GOVERNING NIGERIA: CONTINUING ISSUES AFTER THE ELECTIONS DEBORAH L. WEST WORLD PEACE FOUNDATION WPF PROGRAM ON INTRASTATE CONFLICT AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION, JOHN F. KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT, HARVARD UNIVERSITY Cambridge, Massachusetts 2003 BOARD OF TRUSTEES Richard H. Ullman, Chairman J. Brian Atwood Peter D. Bell Lincoln P. Bloomfield Catherine E. C. Henn Philip Khoury Thomas M. O’Reilly Kenneth A. Oye James M. Shannon John Shattuck Anne-Marie Slaughter Frederick G. P. Thorne Paul Van Slambrouck Robert I. Rotberg, President Copyright © 2003 WORLD PEACE FOUNDATION 79 John F. Kennedy St. Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 Tel: 617-496-2258 Fax: 617-491-8588 E-mail: [email protected] www.worldpeacefoundation.org All rights reserved CONTENTS Africa Depends on Nigeria 1 Robert I. Rotberg Conference Report 5 Deborah L. West 1. National Conference: Nationality and Unity 5 2. The Federal-State Conundrum: Over-centralization? 8 3. Governance: Questions of Structure and Leadership 9 4. Nigeria’s Economy 11 5. Corruption 13 6. The Role of Civil Society 16 7. Human Rights 19 8. Shari’a 20 9. Personal Security 22 10. AIDS—A Growing Threat 25 11. Conclusions 25 Participants 27 Books of the World Peace Foundation (since 1980) 29 Reports of the World Peace Foundation 31 Deborah L. West is Program Associate, World Peace Foundation and WPF Program on Intrastate Conflict at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. She is the author of WPF Report 34, Myth and Narrative in the Is- raeli-Palestinian Conflict (2003). WPF Report 35: Governing Nigeria 1 Africa Depends on Nigeria “The disintegration of Nigeria means the end of Africa. Nigeria is Africa. It is Af- rica’s beacon of hope,” said President Yahaya Jammeh of the Gambia in mid- December, 2002. The destinies and growth of all of the countries of West Africa, he continued, were “tied to the destiny of Nigeria.” If Nigeria falls, “that will be the end of Africa.” From Washington’s point of view, Nigeria is critical to U.S. national security interests both because it is a linchpin of modern Africa’s shift from autocracy to- ward democracy, and because it supplies about 7 percent of U.S. oil imports. If Nigeria weakens, and takes on more of the anarchical qualities of a failed state, America’s energy security will be dangerously compromised. In Nigeria, commu- nal violence, widespread insecurity, and corrupt leadership all jeopardize steady flows of petroleum. In the months since Washington and President Jammeh articulated their concerns and the concerns of so many who want Nigeria to succeed, Africa’s most populous country held elections in April 2003 for parliament, for governorships, and for the presidency. Although the European Union and other international ob- server teams pronounced the electoral process seriously flawed in several south- ern states, especially in the Niger Delta, President Olusegun Obasanjo’s overwhelming reelection against former President General Muhammadu Buhari and a clutch of less well known candidates is secure. As the Economist headlined, “the poll was dirty, but the more popular man won.”1 Others believe that the questionable way in which the register of voters was compiled and primary elec- tions were mishandled suggests that no one really knows what the true results of the presidential balloting might have been, especially if the exercise had been clean. Likewise, the fact that Obasanjo’s People’s Democratic Party easily won a leg- islative majority is suspect. The size of Obasanjo’s and the PDP’s victories nation- ally. and, particularly, in the Delta (where he received an amazing 100 percent of the votes in many places) are questionable. Many of the results of the races for state governor are also criticized by observers and knowledgeable Nigerians. In a number of constituencies, especially in the south, there were reports of polling places never opening, ballot boxes being stuffed or stolen, unusually high num- bers of people casting ballots, voters being intimidated, gunfights, and other, of- ten blatant, breaches of electoral norms. For Nigerians, it was business as usual. According to Festus Okoye, who headed the Transition Monitoring Group during the elections, there were no val- ues in the election. “There [were] no principles. It’s only who gets power. Nothing more. It’s a shame.” Olubunmi Dipo-Salami, of the women’s rights group Baobab, 1 “The People Disagree,” The Economist (26 April 2003), 41. 