Nigeria's New Leader Faces Uncertainties
By KATHARINE HOURELD
Associated Press Writer
In his first two months in office, Nigeria's shy, aristocratic new president has faced a nationwide strike, violence in the country's oil region and accusations that he's too timid for the job.
But these challenges pale compared with the country's corruption, decayed infrastructure and poverty. This nation of 140 million expects a lot of President Umaru Yar'Adua.
'These big men always have big talk,' grumbled Raymond Olanre as he hawked newspapers on a potholed road. Yar'Adua 'says he will give us water and light, but that is just what the previous (president) said.'
Electricity and clean running water are just some of the basics that Africa's largest oil exporter has failed to deliver to its citizens. Yar'Adua has made some stabs at reform, but many Nigerians fear he won't be able to stand up to his strong-willed predecessor, Olusegun Obasanjo, and remake his country.
Obasanjo plucked the former state governor from obscurity and made him the governing party's presidential candidate last year. Yar'Adua's landslide victory in April's elections was condemned by domestic and international observers, who charged widespread voter intimidation and vote-rigging.
Under Obasanjo, Nigeria had eight tumultuous years of democracy, the longest such period since independence from Britain in 1960. But corruption and poverty remained rife.
Olanre, for example, earns about $2 a day - not much, but still more than most. He is 22, in a country where average life expectancy is 43.
There are signs that Yar'Adua, a reclusive former chemistry teacher from a royal Muslim family, is preparing for real change, says Jibrin Ibrahim of the Center for Democracy and Development, a Nigerian think tank. It will take a year for his true colors to emerge, and meanwhile, with a cabinet of competing factions, 'he is still not totally in charge,' Ibrahim said.
Every step forward so far has left Nigerians clamoring for more.
In a surprise move, Yar'Adua publicly declared his assets - the first Nigerian president to do so - and urged his officials to do the same. None has so far.
Yar'Adua reversed the contentious sale of two of the country's broken down refineries to a shadowy consortium headed by Obasanjo's allies, a deal hurried through in the dying days of the outgoing regime. Incompetent management, sabotage and neglect had already shut the country's four major refineries, forcing Nigeria to import refined petroleum.
And this month, four former governors were charged with stealing state money, with more arrests promised by the country's anti-corruption watchdog. But none held office in the three major oil-producing states of the southern Niger River delta, whose governors receive billions of dollars in oil revenues annually but have failed to provide electricity, water, schools or clinics. Each was a major donor to the ruling party, however.
'People in the delta will not take Yar'Adua seriously until we see some of our own governors being brought to book,' said Damke Pueba of Stakeholders Democracy Network, an advocacy group in the main southern oil center, Port Harcourt.
'He's still using the same Obasanjo approach,' she said, referring to the previous president's policy of charging political enemies with corruption while allowing major party donors a free hand. 'Some (officials) are sacred cows, others are sacrificial lambs.'
In the meantime, a string of bombings and kidnappings that sharply escalated from December 2005 has cut a quarter from Nigeria's daily oil-production capacity of 2.5 million barrels a day.
Rich areas of Lagos, the commercial capital, get a few hours of electricity a day, strangling small businesses and driving away investment in a country where millions are unemployed. Poorer neighborhoods go without power for days, even weeks.
The new administration has two members of the opposition, seven women, and a finance minister seen by many as a reformist. But Yar'Adua has also retained many faces from the outgoing regime, which worries those looking for a radical change of direction.
'He is very cautious, to the point of being faulted,' said Charles Dokubo of the Nigerian Institute for International Affairs. 'Nigerians want (Yar'Adua) to prove to them that he does not need a back-seat driver.'
