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11 June 1999 Vol 40 No 12 AFRICA CONFIDENTIAL NIGERIA II 3 NIGERIA New team, old players All hail to the chief Like most Nigerian governments, President Olusegun Obasanjo returns to power amid hopes that the President Obasanjo's new team is country's decline can be reversed after 15 years of military rule an awkward coalition. He has Government business took off at a frenetic pace after the 29 May inauguration of President Olusegun nominated a mixture of Obasanjo. Launching proceedings, Obasanjo made a powerful attack on corrupt contractors, technocrats, political jobbers, soldiers and politicians to an audience that included international political celebrities (see Box). human rights activists and opposition politicians in a bid to Within hours of being sworn in as President, Obasanjo had cleared out many of the hold-overs from make a national administration. the outgoing military regime by retiring all the military service chiefs along with the Central Bank Governor and the Police Commissioner. Days later, he had set up two panels of eminent people to probe all contracts awarded this year by the outgoing military regime and human rights abuses during ZIMBABWE 4 General Sani Abacha’s rule, handed over a list of ministerial nominees to the Senate and started Where's the door? going through the country’s financial ledger with his economic advisors. The style of Obasanjo’s return to power has impressed all but the most sceptical, whether President Mugabe may not, after Nigerians or outsiders. By attacking the corruption of his predecessor governments in front of all, be heading for a speedy foreign guests and by promising to introduce comprehensive anti-graft legislation within a fortnight, retirement although he was 75 in February and has held power since Obasanjo showed surprising muscle. Yet it remains unclear quite how he will be able to distance 1980. The latest signals within the himself from some of the corrupt elements in his party machine which helped bring him to power. ruling ZANU party show that By appointing highly credible figures such as Christopher Kolade as head of the contracts probe Mugabe and his generation are in committee and Justice Chukwudifu Oputa as chairperson of the human rights investigation, no hurry to leave. Obasanjo has given substance to his promise that ‘there will be no sacred cows’ in his anti-graft drive. SOUTH AFRICA 5 High hopes, grim realities Mbeki's triumph Obasanjo’s optimists were quickly reminded of the huge obstacles the new order faces with the The overwhelming majority won resurgence of communal fighting in the oil-town of Warri. Within a week of the inauguration, some by the ANC has left opposition 200 people were killed in three-cornered battles over local government boundaries and resources voters surprisingly unflustered, between the Ijaw, Itsekiri and Urhobo peoples. Warri is also the centre of the oil industry, the biggest given earlier panics that President- city in the fractious Delta Region and the operational headquarters for most major oil companies. designate Mbeki would use the victory to tamper with the And Warri is just one mark on Nigeria’s troubled ethnic map. Further east, the crisis in Ogoniland constitution. He publicly denied continues, drawing in many neighbouring groups, all suffering from the effects of environmental any such intention and re-endorsed despoliation and a ruined local economy. Meanwhile, in the weeks before Obasanjo took over, the the ANC's conservative economic northern town of Kafanchan exploded in protest at the installation of Emir Isa Mohammed. policies. Obasanjo’s response to the Warri crisis typified his top-down, pro-active governing style. He promised to visit Warri before the end of the week and announced the setting up of a special projects EGYPT 6 division, drawing on local and foreign experts, to produce a development plan for the Delta. However, that doesn’t begin to satisfy the Delta activists who trace the roots of the region’s problems The Nile flows on back to Nigeria’s political structure. They say that concentration of power at the centre, under both As it struggles to keep its role as civilian and military regimes, has ruined the economy and ecology of the Delta, which produces Middle East peace-broker, Cairo much of Nigeria’s oil wealth but leaves most of its inhabitants as supplicants. Specifically, they want is also juggling its ambition to the immediate repeal of the 1978 Land Use Decree introduced during Obasanjo’s first tenure as become the region's largest and military leader most advanced economy. The contradictions of 16 years of ‘federal military government’ have left federalism in poor shape. Today, the demands for genuine devolution of power to states and local governments are far more insistent than when Obasanjo left power as military ruler in 1979. Local control of resources and POINTERS 8 policy is the mantra across much of the Delta and riverine oil-producing