THE TICKING TIME BOMB THAT'S NIGERIA

I have overflogged this issue on the predicament of Nigeria since the beginning of Nigerian Times sites in the virtual world. And they said we have a listening President in Nigeria. But, what is the benefit in such a President if all he does is listening without learning. Because, from all the indications in the political leadership of Nigeria, it is apparent that the President of Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo does not learn any lessons from the tragedies of the past as chronicled in the annals of the political history of Nigeria. And he is a bad liar as he returned from the G-8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, and told us that he had succeeded to secure highly beneficial debt relief for Nigeria. And several delegations of Nigerian communities went to Abuja the federal capital of Nigeria, to congratulate and commend him. But, the cat has been let out of the bag of the Paris Club that revealed the truth to us that our President lied to cover up his failures in his futile pursuits to convince the creditors to forgive the poor debtors in Africa. In fact, the bad situation has become worse. Because, the Paris Club has succeeded to continue to hoodwink, swindle and rip off Nigeria through economic chicanery and "Smart Alec" Wall Street Debt Round Tripping. So, they have pinned Nigeria against the wall of a dead end. But, I am not surprised, because I understand the inferiority complex of this old man when confronted by those he knew were more intelligent than him. The primitive native who joined the Nigerian army and became a general and later became the head of state in 1976 on the condition that he would hand over to the stooge of the Northern Islamic rulers. Then, he returned to become the President of Nigeria in 1999 under similar conditions. He has never won any leadership on the account of his intelligence.

The article below was written by a well informed scholar who knows the real truth about the present social and political crisis in Nigeria. Please, read and be more enlightened.

Posted by moneypenny (Tuesday, March 01, 2005)

The Ticking Time Bomb

That's Nigeria

By JEFFREY HERBST March 1, 2005.
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page.

It is a surprise when some states collapse. But the gradual unwinding of Nigeria is happening in a very public manner. The collapse of this giant -- the continent's most populous state, whose 137 million citizens account for approximately 20% of all people south of the Sahara -- may soon be the most pressing issue in Africa.
President Olusegun Obasanjo was first elected in 1999 as Nigeria transitioned to multiparty democracy after the disastrous five-year rule of Gen. Sani Abacha. He won another term in 2003 in elections that had numerous irregularities and remain a source of bitterness. Mr. Obasanjo has also had to confront Nigeria's disastrous economic decline and its extraordinary corruption. Although he retains a good reputation in the West -- in part due to U.S. and European fears that highlighting Nigeria's many problems will only undermine a leader with good intentions -- he has often been indecisive in the face of threats to the very fabric of the country.
Keeping Nigeria together has always been difficult. The country fought a bloody civil war in 1967-70 when the oil-rich Ibo areas in the southeast tried to secede. In later years, it was thought that Nigeria's oil wealth and its federal system would prevent state fracture. However, there are now two separate threats to Nigerian statehood that are placing enormous stress on the country's uncertain leadership.

First, 12 (out of 36) largely Muslim northern states have effectively seceded after giving Sharia courts jurisdiction over criminal matters and expanding the reach of Islamic law. Western media have largely focused on a few spectacular cases of stoning meted out to women accused of adultery. But the fact that a large portion of Nigeria refuses to abide by parts of the national constitution is an extraordinary sign of state decay. Indeed, northern Nigerians have pioneered a new type of secession by staying in their country but adopting their own laws.

Mr. Obasanjo has done very little to fight the adoption of Sharia, largely ignoring an open threat that other leaders would take as an invitation to civil war. The government seems largely to be in denial, hoping that enthusiasm for Sharia will burn out, even though the declaration of Sharia was in part a way for northern elites to challenge Mr. Obasanjo, a born-again Christian.

However, the north's radicalization should not be underestimated. Osama bin Laden is seen as a hero in much of the north: His picture is everywhere, and Nigeria became notorious for the number of babies named after him. Perhaps the most telling signal of the north's radicalization was the February 2003 speech in which bin Laden recognized the potential for anti-government Muslim clerics in Nigeria. He named Nigeria (along with Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen) as among "the regions most qualified for liberation."

The imposition of Sharia in the northern Kaduna state caused riots in February 2000 in which approximately 2,000 people died. Episodes of communal violence, also linked to Sharia, have killed dozens at a time elsewhere in the country since 1999. The situation is aggravated by hapless Nigerian security forces who barge into some of the violent conflicts. Quite possibly, the tinderbox that is northern Nigeria will simply explode with carnage that equals or is much greater than the Kaduna disaster of a few years ago.

Much of the north was ruled in the 19th century by the Sokoto Caliphate that the British conquered in 1903 and that was later joined with other territories to create today's Nigeria. The north's assertion of legal autonomy though Sharia reflects, in part, the re-emergence of these pre-colonial schisms.
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At the same time, the Nigerian government faces a low-level civil war in the Niger Delta region in the southeast. The Delta region has been the focus of a series of growing protests for years as local communities express their resentment over the environmental spillover from hydrocarbon exploitation and the government's failure to invest sufficient oil money in the lands that produce the wealth. These communities were alienated when the previous military government killed Ogoni activist Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995. In the Delta, despite its economic importance, there is near anarchy: Oil platforms are routinely seized; the army has running battles with opponents; and communities fight each other to try to control the theft of oil which now runs into the tens of thousands of barrels each day. Violence in the run-up to the 2003 election caused oil production to be cut by 40%.

Europe and the U.S. should be greatly concerned about Nigeria's slide toward chaos. Further decay would only help terrorists and others who seek to further radicalize the north, the country's oil supply is extremely vulnerable to political disruption, and any widespread violence in Nigeria would be a human rights catastrophe. More generally, significant instability in Nigeria could eliminate many of the gains that the surrounding West African countries have made in democratization and economic liberalization. Violence may trigger massive movements of people that would overrun adjoining smaller states. The forces propelling Nigeria's unwinding may be too great for anyone to deflect. However, international expressions of concern might generate some response.

In 1993, when Felix Houphouet-Boigny, the founding leader of Côte d'Ivoire died, most agreed that his country had a relatively promising and politically stable future. Today, Côte d'Ivoire is a failed state with warring parties having divided the country and destroyed much of the economic infrastructure. Côte d'Ivoire is a warning of how quickly a state can become unglued and how fast violence can destroy institutions and communities. Nigeria was never doing as well as Côte d'Ivoire in the early 1990s.
Such a dramatic collapse is still not inevitable in Nigeria but, given the warning signs, no one should be surprised if that state continues to wither away and more and more are swept up in communal and political violence that eventually causes disaster.

Mr. Herbst is professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University.

URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB...