Nigeria needs action, not words

The stability of Africa’s most populous state continues to defy the doomsayers. When the democratically elected president Olusegun Obasanjo ended his second term of office in 2007, a quiet, self-effacing academic, Umaru Yar’Adua took his place. Last week he died of heart disease, not yet 60.

Not everything Yar’Adua did was good. His most grievous sin was to fire Nuhu Ribadu, the pathbreaking head of the country’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission that successfully prosecuted many of Nigeria’s most egregiously corrupt governors. In spite of that, though, and his habit of associating with some of the most corrupt governors and “fixers” in the country, he achieved two highly significant things. The first was that he managed what his predecessor had tried and failed to achieve: come to terms with the armed militants who were bent on destroying the foreign-owned oil industry and the Niger Delta oil and gas that underwrites the economy. It is perhaps too early to judge whether his peace plan will hold up over the long term—some of the rebels have broken the truce—but it looks like a significant step forward.

The second was on the economic front. His appointments both to the finance ministry and the central bank were astute, even if the subsequent policies could have been better handled. The banks often remain poorly managed. Nevertheless, the result has helped Nigeria bounce back fast from the impact of the West’s great recession. Growth fell from over 8% a year to 5.6% last year, but an IMF report last month projected that it will be 7% this year and next. This is not just because of oil. The growth rate of the agricultural sector, the second fastest in Africa, has continued the trajectory begun under Obasanjo. If a second world commodity boom gets underway, then Nigerian agriculture is well positioned to take advantage of it.

Nigeria will miss Yar’Adua most of all, though, because of what made up the inner man. He was a Muslim through and through, and one who had thought deeply about what his beliefs meant. I found this out when I was the only foreign journalist to have a long interview with him during his presidential campaign.

“All religions get corrupted”, he told me. “But we should never forget that religion is about love, kindness and tolerance of the other peoples of the book. Honesty, fairness, justice, truth, forthrightness, love and peace are the elements of Islam.”

Politicians, civic and church leaders in the largely Christian south of the country have campaigned hard against moves by northern Islamic states to introduce Sharia law, believing it undermines the secular constitution. Yar’Adua observed that “civil law and Sharia law are not that much different. Both want to administer justice, even if there are differences in procedure and subject matter e.g. the Islamic prohibition of alcohol. Regrettably, much of Sharia law has been politicised, but the two systems should be able to live comfortably side by side.”

I asked him about the practice of stiff punishment for adultery. “A court needs four witnesses to prove it and it unlikely a court can find that number. So the only way to convict them is if the couple confess and even then the court has to prove the couple are mentally sound.”

Then I asked about the famous case in his state of a young woman who was raped but accused of adultery. “I knew the system would find her not guilty. I knew they couldn’t prove adultery. Some of the lower courts are not knowlgeable and just because the case became politicised they passed a judgement against her. But the appeal court that acquitted her knew what they were doing.”

At the time I met with him he appeared alert and cognizant of the issues, not just regarding the Delta crisis but on the continuing energy problem, on land, electoral and education reform, the development of water transport to take the burden away from the bad road system in the Delta and, above all, a lessening of the dependence on oil and the need to give much more emphasis to productive activity and taxes. Yet his illness, or lack of will, hampered the implementation. It became just talk.

Perhaps his wisest decision was to ask Goodluck Jonathan, the governor of one of the troubled Delta states, to be his running mate. A rare financially clean governor (as was Yar’Adua), he is an idealist. He is also a friend of Ribadu, and there is talk of Jonathan proposing the former Economic and Financial Crimes Commissioner as his vice president in next year’s election.

Jonathan has inherited a viable if still theoretical program of action from Yar’Adua. A healthy man in his prime, there is no reason why he shouldn’t succeed with it.