Nigeria Sees Hope, Challenges in Prospect of End to Military Rule

Newspaper editor Dele Alake left a cocktail party one recent evening, jumped into his car and did something he hadn’t done for years. He drove straight home.

“Now I can drive home without looking through my rear window to see if I’m being followed,” said Alake, whose popular National Concord newspaper was a fervent critic of the oppressive military regime of former dictator Gen. Sani Abacha. “The psychological pressure is off.”

Abacha opponents, political observers and ordinary Nigerians overwhelmingly agree that, since the dictator’s death in June, the atmosphere in this strategic, oil-rich African power has changed from suffocating repression and fear to rekindled hope and freedom.

Under Abacha, it was not unusual for outspoken journalists, political dissidents and human rights activists to make unscheduled detours and follow clandestine routes in an attempt to avoid being tailed, and sometimes detained, by the government’s notorious internal security service.

Many simply stopped going out in the evening. Disappearing underground for days, even weeks, at a time was commonplace among activists.

Now, said Alake, “I don’t have to write a [controversial] story for one week and then go underground for four weeks. Before, it was like walking through a minefield.”

Setting the Right Tone

Although critics warn of being too optimistic too soon, many in this nation of 108 million say that, at last, they can dare to exhale. Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, the career soldier who succeeded Abacha after his fatal heart attack, appears to be making good on his promise to transfer power to a civilian government after a presidential election in February.

Election monitors and analysts said a vote in December to elect local councilors--the first step in the political democratization process--proved a success, despite some shortcomings and logistical problems. And a vote Saturday to elect 36 state governors and assemblies also appeared to go smoothly. Saturday’s vote results are expected to be announced within a couple of days.

“The tone has been set by Abubakar,” said Olisa Agbakoba, a human rights lawyer. “He has contributed in no small measure to creating a sense of honesty in the [democratic transition] process. He’s given it integrity.”

In his short time in office, Abubakar has released dozens of political prisoners, extended amnesty to dissidents who fled their homeland, recovered millions of dollars looted from the public coffers and lifted a ban on political parties.

“Nigerians feel that the present leadership means well,” said Innocent Chukwuma, executive director of the Center for Law Enforcement Education, a civic nongovernmental organization, or NGO, in Lagos, Nigeria’s second city. “There is a clear indication that [Abubakar] is in a haste to leave the stage, and this is born out of the fact that [the military] has overstayed its welcome. The Nigerian people are indeed tired of a government that is not based on their whim.”

On the streets of Lagos--a grimy, fast-paced city and a traditional hotbed of opposition politics--vendors openly share their opinions with foreign journalists without fear of later interrogation by the secret police. Many people say they are impressed by Abubakar’s willingness to consider their opinion on a draft constitution that will lay the foundation for the nation’s new laws and basic doctrine.

And there are hopeful, if tentative, signs of change in the country’s economic and justice systems.

A presidential task force on penal reform has been established, and, last month, human rights monitors were allowed for the first time to legally enter jails, talk to inmates and secure the release of the sick, the aged and those still held under false pretenses.

“I’m excited about it,” said Olawale Fapohunda, chairman of Nigeria’s National NGO Coalition on Penal Reform, who said rights activists previously had to sneak into prisons and could rarely offer inmates any hope of freedom. “It gives you the feeling that, at last, we actually can do something.”

But Fapohunda said at least 291 political prisoners remain in jail, including businesspeople, bankers, religious leaders, accused military coup plotters and two men over the age of 100.

Businesspeople are encouraged by Abubakar’s attempts to restore foreign investor confidence by promising to liberalize the market, scrap a dual exchange rate that is unfavorable to non-Nigerians, protect investor profits, curb corruption and establish a fairer system of awarding government contracts.

“Before, there were hardly ever tenders for government jobs,” recalled Chibudom N. Nwuche, an executive in the private oil sector. “Jobs were decided based on who knows the first lady or the first family. Now there is a fairer process of selecting winners of bids.”

Yet there is still much to be done to nurture democratic principles in a society accustomed to dictatorship, and to change decades-old attitudes of oppression among the country’s ruling elite--before May 29, when the civilian government takes its seat.

Nigeria has been ruled by the military for all but 10 years since its independence from Britain in 1960. It is no wonder, observers say, that the spirit of openness and fair play has not quite trickled down to the control-oriented military security sectors.

“Things are changing, but the change is not yet enough for us to celebrate,” said Shina Loremikan, secretary of the Lagos-based Committee for the Defense of Human Rights. “The various institutions of oppression . . . used to victimize, harass and kill Nigerians are still in place today. . . . And they are still wreaking havoc, [albeit] at a more decent and slower pace.”

Secret police and security forces still break up political gatherings, detaining government critics without charge, Loremikan noted. And 43 so-called obnoxious decrees, which violate the civil liberties of Nigerians, are still in place, he said. These include a law that allows the indefinite detention of any person considered a “security risk” or whose activities are suspected to have an adverse effect on the nation’s economy. Abacha took advantage of the law to jail opponents and dissidents.

“It would take the Ministry of Justice less than one hour to repeal that decree,” Loremikan said.

He also noted that, although Abubakar has managed to recover millions of dollars of public funds stolen by government officials, he has failed to hold the Abacha-era perpetrators responsible for their crimes. Some Nigerians say this indicates that Abubakar does not believe the culprits should be punished. “The process of a new beginning can only be sustained if it is done with honesty,” Loremikan said.

Some activists praise Abubakar’s efforts to return the reins of power to civilians but fear his good intentions might be thwarted by his subordinates.

“Everything is in favor of [Abubakar] going,” said Fapohunda, the prison reformist. “But with the military, you never can tell. . . . What about the wider [military] constituency? Will they be content to live a life in the barracks? That will be the test.”

“The military has tasted power,” said editor Alake, whose newspaper was owned by popular opposition leader Moshood Abiola, who died of an apparent heart attack on the eve of his expected release from prison. “In Nigeria, power means money, petroleum, being able to determine life and death, and having the ability to make a person rich or a pauper in a matter of minutes.”

Critical Economic Issues

Whoever takes power in this vast nation come May will be confronted with a multitude of challenges, including tackling a $3-billion debt, a paralyzing fuel crisis, massive unemployment and unwieldy infrastructure development. The new leadership will also need to maintain the confidence of Nigerians, analysts say.

“Everyone has to feel they have a stake,” said one Western diplomat in a recent interview in Abuja, the nation’s capital. “That’s not happening now. Until there is an economic turnaround . . . nothing else will matter. It won’t matter which party gets in.”

Lack of cash might tempt the new leaders to resort to illicit tactics, such as tampering with profits procured from oil and intended for development projects, some observers say.

“It’s starting to look now like the [new] government will enter into power at the exact moment that the [national] coffers run dry,” the diplomat said. “Then what decision will it take?”

Other analysts say that failure to pay civil servants and make quick infrastructure improvements might evoke some nostalgia for military rule.

What is clear is that the growing pains of democracy will require Nigerians to be patient.

“Nigeria’s learning curve will be how it responds to democracy when it comes,” said Agbakoba, the human rights lawyer, adding that his countrymen will have to avoid being tempted to “use their new freedom as a license to disrupt things.”

For now, however, many Nigerians are simply content to let history take its course and savor their newfound spiritual emancipation while it lasts.

Said Agbakoba, who spent parts of his life under Abacha in detention or in hiding: “It’s like a war ended, and you’re [able to] see old friends again.”