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.

The real obstacle to progress is not a lack of resources; it is who controls them and how they are used. Oil-producing states demand that the complicated allocation formula under which the country's revenues are distributed be changed so that they receive more than 13 percent of the country's oil revenues and far more than non-oil-producing states. But they already get a phenomenal amount of money. According to Human Rights Watch, Rivers State's 2006 budget was $1.3 billion, plenty to transform the lives of its 5.1 million residents. Yet little development occurred there, even though the state's PDP governor maintained a private jet and enjoyed the benefits of substantial real estate investments in South Africa. He was hardly alone: in 2006, the EFCC investigated 31 of Nigeria's 36 governors for corruption.

Still, all Obasanjo did during his tenure to alleviate problems in the oil-producing states was to create the Niger-Delta Development Commission and send the military to fight local militias. Neither approach worked. The people of the Delta never had confidence in the nddc, not least because the agency was under the control of rapacious state governors. It received over $280 million from 2001 to 2004 and had little to show for the money. Nonetheless, it was entrusted to administer a proposed new 15-year, $50 billion development plan.

Government attempts to crack down on the militias have also failed. The militias, first organized by politicians to ensure election results, now attack oil installations with sophisticated weapons. They steal oil and trade it on the black market and kidnap oil workers for ransom. Sometimes, they make political demands; sometimes, they act only to make money; sometimes, it is a bit of both. Their members include unemployed young male university graduates, who operate in collusion with military personnel and politicians.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or mend, the best known of these groups, has outgunned, outmanned, and outmaneuvered the military in the Delta's mangrove swamps and creeks. Mend demands, among other things, that the government free two of its prisoners: the leader of a sympathetic resistance group, Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, who has been in detention for nearly two years, and Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, a former governor of Bayelsa State who has been charged with money laundering. Mend argues that even if Alamieyeseigha is a thief, so are many other governors who are free. The PDP's vice presidential candidate, Goodluck Jonathan, succeeded Alamieyeseigha as governor of Bayelsa after Alamieyeseigha was impeached and imprisoned in December 2005. The choice of Jonathan as the PDP's vice presidential candidate was designed to calm the Delta, but it has not. As of May, there had already been more kidnappings in 2007 than in all of 2006.

Whatever one thinks of their logic and their tactics, the militants have managed to get a central point across. There are dozens of ethnicities in the Niger Delta -- the Ijaw people, in whose name mend speaks, are the most numerous -- and there are long histories of antagonism between them. But all agree that more of the region's oil revenues must be invested in infrastructure, development, and jobs.

Unrest in the Niger Delta is a reminder of the region's ethnic and religious strife -- a limited source of tension during the election period but one that is always near the surface in Nigeria and could easily burst into the open. Some 400 distinct languages are spoken in Nigeria: three or four of them are understood by tens of millions of people, the rest by many fewer. The country is half Muslim and half Christian. The Nigerian constitution guarantees freedom of religion, and except during the 1967-70 civil war and the early years of this century, Muslims and Christians have coexisted mostly peacefully. Still, religion remains a possible fault line: by one estimate, there have been 15,000 deaths from ethnic and religious clashes since 1999. Virtually all these clashes, however, started because of political and economic tensions, not religious ones.

One thorny issue was the introduction in 2000 of sharia criminal law to apply to Muslims in the far northern states, including Katsina, Yar'Adua's home state. (Muslims in northern Nigeria have always been subject to sharia civil law, even under British colonial rule.) The move was largely intended to demonstrate opposition to Obasanjo and others in the PDP. (In fact, Obasanjo called it "political sharia.") But it was also meant to restore order and morality. Since then, concern over the law's introduction has faded, largely because the most draconian punishments it calls for have generally not been carried out.

The sharia issue, and that of religion more generally, receded even further as the April elections approached: the three leading presidential candidates were all Muslims from the north running with Christian vice presidential candidates from the south. Even more important, religious tensions dissolved in the face of the people's determination to see Obasanjo's departure from government. But if economic deprivation and political dissatisfaction endure, religion and ethnicity could become contentious matters again.

Much will depend on Yar'Adua's ability to gain the confidence of all Nigerians. Many believe that Obasanjo, having chosen Yar'Adua as his pawn, will continue to be the de facto president. Others insist that after a short time Yar'Adua will show that it is he who presides. But the optimists have been discouraged by early statements from Yar'Adua that he intends to ensure the continuity of policy and personnel from the outgoing regime.

FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS