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Nigeria: This House has Fallen
Nigeria: This House has Fallen
Date distributed (ymd): 000821
Document reposted by APIC
+++++++++++++++++++++Document Profile+++++++++++++++++++++
Region: West Africa
Issue Areas: +economy/development+ +security/peace+
Summary Contents:
This posting contains excerpts from the introductory chapter of
'This House Has Fallen,' the new book on Nigeria by experienced
journalist Karl Maier, Maier excels in first-person reporting,
relying on the voices of the diverse Nigerians he interviewed over
more than two years in the country, Though there are many excellent
academic works by Nigerians and others, Maier's book is unique as
a comprehensive and current journalistic account dedicated to
Nigeria.
To purchase Maier's book through Amazon.com, and for links to a
other recent books on Nigeria, visit APIC's Web Bookshop
at http://www.africapolicy.org/books
Related postings today and tomorrow contains statements on U.S.
policy towards Nigeria, issued in the context of President
Clinton's visit scheduled for August 25-28.
+++++++++++++++++end profile++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
From THIS HOUSE HAS FALLEN: MIDNIGHT IN NIGERIA by Karl Maier
Published by PublicAffairs (August 2000) [posted by APIC with
permission]
To most outsiders, the very name Nigeria conjures up images of
chaos and confusion, military coups, repression, drug trafficking,
and business fraud. It remains a mystery to all but a handful of
academics and diplomats. The international media generally shun
Nigeria because it is a difficult place to work, and it is not easy
for journalists to sell the story to editors in New York, Atlanta,
or London. Nigeria does not present a cut-and-dried moralistic tale
of the South African type about an evil racial minority suppressing
heroic resistance fighters. So from time to time Nigeria drifts
across our television screens and into the world's public
consciousness, only to fade back out again.
The level of ignorance and indifference about Nigeria among the
world's most powerful governments can be startling. I attended a
meeting of U.S. and Nigerian academics and human rights activists
at the U.S. State Department in 1997. One of the Clinton
administration's senior envoys to Africa strode in to make a brief
appearance and said he had an important matter to address. This was
at a time when senior politicians and dozens of journalists and
human rights activists were in jail, and Nigeria appeared poised on
the precipice of political and social catastrophe. What concerned
the official, however, was Washington's fear that the military
regime of the day, headed by a diminutive dictator named General
Sani Abacha, might rename the street outside the U.S. embassy after
Muammar Gadhafi or Fidel Castro as a way of thumbing its nose at
the United States. A Nigerian human rights activist sitting next to
me shook her head and said under her breath, "I don't believe what
I just heard." A small incident perhaps, but it spoke volumes about
the West's approach to Africa and Nigeria.
Two weeks before President Bill Clinton's historic visit to Africa
in March 1998, his assistant secretary of state for African
Affairs, Susan Rice, told the Senate that Washington would regard
Abacha's plans to transform himself from military dictator into
civilian president as "unacceptable." Then, while in South Africa,
Clinton contradicted her, effectively saying that the United States
would not object to the most brutal despot in Nigeria's history
embarking on a course to "civilianize" his dictatorship. After all,
other military leaders in Africa had done it.
These are not trivial examples. We, the outside world, ignore
Nigeria at our peril, and we are ill served when our governments
demonstrate such indifference. From almost any point of view,
Nigeria truly matters. However deep it has sunk into a mire of
corruption, repression, and economic dilapidation, Nigeria remains
one of the world's strategic nations. It is the biggest trading
partner the United States has in Africa. It is the fifth largest
supplier of oil to the U.S. market, where its low-sulfur Bonny
Light crude is especially prized because it is easily refined into
gasoline. As the world's tenth most populous country, Nigeria
represents an inherently sizable market that could provide trade
opportunities for North American and European companies. It is a
vast land, stretching from the dense mangrove swamps and tropical
rain forests of the Atlantic coast to the spectacular rocky
outcrops of the interior and the wide belt of savanna that finally
melts into the arid rim of the Sahara desert. Its 110 million
people are an extraordinary human potpourri of some three hundred
ethnic groups that represent one out of six Africans. Nigeria is
Africa's equivalent to Brazil, India, or Indonesia. It is the pivot
point on which the continent turns.
Designed by alien occupiers and abused by army rule for
three-quarters of its brief life span, the Nigerian state is like
a battered and bruised elephant staggering toward an abyss with the
ground crumbling under its feet. Should it fall, the impact will
shake the rest of West Africa. ...
Nigerians from all walks of life are openly questioning whether
their country should remain as one entity or discard the colonial
borders and break apart into several separate states. Ethnic and
religious prejudices have found fertile ground in Nigeria, where
there is neither a national consensus nor a binding ideology.
Indeed, the spread of virulent strains of chauvinism in Nigeria is
part of a worldwide phenomenon playing out in Indonesia, the
Balkans, the former Soviet Union, and a host of other African
nations. This sort of politicized tribalism, a constant companion
to the modern version of globalization, is the biggest threat to
international peace and stability. With ever growing frequency,
wars are fought not between states but within them. The conflict is
neighbor against neighbor, us against them, always the menacing
Other, whether the differences are racial, religious, or
linguistic.
And although Nigeria shares this explosion of animosity with other
states, it remains unique. It provides the story line for one of
the great epics of the late twentieth century. The landscape for
the unfolding human drama is a giant, heaving, multiethnic symbol
of the archetypal Third World basket case. Since winning
independence from Britain in 1960, Nigeria has witnessed at least
one million deaths in Africa's biggest civil war, the assassination
of two government leaders, six successful coups and four failed
ones, and thirty years of army rule. Yet somehow the country has
stayed together, despite decades of government by a clique of
military and civilian elite who have behaved, to borrow a phrase
from the eminent Africa historian Basil Davidson, like "pirates in
power." They are modern equivalents of the African war-lords of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who built up wealthy kingdoms
by selling millions of their people to the Europeans in the
Atlantic slave trade. In their current incarnation, they sell their
resources---oil in the case of Nigeria---instead of human beings.
Very little trickles down. In the official arenas of international
discourse---the United Nations, the World Bank, the media---Nigeria
is known as a "developing nation," a phrase that conjures up images
of economic progress of the sort experienced by the West or among
the Asian "tigers." Nigeria, like so many countries in Africa, is
patently not a developing nation. It is underdeveloping. Its people
are far worse off now than they were thirty years ago. The numbers
speak for themselves. Despite some $280 billion in export revenues
since the discovery of oil in the late 1950s, at least half of all
Nigerians live in abject poverty without access to clean water.
Literacy is below that of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Gross
domestic product per person is lower now than it was before the
beginning of the oil boom of the 1970s. To even return to the
living standards of that time, the economy would have to grow by an
unlikely 5 percent per year until 2010. The value of the national
currency, the naira, has fallen from $2 to a penny per naira. The
foreign debt stands at $32 billion. The World Bank ranks Nigeria as
the thirteenth poorest country in the world. The 1999 UN human
development index gives it a slightly better though still
disheartening score, 146th out of 174. The UN Center for Human
Settlements (Habitat) predicts that Lagos will be the world's fifth
most populous urban center by 2015, with a population of
twenty-three million.
So far the West has done little to help and has often made matters
worse. It is hypocritical of the West to blame Nigeria for
corruption, fraud, and drug running and to demand that Nigerians
own up to their foreign debt while at the same time allowing the
funds garnered from such nefarious dealings to be deposited in
Western banks. "A man who receives stolen goods is called a fence,
but what do you call a country that is in the business of receiving
stolen goods?" asked Dr. Folarin Gbadebo-Smith, a U.S.-educated
dentist and businessman, while in his Lagos office one day. "They
lend Nigeria money, somebody here steals the same amount of money
and gives it back to them, and then they leave these poor Nigerians
repaying what they never owed. The role of the Western powers has
been totally disgraceful."
