Some Basic Facts

• Population of 160 million (a census hasn’t been taken for a long time)

• Substantial oil industry

• Multi-religious, multi-ethnic

• Islam began to influence area in 15th century

• Federal system

Three main ethnic groupsHausa-Fulani, Yoruba, and Igbo

Colonial experience for Nigeria

• Slave trade of West Africa; outlawed by the British in 1807

• Berlin conference of 1884 was when Africa was carved up (see next slide)

• Nigeria first became an entity in 1914 when southern and northern protectorates were brought under a single colonial administration

• North was left relatively undisturbed; allowed the emirs to be indirect rulers for the British; British much more concerned with the commerce/ports in the southern part of the country

• More missionaries came to the south; more western-oriented education; has left legacy where southerners view the northerners as less educated/worldly

Independence and the Aftermath

• 1960: Formal Independence• 1960-1966: First Republic• 1966-1979: Civil War and

Military Rule• War in Biafra: 1967-1970 (Igbo

nation tries to secede); General Gowon leads a bloody war to prevent this from happening; 1 million dead

• Second Republic: 1979-1983• Military Rule: 1983-1999• Return to Civilian Rule: 1999-

present

General Ibrahim Babangida

• Seized power in 1985• Annulled election

results in 1993 when Abiola won

Babangida’s rule

• Promised to hand back power in 1990 to a civilian government

• Structural Adjustment Reforms eviscerated Nigerian middle class

• Suspended writ of habeas corpus• Upgraded Nigeria’s status within OIC to full-

member from observer status• Major demonstrations throughout the country

after annulment of elections• Handed power over to a caretaker government

General Sani Abacha• Seized power in late 1993• Very bleak period in Nigeria:

political parties banned; journalists fled for their lives; series of strikes; arrests of union leaders

• Major corruption and expropriation of money under Abacha

• Had Ken Saro-Wiwa executed• Kicked out of British

commonwealth• Talk of placing sanctions

against Nigeria by U.S. govt• Out of step with the African

Renaissance during the 1990s

Abdulsalami Abubakar

• Abacha died of a heart attack in 1998

• Abubakar is the successor

• Abiola still wanted to become president but he also died in prison

• Local level elections take place first in 1998-1999

• Obasanjo released from prison once Abacha died

• Independent National Electoral Commission established to oversee elections

• Three parties which received the highest number of votes in over 700 local level elections were then permitted to compete in the state and local elections in 1999

• People’s Democratic Party did the best• 1999 presidential elections; two candidates went

head to head and Obasanjo of the PDP won with over 60% of the vote

• Obasanjo was a Yoruba, had handed power back to the civilian govt in 1979

• Did well in non-Yoruba areas of the country• Major issue: corruption; retired all military

officers who held power under previous military govts; indebtedness of Nigeria

Former PresidentOlesugun Obasanjo

• Obsanjo ran again in 2003 (Nigerian presidents can serve 2 four year terms); also have vice presidents; no PM

• Current VP, Atiku Abubakar and Obasanjo did not get along at all

The State of Nigerian Democracy in 2006

• Of Nigeria’s 36 governors, 31 are under federal investigation, mostly on suspicion of corruption, and 5 were impeached.

• Governors get a check each month that represents their state’s cut of Nigeria’s booming oil fortune, and have almost no one to answer to for how they spend the money.

• In 2000, suffused with the euphoria of new freedoms, 84 percent of Nigerians said they were satisfied with the state of their new democracy, according to the Afrobarometer public opinion survey.

• But six years later, the same survey found that just 25 percent of Nigerians felt that way.

• New democracies naturally suffer from the letdown of high expectations, but the drop in Nigeria is virtually unparalleled on the continent.

• Of the 12 African countries surveyed in 2005, only Zimbabwe, which the Bush administration has called an “outpost of tyranny,” had a lower score.

December 2006Umaru Yar’Adua in Abuja, Nigeria, after winning his party’s

presidential nomination.

• Nigeria’s governing party selected a reclusive northern governor from a prominent political family to be its candidate in 2007’s presidential election.

• The selection by the People’s Democratic Party of the governor, Umaru Yar’Adua, a 55-year-old former chemistry teacher, made him the front-runner in the race.

December 2006

• The All Nigeria People’s Party, the main opposition, chose Muhammadu Buhari, a northern Muslim from the Hausa-Fulani ethnic group and a former army general who took power in a military coup in 1983, as its presidential candidate for elections in April 2007 after all six other contestants withdrew.

• Mr. Buhari’s iron-fisted rule from 1983 to 1985 is best remembered for its austerity measures, the jailing of politicians on corruption charges, and the execution of drug traffickers.

Elections in 2007

• The National Election Commission said elections for president and the National Assembly would take place on April 21, 2007

• Elections for state governors and local assemblies were held a week earlier, on April 14, 2007.

• President Olusegun Obasanjo must step down in May 2007 after two four-year terms.

• In the spring 2007, Parliament defeated an attempt by his supporters to change the Constitution to allow him a third term.

Presidential Elections

• Nigeria’s troubled presidential election, which came under fire from local and international observers and was rejected by two leading opposition candidates, represents a significant setback for democracy in sub-Saharan Africa at a time when voters in countries across the continent are becoming more disillusioned with the way democracy is practiced.

