igwe had become one of the fiercest critics of the
state government. The Bakassi Boys, whose official name is the Anambra State Vigilante Services with
members belonging to the region?s dominant Ibo ethnic group, is the most notorious country?s militia the
governor legalized in August 2000 and located the offices inside the governor?s headquarters in the state
capital, Awka. The ?Boys? have been credited with reducing crime by killing criminals and leaving their
headless bodies in the streets as warnings?.
These events happened after the democratic regime of former General President Olesegun Obasanjo
took power in 1999.
Ethnic confrontations also increased since 1999. Northerners (Hausa and Fulani representing 29% of the
population with poverty rates of 70-78%) of Muslim religion have several times launched ethnic and
religious cleansings against Southerners (Yoruba 21%, Ibo 18% and the other 236 ethnic groups 32%
with poverty rates of 55-60%) of African and Christian religions.
The oil producing Niger delta region is also worldwide known as the confrontation theatre between
international oil firms and local ethnic groups, between ethnic groups themselves, or between ethnic
groups and the Nigerian police.
In 2001, the Tiv and the Jukun ethnic groups of the central states of Benue and Taraba fought each other
over access to land. When the army deployed to bring peace to the area, the mission went tragically
wrong and 19 soldiers were abducted and killed by a local militia group. Despite pleas from community
leaders, the army returned to the area in force and, in a ferocious revenge attack, indiscriminately killed
about 300 unarmed civilians, often firing to the crowd after having alleged a meeting and gathered
villagers.
Obasanjo did nothing to prosecute the genocide perpetrators.
Electoral campaigns deprived of economic topics
However, Olesegun Obasanjo is the one who will surely be elected for a second term this April 19. His
party, the People?s Democratic Party (PDP) won 181 seats over 360 in the Lower House and 60 seats
over 109 in the Senate during last Saturday?s strongly contested polls.
The main opposition candidate in the presidential election, former General President Muhammadu Buhari
has warned of mass protests if the poll for the national president and the 36 state governors elections this
Saturday were also marked by widespread rigging. There is a lot of tension ahead of the coming
presidential election, with risks of losing more lives.
Many observers in Nigeria believe that the roots of the violence across much of the country are not
religious or cultural. Conflicts are often created and stoked by politicians, both at a local and national
level, who seek to gain advantage from social division.
Listening to each of the presidential candidates? last speeches, it was surprising to notice the absence of
major economic topics. However, this was no surprise to informed observers since the root stakes are
rather the means used to distribute the country's vast oil wealth from the federal government in Abuja to
the local level, and not at all any wellbeing of the electoral herds.
Contracts handed out to political favorites are the main source of Nigerian economic nightmare. Almost
all economic activity in the country works on this principle - the awarding of contracts for building roads,
schools, and hospitals; for supplying electricity, water, medicines, etc.
Nigerian capitalism makes those with access to the source of power rich. Those who do not have power
would use all means to get it. And caught in the middle of this Mafia are the ordinary Nigerians, whose
local disputes are either fomented or hijacked by cynical politicians prepared to pay sections of the
community sums of money to foment unrest.
The Washington?s business as usual transplanted into Abuja becomes the excrescence of a malignant
tumor that may devastate the entire African region.
General Olusegun Obasanjo, the assassinated Murtala Muhammed's deputy, took the reins of
government following a public outrage in 1976 and promptly executed over thirty of the coup plotters.
Over the next three years a new constitution was drafted with separation of powers provisions and
establishing a U.S. style presidency, with local governments given greater autonomy and a strong
capitalist system. President Jimmy Carter came to Lagos in March 1978, becoming the first sitting U.S.
President to visit sub-Saharan Africa.
George W Bush was also quick to invite the American model?s student, back into capacity through the
1999 democratic elections, at the 2002 G8 summit of Kananaskis, Canada.
The Nigerian tragedy had been organized by the former British colonialist having imposed a coexistence
of culturally different communities into a bogus nation. It is perpetuated by the Western-like ruling elites,
organized into strong Mafia groups fighting for federal (oil) resources and exacerbating ethnic tensions to
cover their interests.
When even in the United states allegations of electoral rigging were heard in 2000 and current president
was enthroned with 25% of American citizens? favorable voices, why should we be surprised that the
American model?s student in Africa becomes the hell? When 50% of the American citizens abstain from
voting, the message is clear that these 104 million American citizens do not trust the American
democracy.
Therefore, why should we keep feeding expectations about the Nigerian democracy so far away from
the Western culture? Western models are the source of African tragedy. But who would ever attempt to
make the saving change in Nigeria without being labeled as anti-American and being treated like
Saddam?
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©2003 The African Independent, Inc. All rights to republication are reserved