Nigeria's Rigged Democracy

Jean Herskovits

From Foreign Affairs, July/August 2007

Summary:  Nigeria's elections last April were among the most seriously flawed in the country's history, thanks largely to the manipulations of the U.S.-backed ruling party. With Nigerians increasingly clamoring for accountability, Washington's continuing support could generate more unrest -- and could pose a risk both to oil supplies coming out of Nigeria and to the stability of West Africa.

Jean Herskovits is Research Professor of History at the State University of New York, Purchase.

Nevertheless, more has been wrong than right with Nigeria's economy under Obasanjo's stewardship. The domestic debt, estimated at over $11 billion and left untouched, is hampering growth. Since 1999, the federal government has implemented less than 60 percent of the recurrent budgets and only 75 percent of the capital budgets. According to the Nigerian economist Sam Aluko, this budget crisis is the result of the government's "policy of privatisation, downsizing and retrenchment of civil and public servants, non-payment of pensions, gratuities and domestic debts which continue to accumulate." Nigerians complain that the privatization of government assets, which Obasanjo undertook at the World Bank's direction, has lacked transparency and that well-connected Nigerians have grabbed the country's crown jewels at sale prices. Obasanjo has also shrunk the federal civil service, "monetized" perks, especially at senior levels, and implemented new pay scales for government employees. But these measures have increased unemployment in the largely stagnant economy, with only mixed benefits for the remaining civil servants.

Asked in 2004 when macroeconomic reforms would have a positive impact on most Nigerians' lives, Okonjo-Iweala said that it would take "at least five years." On a recent visit to the Nigerian capital, Abuja -- a city booming with construction projects, unlike any other in Nigeria -- one World Bank official said that he saw signs of a "burgeoning middle class." But for anyone who knew Nigeria in the 1970s, the comment was absurd. Professionals, civil servants, and many businesspeople who once were part of that middle class can scarcely pay their children's school fees today. Of course, there is a burgeoning wealthy class in Nigeria, but it is small, and its members thrive largely thanks to political connections and connivances.

For the vast majority of Nigerians, making a living is difficult. Agriculture, which should employ the large rural population, has declined for lack of support from the government, and important industries, such as textiles, are moribund. The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria reports that over 1,800 firms have closed down since 1999, contributing, along with insecurity and the unreliable electric power supply, to the departure of some multinationals (although not oil companies). High levels of unemployment among young males -- some 60 percent of northern college graduates are reportedly jobless -- have led to rampaging crime. The country's commercial capital, Lagos, is now best known abroad for its sprawling slums and roaming gangs of armed robbers.

Basic living conditions have also worsened. Electricity is scarce, and clean water is rare. Despite vast sums supposedly spent on federal roads, those roads have continued to deteriorate. Some 70 percent of Nigerians must get by on $1 a day. The UN Development Program's 2006 Human Development Report ranked Nigeria 159th out of 177 countries studied. In 2004, mortality rates for children under the age of five averaged 217 deaths per 1,000 births -- higher than anywhere in coastal West Africa, apart from war-torn Liberia and Sierra Leone. Meanwhile, absurdly, the government built a new stadium in Abuja for more than the combined budgets for health and education for 2001 and 2002. Health facilities in Nigeria have been so neglected that in the midst of campaigning for the April elections, two leading presidential candidates flew to Europe to get treatment for minor ailments.

And all of this has happened even as Nigeria's oil revenues have soared: in the course of Obasanjo's eight-year tenure, Nigeria earned $223 billion, two and a half times the amount earned over the previous eight years. But thanks to kleptocracy and rampant graft, much of the money has not gone where it should have. Of course, oil revenues had been misused in Nigeria long before Obasanjo's administration: the EFCC estimates that the country has wasted $400 billion since 1960. But it was the record of this president and his governors that angered Nigerians as they approached the elections and made them wonder why, despite the country's riches, so many of their lives continued to be be so wretched.

POLITICS AS USUAL

The answer, of course, is governance and politics. In 1999, as Nigeria emerged suddenly from 15 years of military rule, the largest political parties were ad hoc coalitions, with no continuity or unifying programs. The previous military governments had reinforced centralization and the power of the executive in Abuja and in the states. By the late 1980s, party politics had all but disappeared. In 1999, a military government approved a new version of the 1979 constitution, which was American in form but with added Nigerian complications. Experienced civilians, meanwhile, had been banned from politics in the late 1980s, and a new breed of opportunistic leaders had arisen, entrenching a tradition of patronage, cronyism, and financial mismanagement.

Obasanjo has never favored a multiparty system for African countries. Twenty years ago, he pointed out that in his native tongue, Yoruba, the word for "opposition" also means "enemy" and advocated single-party systems for African countries. During his tenure as president, distinctions between party and government disappeared; looking forward to one-party rule, he, and many other politicians, flouted the constitution.

But even as Obasanjo was tightening his grip on power, Nigerians throughout the country were insisting on a return to democracy. During the elections in 2003, an opposition party won the governorship of the northern state of Kano thanks partly to the people's insistence that they oversee the balloting themselves. And then, on May 16, 2006, the country witnessed a remarkable new development: ordinary Nigerians demanded accountability from those who claimed to represent them -- and they got it. That was the day the Senate was asked to vote on a package of 107 constitutional amendments, including some that would have allowed Obasanjo to run for office for one -- or two or three -- more four-year terms. (By some accounts, a single vote could fetch $750,000.) Nigerians all over the country, and especially in the north, had given their representatives an ultimatum: take bribes and allow Obasanjo to run for a third term, and you will not be welcome back home. The message got through: the Senate voted against the amendments. Obasanjo's hopes for a third term were dead.