2007 Presidential Elections

• 25 candidates ran for the presidency

• A lot of voting irregularities

• Some violence leading up to the election

• Only 25% of Nigerians feel as though democracy is serving them well compared to 74% in 2000 according to the Afrobarometer survey

April 2007

• The State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, called the contest “a flawed election, and in some instances, deeply flawed.” Similarly, the election observer mission of the EU blasted the conduct of the election and questioned the legitimacy of the results.

• His nearest rival, Muhammadu Buhari, a former military dictator, had less than one-fourth as many votes.

• Defeated candidates prepared legal challenges in many races, arguing that the lack of organization by the nation’s Independent National Electoral Commission, vote rigging by party officials and the violence and intimidation that kept many voters from the polls were enough to annul the results in many races, including the presidential contest.

• Election officials barred Mr. Abubakar, the sitting VP, from running because he was indicted on corruption charges by an administrative panel, but the Supreme Court ruled days before the election that he had been unlawfully removed.

• Last-minute ballots were printed and distributed to include him, but the ballots showed only party symbols, not the names of candidates, and lacked serial numbers that help reduce fraud.

• These irregularities are likely to figure prominently in legal challenges to the election.

• European Union observers said they witnessed instances of ballot-box theft, long delays in the delivery of ballots and other materials, and a shortage of ballots for the presidential race.

• In half of the polling stations their teams visited, there was no privacy for voters to mark their ballots in secret.

• Observers also witnessed unused ballots being marked and stuffed into ballot boxes.

• Mr. Yar’Adua, a 56-year-old governor of the remote northern state of Katsina, had been a reclusive figure from a prominent political family.

• Under the unwritten rules of Nigerian politics, which dictate that the presidency alternate between the north and south, a northern Muslim like Mr. Yar’Adua would undoubtedly replace Mr. Obasanjo, a Yoruba Christian from the southwest.

Late May 2007: Nigeria’s new president, Umaru Yar’Adua, took office in Abuja. After a history of military coups, Mr. Yar’Adua’s inauguration

was the country’s first peaceful transition of power between civilians.

February 2008

• A panel of judges has upheld the election of President Umaru Yar’Adua of Nigeria, ruling that the evidence of ballot-box stuffing and phantom voting booths presented by two challengers in the race was not enough to overturn the outcome.

• The two opposition candidates who brought the case, Muhammadu Buhari, a former military ruler, and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, vowed to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court, further extending a bitter legal fight over the nation’s contested elections.

• The Nigerian courts have been flexing their muscles in recent months, overturning the elections of the Senate president, dozens of other lawmakers and seven governors due to corruption, but the ruling on the 2007 presidential election may have shown the limits of their reach.

Issues we need to discuss

• Oil• Nigeria’s role in Africa: UN peacekeeping and

through ECOWAS• Debt Relief• Ethnic/religious divisions over sharia law• Political parties; how to make them more of

catch-all parties and not based on ethnic affiliation?

• Corruption: Transparency International

Oil in Nigeria

The resource curse

• Oil- both a blessing and a curse?• Thomas Friedman’s First Law of Petropolitics• http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?

story_id=3426• Nigeria is the world’s seventh largest exporter of

oil• Oil accounts for 80% of state revenues• The govt has a majority interest in every oil

company operating there

• What has oil meant for Nigeria?

• Others try to portray the conflict as tribal and not over economic resources

• Nigeria in danger of becoming a failed state?

• US interested in seeing a stable Nigeria

• Oil concentrated in Niger delta area• Member of OPEC since 1971• Oil prices fell in 1980s leading to more

indebtedness; Nigeria underwent structural adjustment programs

• Issue of MNCs responsibility in Niger Delta area

• Attacks on pipelines; attacks on Western oil workers

Ken Saro-WiwaLeader of the Movement for the

Survival of the Ogoni PeopleExecuted by Abacha’s govt in 1995

• Clip of last interview of Ken Saro-Wiwa before his execution

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62-rLX1UYBE

May 2009

• Fourteen years after the execution of the Nigerian author and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa by Nigeria’s former military regime, Royal Dutch Shell appeared before a federal court in New York to answer charges of crimes against humanity in connection with his death.

• The trial would have examined allegations that Shell sought the aid of the former Nigerian regime in silencing Mr. Saro-Wiwa, a vociferous critic, in addition to paying soldiers who carried out human rights abuses in the oil-rich but impoverished Niger Delta where it operated.

• The civil suit was brought by relatives of Mr. Saro-Wiwa and other victims of Nigeria’s former military regime, who are taking advantage of a Supreme Court decision that gives foreign victims of human rights abuses a measure of access to American courts. (1789 Alien Tort Claims Act).

• The suit asserts that in the early 1990s, Shell became worried about Mr. Saro-Wiwa’s campaign to protest the impact of oil production throughout the Niger Delta.

• The suit asserts that Shell feared Mr. Saro-Wiwa’s activities would disrupt its operations and tarnish its image abroad, and “sought to eliminate that threat, through a systematic campaign of human rights violations.”