areas, as well as the industrial and financial heartlands of the south-western Yoruba region. Zambia, Djibouti, On such demands for restructuring and a new constitution, Obasanjo is keeping his counsel. With Africa/Netherlands the return to civil rule, much of the steam has gone out of the campaign for a sovereign national conference to rewrite the constitution, even if many politicians agree that the devolution issue must and Somalia be addressed - prefably through the national legislature. Paris meeting; Francophilie; Dutch Both houses in the federal legislature in Abuja are jealous of their constitutional powers. Many warning; and unfunny money. politicians feel squeezed between a powerful executive presidency and widespread popular cynicism 11 June 1999 Africa Confidential Vol 40 No 12 Exeunt sojas It was a spectacular coda to 16 years of military rule. On 29 May, more Yoweri Museveni. than 30 heads of state, ex-heads of state and international dignitaries - Others in the US delegation, such as Assistant Secretary of State for including President Nelson Mandela, Britain’s Prince Charles and Africa Susan Rice and Special Assistant to the President for Africa Germany’s former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt - journeyed to Abuja Gayle Smith scheduled several meetings on Congo-K as regional to see military leader General Abdulsalami Abubakar hand power to moves towards a tentative ceasefire progressed. retired General and now civilian President Olusegun Obasanjo. Relations between Congo’s combatants are still poisonous. Indeed, For the hopeful, it was Nigeria’s second Independence. The celebrity Nigerian protocol officers had to move fast to defuse a clash between ceremony was so significant for the country’s battered reputation that Museveni’s and Kabila’s security people just minutes before the pre- even the most shameless putschist might think twice before trying to inauguration banquet on 28 May. After Kabila’s minders went into the overthrow the new civil order. With a 21-gun salute, and a Nigerian Air dining hall to check the safety of their President’s chair, Museveni’s Force fly past leaving trails of smoke in the national colours of green minders moved in close behind, loudly accusing them of threatening and white, the military laid on the symbolism thickly, as if to reassure the Ugandan leader’s safety. This time the crisis was defused and the themselves that this time, they were really going. banqueters continued unmolested. Abubakar and his service chiefs beamed through two hours of Much was read into the absence of some of Nigeria’s neighbours - military marching around the parade ground. The drill was emphatically Presidents Charles Taylor of Liberia and Blaise Compaoré of Western - the North Korean-style parades common during Abacha’s Burkina Faso (both of whom Nigeria accuses of backing the reign have been junked. Former President Shehu Shagari looked at Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone), plus President Paul ease ensconced next to the general (Muhammadu Buhari) who Biya from Cameroon, whose country continues to pursue claims overthrew him in 1983. Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, still reviled for against Abuja for the Bakassi Peninsula. Compaoré, still under annulling the 1993 elections, looked less comfortable as well-wishers pressure over the murder of journalist Norbert Zongo, had sent his heaped accolades on Gen. Abubakar for keeping to his promise and his apologies in advance. Biya had sent his Prime Minister, although handover date. Cameroonian opposition leader John Fru Ndi and his Social Democratic Crowds headed for the Eagle Square parade ground in Abuja before Front delegation also proved popular with the local crowd. Taylor was dawn. Cheers for the arriving dignitaries were a barometer of local star in Abuja a week later to meet Obasanjo who implored him to play a status: Mandela got the most; the heir to the British throne was greeted constructive role in the Sierra Leone peace talks. enthusiastically (by a society with over 500 of its own monarchs); and Away from the ceremonial spotlights, some policemen and soldiers Congo-Kinshasa’s President Laurent-Désiré Kabila won the most started looting a lorry carrying inauguration paraphernalia, such as boos and catcalls. umbrellas in the Nigerian colours and souvenir tee-shirts. Fist-fights, Obasanjo and Abubakar organised a formidable guest list: 23 African then a near riot, broke out around the vehicle after one of the police heads of state turned up to see the brave new Nigeria and for diplomatic officers discovered he had lost his gun. Meanwhile back on the dais, parleying on the margins. The United States’ Reverend Jesse Jackson, Obasanjo was making his hard-hitting inaugural address, bemoaning whose mediation efforts during Gen. Sani Abacha’s rule got mixed the moral malaise afflicting Nigeria after 16 years of army rule. Less reviews, has moved his focus to Sierra Leone and Central Africa.