In May 1999, after a sixteen-year stretch of military rule, Nigeria
appeared ready to turn a new page. A civilian government headed by
a former head of state and war hero, retired General Olusegun
Obasanjo, and his vice president, Atiku Abubakar, took office, but
much damage had already been done. Obasanjo assumed the helm of an
ailing ship of state almost totally lacking in morality or
legitimacy. The government spends up to half of its annual budget
on salaries of an estimated two million federal, state and local
government workers, yet the civil service remains paralyzed, with
connections and corruption still the fastest way to getting
anything done. ... Colonial Nigeria was designed in 1914 to serve
the British Empire, and the independent state serves as a tool of
plunder by the country's modern rulers. Nigerians spend a good part
of their lives trying to get the better of the government for their
own benefit or that of their family, their village, or their
region. Rare is the head of state who acts on be-half of the entire
nation. The people are not so much governed as ruled. It is as if
they live in a criminally mismanaged corporation where the bosses
are armed and have barricaded themselves inside the company safe.
Nigeria's leaders, like the colonialists before them, have sucked
out billions of dollars and stashed them in Western banks.
Millions of Nigerians, including much of the cream of the educated
and business elite, have fled their country to escape
impoverishment and political repression. Most live in the United
States and Europe, although almost every country has a Nigerian
community. Nigerian drug syndicates, aided in part by the large
diaspora, have carved out a dominant share of the world market.
They rank among the top importers of heroin and cocaine into the
United States, and they have penetrated major African markets, such
as Kenya and the nations in southern Africa. Nigeria does not
itself produce such drugs, but Nigerians, brilliant traders, have
stepped in to fulfill the world demand.
At the turn of the century, Nigeria was home to approximately sixty
million youths under the age of eighteen, seething with frustration
over the lack of academic and job opportunities that just three
decades before appeared to be within reach of their parents. They
represent Nigeria's equivalent to what South Africa calls its "lost
generation," that huge army of frustrated youth who lack the tools
to face the demands of a modern economy. In South Africa they were
the products of the apartheid system and of the weapons of the
struggle school boycotts, strikes, guerrilla warfare---employed to
overthrow it. In Nigeria the blame for its lost generation falls
squarely on the shoulders of its people's leaders---corrupt
military dictators and their civilian accomplices---who over the
past quarter of a century have humbled a once proud nation through
outright incompetence and greed.
Whether we know it or not, almost everyone is touched by the
Nigerian crisis. The violent rebellion in the mangrove swamps of
the oil-rich Niger delta region means that the gasoline sold at
filling stations in the United States and Europe is almost
literally stained with Nigerian blood. Nigeria reaches the most
unlikely of places. The modest knitting shop where my mother works
in a suburb of Louisville, Kentucky, received a form letter from a
Dr. Jubril Akeh offering to share $45.5 million garnered from a
corrupt business deal in Nigeria. All the knitting shop had to do
was to provide the details of its bank account---but the whole deal
was a con in which the swindler, once in possession of those
details, would drain the account. It was the classic Nigerian
confidence trick, commonly known as "419" after the statute that
deals with business fraud. The extraordinary part is that someone
always takes the bait. Nigerian con artists send millions of such
letters to businesses and individuals around the world every year.
They cost Britain up to $1 billion a year, and they probably take
a similar amount from the United States.
Nigeria could, however, follow another path. Its potential is huge.
Its tremendous wealth, if properly channeled, holds out the hope
that a stable government could unleash the unquestioned energy and
talent that pulsates through the rich ethnic mosaic. The human
capital is there. Thousands of Nigerian professionals are well
educated and skilled enough to drive the country forward. Anyone
who has visited Nigeria's markets and witnessed its people endure
the constraints of bad government and the sinking economy can
testify to the country's resilience.
Nigeria was once the premier African voice, taking principled
stands in the face of fierce Western opposition over important
issues such as the immorality of white minority rule in Rhodesia,
now independent Zimbabwe, and South Africa. ...