Big Development

• Royal Dutch Shell agreed to pay $15.5 million to settle a case accusing it of taking part in human rights abuses in the Niger Delta in the early 1990s, a striking sum given that the company has denied any wrongdoing.

• The settlement came days before the start of a trial in New York that was expected to reveal extensive details of Shell’s activities in the Niger Delta.

• Shell continued to deny any role in the death. It called the settlement a “humanitarian gesture” meant to compensate the plaintiffs, including Mr. Saro-Wiwa’s family, for their loss and to cover a portion of their legal fees and costs.

• Some of the money will go into an educational and social trust fund intended to benefit the Ogoni people.

Protests Against MNCs

Women Protest Against ChevronTexaco

Movement for the Emanicipation of the Niger DeltaMEND

• The militants, from the delta's dominant Ijaw tribe, have attacked pipelines and captured four oil workers, demanding that the government release two of their jailed leaders and $1.5 billion from Shell, Nigeria's biggest oil producer.

Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?

Macon Hawkins of Kosciusko, Tex., an employee of a pipe-laying company, was a hostage of the Movement for the Emancipation of the

Niger Delta.

Nigerian peacekeepers arrive in Liberia

• Nigeria has played a major role in ECOWAS peacekeeping operations in the 1990s

• Viewed as THE regional power in West Africa; after South Africa, probably the second most important country in SSA

• Has sent peacekeepers to Darfur, Sudan as well

The issue of ethnic violenceimplementation of Sharia law

Ethnic Violence Continues

Feb. 2006The body of a Muslim victim of the violence lay outside a ruined mosque as a

member of a local gang looked inside. Attacks on Muslims in the south of

Nigeria followed attacks on Christians in the north.

2006

• Rioters killed scores of people, mostly Muslims, after burning their homes, businesses and mosques in the worst violence yet linked to the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad first published in a Danish newspaper.

• The violence in Nigeria began with attacks on Christians in the northern part of the country last week by Muslims infuriated over the cartoons.

A mosque was destroyed by Christian rioters.

A clip from Al-Jazeera on Boko Haram

“Western education is Sin”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VN_7A3mNKg

Debt ReliefApril 2006

• Nigeria reached a deal with the Paris Club, which includes the United States, Germany, France and other wealthy nations, that allowed it to pay off about $30 billion in accumulated debt for about $12 billion, an overall discount of about 60 percent.

• The government said it paid a final installment of $4.5 billion. It plans to use the money it saves to develop the country and reduce poverty.

• Debt relief has become a central issue in the fight against poverty.

• Nigeria, which owed about $36 billion in overall debt, is one of the most indebted nations in the world.

• With a population of about 160 million, it has more impoverished citizens than any other African nation; per capita gross domestic product stands at roughly $1,000 a year.

• Yet Nigeria had not been among the nations that have received write-offs or discounts on their debts, as several poor countries have.

• In part that is because of its reputation for corruption, earned by a succession of military governments that plundered the state treasury, and because Nigeria, with its oil wealth, is seen as being able to pay.

Political Parties andthe Federal Government

• Bicameral legislature called National Assembly

• People’s Democratic Party: party draws much support from the predominantly Christian southern states

• Alliance for Democracy draws support from the Yoruba in southwest

• All People’s Party draws more support from the North

• Each of Nigeria’s 36 states has three senators plus one for the federal capital of Abuja

• Population of states determines the number of representatives

• Both elected for four year terms and elected at the same time rather than staggered elections

Corruption in Nigeria

• Obasanjo made this one of his signature issues

• Created a Financial Crimes Commission• Some say, he used it more as a political

tool to get rid of his political enemies than to truly clean house

• Oil companies involvement in corruption• Corruption at all levels of the govt and

bureaucracy

• What is the Corruption Perceptions Index?The TI Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) ranks countries in terms of the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians.

• It is a composite index, drawing on corruption-related data in expert surveys carried out by a variety of reputable institutions.

• It reflects the views of business people and analysts from around the world, including experts who are locals in the countries evaluated.

• For the purpose of the CPI, how is corruption defined?The CPI focuses on corruption in the public sector and defines corruption as the abuse of public office for private gain.

• The surveys used in compiling the CPI ask questions that relate to the misuse of public power for private benefit, with a focus, for example, on bribe-taking by public officials in public procurement.

CPI 2007

VP Goodluck Jonathan takes over for ailing president in February 2010Pictured in dark hat

Meeting with ObamaJonathan is from the Niger Delta region

• Yar’adua died in May 2010 after long illness; treated in Saudi Arabia

• President Jonathan served out remainder of term until next elections in 2011

• From the Ijaw tribe in the Niger Delta region• How will this upset the ‘unwritten rule’ of

oscillating power between a Christian and Muslim?

Presidential Elections held inApril 2011

• 22.5 million votes cast• Less pre-election violence than was the case in 2007• Two-way contest between Goodluck Jonathan and

former General Buhari• Johnathan: 57% of votes cast to Buhari’s 12.2%• Taking electronic fingerprints of every voter this time

around to reduce fraud in elections going forward• His VP is a Muslim from the North, Namadi Sambo