As Nigerian president exits, nation’s future uncertain

Dulue Mbachu

LAGOS, Nigeria — When Olusegun Obasanjo was elected Nigeria’s president in 1999, Nigerians hoped long years of military misrule were behind them and stable democracy was ahead.

But as Obasanjo left office Tuesday, Nigeria’s democracy remained in doubt, and its people seemed uncertain of their future.

Still, Obasanjo, a 70-year-old former military leader, is credited with making economic strides, and earned respect abroad for his efforts to secure peace across Africa. While he is no longer president, his influence in Africa’s most populous country will likely remain strong.

Many of his critics say he failed woefully. Obasanjo, though, counts his greatest achievements in terms of intangibles.

“Democracy is not a destination, it’s a journey,” Obasanjo said in a nationally televised farewell address Monday. “We are well on our way to a greater destination.”

Term limits kept Obasanjo from running again, and he says he will be a farmer after he leaves office. But last-minute political engineering has ensured a powerful party position for him: chairman of the party’s board of trustees. A daughter, Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello, won a senate seat on his party’s ticket in April elections and is likely to help keep the family name in the limelight. His wife Stella died in 2005.

Umaru Yar’Adua, picked by Obasanjo to lead his People’s Democratic Party ticket, was declared winner of the elections that domestic and international observers said were deeply flawed. Yar’Adua took office Tuesday, but has been battling a crisis of legitimacy since the vote.

“After eight years, Obasanjo is leaving Nigeria the way he met it,” said Emma Ezeazu, who leads the Alliance for Credible Elections, an umbrella of civic groups campaigning to end the country’s history of vote rigging. “We have a tradition of rigged elections but he has given us the most rigged election in the country’s history.”

When Obasanjo took office in 1999, his credentials were among the most impressive of Nigerian politicians. He succeeded an assassinated predecessor as military ruler of the country in the 1970s, then became the first military ruler in Africa to voluntarily transfer power to an elected civilian government in 1979.

Retiring to his farm on the outskirts of Lagos, the country’s biggest city, Obasanjo set up the Africa Leadership Forum and became an international statesman renowned for his governance advice to other African countries. When the military toppled the civilian government that succeeded him, Obasanjo became a vocal critic of the autocratic regimes that spanned more than 15 years.

Obasanjo was charged with plotting to topple Gen. Sani Abacha in 1995 and sentenced to life in jail, a term that was later reduced to 15 years. Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, who succeeded Abacha after his death in 1998, freed his old friend Obasanjo.

Obasanjo won the elections that followed in a landslide. He vowed to tackle Nigeria’s debilitating corruption and abysmal power supply situation, as well as heal ethnic and religious wounds that made the country prone to upheavals.

Obasanjo said Monday his restive nation of 140 million people, split among 250 ethnic groups and almost equally between northern-based Muslims and southern Christians, had grown more united under his tenure.

“We have become simply Nigerians interested in the development and progress of our country. This is a great gain,” he said.

Obasanjo had also pledged to make Nigeria a leader on the continent. He ended his tenure with a farewell tour of Sierra Leone and Liberia, where he played a leading role in bringing peace after years of civil war. He has sent Nigerian peacekeepers to several African hot spots, and hosted talks aimed at ending the bloodshed in Sudan’s Darfur region.

But after eight years in office, many complain that Nigeria is still rife with problems. The country’s infrastructure has decayed, and fuel shortages and power cuts — which Obasanjo promised to end within two years of assuming office in Africa’s leading energy producer — have hit their worst levels in the Nigeria’s history.

The oil sector remains volatile, with attacks by militants claiming a greater share of the country’s exports and shaking world markets. Corruption remains endemic.

“The public was betrayed on so many levels,” said Nigerian Nobel literature laureate Wole Soyinka, who with 48 fellow laureates from around the world called for new elections. Of Obasanjo, the writer says: “Reluctantly I’ve been forced to conclude that he’s a dictator at heart.”

Some critics, like Olisa Agbakoba, a human rights lawyer and president of the Nigerian lawyers professional body, make a distinction between his political failings and economic achievements.

“His politics pulled him down,” Agbakoba said, citing Obasanjo’s failed attempt to amend the constitution in order to run for a third term in office. “On the economic front, I think there is progress.”

Agbakoba said Nigeria paid off its foreign debt of more than $32 billion in a deal Obasanjo’s government negotiated with the Paris Club of creditors last year. New economic partnerships forged with China have reduced dependence on the West, Agbakoba added.

But many of the problems he promised to solve appear likely to remain long after he is gone.

“At the time Obasanjo came to power, Nigeria was completely divided by years of military misrule,” said Ezeazu, the elections monitor. “He has spent eight years not healing any wounds.”

Associated Press writer Edward Harris contributed to this report.

(Associated Press)