The upside in Nigeria

IF NIGERIA IS A yardstick for sub-Saharan Africa, then Africa is moving sideways. Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright spoke for many international observers when she described Saturday’s national elections in the continent’s most populous country as “a step backward.”

From a technical standpoint, Albright was correct. Polls opened late, voters were intimidated, some ballot boxes were stuffed and others disappeared. To the surprise of no one, the ruling-party candidate and handpicked successor of President Olusegun Obasanjo won by a landslide.

The election fiasco is disappointing because it reinforces a distaste for democracy in Africa in general and Nigeria in particular. Though liberalism is growing across the continent, polls show that satisfaction with democracy as a form of government is shrinking as elected leaders fail to live up to their promises. Although Nigeria is bursting with mineral wealth, corruption is so endemic and the infrastructure is so backward that the money hasn’t helped the masses of desperately poor, many of whom look with nostalgia on past military dictatorships.

Yet for all the pessimism surrounding Monday’s announcement that Umaru Yar Adua will now run the country, there are some reasons to cheer. Assuming the transition isn’t delayed by court challenges, on May 29, power will pass from one civilian leader to another for the first time in Nigerian history. The parliament refused to support Obasanjo’s constitutional revision to give himself a third term, demonstrating welcome independence from the executive branch. And lamentable as the ballot tampering was, the presidency is probably going to the best candidate.

Yar Adua has been governor of the remote northern state of Katsina since 1999; he has been transparent about his personal assets and is one of only a handful of state governors cleared by Nigeria’s anti-graft agency. He says he is committed to continuing Obasanjo’s notable campaign against corruption. Given that the runner-up, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, is a former autocrat who ran a deeply repressive regime in the mid-1980s, things could have been much worse.