2 WPF Report 35: Governing Nigeria was also critical. “Elections will happen, and it will make people realize that we don’t have democracy. It’s civilian rule that we have.”2 Despite the violence that accompanied the April poll, Nigeria showed that it could conduct two elections in a row, and thus continue the relatively peaceful transition from military to civil rule that was begun in 1999. Nevertheless, as this report shows, the concerns of the forty Nigerians and other experts on Nigeria who discussed the future of their country at a conference at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in December 2002, and of President Jammeh and others, still remain. To a woman and man, and well before Nigeria’s recent election, they were profoundly disturbed about the current parlous state of Nige- rian democracy. Some were pessimistic about better prospects—which all sought for their country—absent major changes in the manner in which Nigeria was gov- erned, secured, and developed. They focused their discussion on what could and should be done to avoid the dark fears of President Jammeh. The Economist called their country “still poor, dangerous and disorganized.”3 The conference was organized by the Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution of the Kennedy School, and the World Peace Foundation. The participants included civil society and human rights leaders from Nigeria, a for- mer head of state, officials from the Office of the Nigerian President, academic experts from Nigeria and the United States, diplomats, and UN officials. There were roughly equal numbers of northerners and southerners, women and men, and persons from the emirates and the non-emirates.4 As this Report shows, the conference setting encouraged candid dialogue and constructive debate about how best to solve Nigeria’s nine critical governance problems: Over-centralization. Nigeria, the participants largely agreed, has an over- centralized federal system that devolves too little fiscal or governance autonomy to the thirty-six states. The heavy hand of Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, is regarded as retarding growth, being responsible for insecurity, and being antagonistic to meaningful nation-building. Participants did not agree, however, on any particu- lar number of sub-federal entities; numbers other than the existing thirty-six were discussed, and some of the experts suggested a regional rather than a state configuration. In his keynote address to the conferees, former Head of State Gen- eral Yakubu Gowon, who led Nigeria out of a brutal civil war and served as the country’s president from 1966–1975, explained why his regime changed the four regions of Nigeria into twelve states in 1967. Lack of Transparency. Nigeria’s current absence of effective revenue- sharing, in practice, was condemned by nearly all of the participants. Because Abuja arrogates all petroleum revenues, and then distributes them less than 2 Both quoted in Somini Sengupta, “Turbulence Stalks Further Nigeria Elections,” New York Times, 19 April 2003. 3 “The People Disagree.” 4 Financial support for the conference and the publication of this Report came from the Trustees of the World Peace Foundation and anonymous friends of Nigeria. WPF Report 35: Governing Nigeria 3 transparently, the states become unable to organize their own governance capa- bilities. Some governors also siphon the funds that arrive from Abuja directly into private pockets. Lack of Economic Diversification. Nigeria is a petrostate, with all the deficiencies that are implied by that apparent largesse. Nigeria once grew all of its own food and had a thriving agricultural and manufacturing export capacity. No longer. All of the participants wanted Nigeria urgently to diversify its economy. Only by so doing could Nigeria become an economic powerhouse, and lead much of Africa toward improved growth prospects. It was sharply noted that Nigeria had failed to organize itself to take advantage of the U.S. African Growth and Op- portunity Act, or to prepare itself to qualify for help under the U.S. Millennium Challenge Account. Corruption. Many participants decried corruption in Nigeria, and the inef- ficiencies and disincentives for foreign and domestic investment that corruption breeds. Few quarreled with Transparency International’s perception of Nigeria as the second most corrupt country in the world, slightly better than Bangladesh. Everyone agreed that corruption would be reduced only when Nigeria’s senior political leaders acted against those of their associates who were outrageously corrupt. Making examples of political crooks was necessary. The Shari’a. Participants agreed that the move since 1999 by twelve northern states to extend the application of shari’a, or Islamic law, from customary and fam- ily civil issues to criminal offenses was a key challenge facing the country. Some participants noted that Nigeria’s corruption and prevailing lack of accountability explained the desire of northern Muslims to expand the traditional use of the shari’a. It was originally expected that the use of the shari’a would mean punish- ment for high-level embezzlers and other corrupt rulers. Unfortunately, that has not turned out to be the case; the governors of the twelve northern states that have introduced the shari’a for criminal matters since 1999 have done so as populists, not in order to clean up the pervasive official criminality in their states. How the north-south split on the use of the shari’a will be resolved, given its questionable constitutionality, was unclear to the participants at the conference.