Among its writers it boasts a Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka; the
Booker Prize winner Ben Okri; Chinua Achebe, whose Things Fall
Apart is arguably Africa's best piece of postcolonial literature;
and rising young talents such as the playwright Biyi Bandele
Thomas. Nigerian professors grace university campuses across the
United States and the world. Internationally renowned singers such
as Sade and Seal hail from Nigeria, as do African music superstars
as the late Fela Kuti and King Sunny Ade. And artistic excellence
is not new to Nigeria. Terra-cotta figures discovered at a tin mine
in the northern village of Nok are believed to have been produced
around 450 B.C. Now they are on regular tours of museums in the
United States and Europe.
In sports Nigerians regularly compete for the world's top honors.
There are Nigerians playing in the National Basketball Association
(NBA); the best-known of them, Hakeem "The Dream" Olajuwon, led the
Houston Rockets to two championships. ... For me, a young soccer
player named Nwankwo Kanu sums up the potential of Nigeria to turn
adversity into achievement. I remember watching the tall thin Kanu
bounding gracefully as he led Nigeria to victory in the
under-seventeen World Cup in 1993. ... During the 1996 Olympic
games in United States, Kanu inspired Nigeria to capture the gold
medal, scoring twice in the amazing 4 to 3 semifinal comeback win
against Brazil. Then he joined the great Italian team,
Internazionale of Milan. During a routine medical checkup, doctors
detected a heart defect. Kanu would never play again, they said.
Undeterred, he traveled to Cincinnati, Ohio, where doctors inserted
a plastic valve in his heart. Two years later he was playing for
Nigeria in the World Cup in France, and he now stars for the
powerful English team Arsenal. In December 1999 Kanu was named
African Footballer of the Year.
Kanu is not the only Nigerian whose courage and conduct inspires
others. The world first cast its attention on Nigeria with the
outbreak of the 1967-1970 Biafran civil war, in which the eastern
part of the country attempted to secede. Up to one million people
died. The images of starving, sticklike children brought, for the
first time, the stark reality of a humanitarian disaster in Africa
to living rooms around the world. Yet despite expressions of
international concern about genocide, including one from the pope,
the end of the war actually witnessed few massacres. Indeed, after
the Biafrans' surrender, Nigeria proved that it could set new
standards in compassion. The government's policy of "No victors,
no vanquished" was a remarkable achievement and has played a
critical role ever since in keeping the country from splitting
apart. ...
Chinua Achebe, in his book The Trouble with Nigeria, wrote,
It is totally false to suggest, as we are apt to do, that Nigerians
are fundamentally different from any other people in the world.
Nigerians are corrupt because the system under which they live
today makes corruption easy and profitable; they will cease to be
corrupt when corruption is made difficult and inconvenient....The
trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of
leadership....I am saying that Nigeria can change today if she
discovers leaders who have the will, the ability and the vision.
Sadly, this was written almost twenty years ago. Things have
continued to fall apart. ...
I lived in Nigeria as a foreign correspondent for two years, from
1991-1993, and returned often on reporting assignments. In mid-1998
I began a series of visits to gather material for this book.
Nigeria has proved to be by far the most confounding, frustrating,
and at the same time engaging place I have ever visited. ...
This book is by no means a comprehensive account of Nigerian
history. That would involve decades and many volumes. Rather, its
purpose is to portray the most intractable crisis points and the
ethnic and regional tensions threatening the survival of what is
perhaps the largest failed state in the Third World. Nigeria
provides a stark lesson. As late as the 1980s, a long spell of good
government and modest economic growth might have provided the
breathing space and the common interest for Nigerians to feel it
was worth continuing as one country, however artificial its
origins. Now things have declined too far for that. Nigeria is on
an altogether more dangerous trajectory. The only long-term
solution in Nigeria to the crises that arise in a multiethnic state
is for the various parties, however many they may be, to sit down
and negotiate how they want to govern themselves and how they want
to share their resources, and to decide whether they ultimately
want to live together. Until they begin that process of internal
reconciliation, at best Nigeria will lurch from crisis to crisis.
At worst it will fall apart. ...
This material is being reposted for wider distribution by the
Africa Policy Information Center (APIC). APIC provides
accessible information and analysis in order to promote U.S.
and international policies toward Africa that advance economic,
political and social justice and the full spectrum of human rights.
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