The Light That Failed

By William E. Smith

"Africa never ceases to amaze." So wrote V.S. Naipaul in A Bend in the River, and last week, true to the novelist's assessment, Africa amazed again. As recently as a fortnight ago, Nigerian President Alhaji Shehu Shagari, 58, was being hailed as the enlightened leader of black Africa's most populous and, in many ways, most promising democracy. Several days later, he was under detention in Lagos, while Major General Mohammed Buhari, 41, organizer of a coup that deposed Shagari, was proclaiming to his countrymen that the armed forces had saved the nation from "total collapse."

In a continent of nations still suffering 25 years later from the pains of birth and persistent poverty, Nigeria has a special significance. Its population, estimated at 90 million, is greater than that of any country in Western Europe. One of every five or six Africans is a Nigerian. Because of its oil resources, which have made it the third largest supplier of petroleum to the U.S. (after Mexico and Britain), Nigeria is the wealthiest nation in black Africa, with a gross national product that is more than half as large as that of the other black African nations combined. Unlike many other African countries, it has a sizable class of educated men and women who are well trained to run its government, industry and armed forces. And notwithstanding the occasional clampdowns imposed by the military, Nigeria has had a tradition of boisterous free speech, freewheeling politics and an unbridled press.

Thus the Dec. 31 coup that toppled Shagari dealt a blow to the hopes of a black Africa that had looked to Nigeria as a trail blazer for democratization. The fact that Shagari could not retain power, even though he was overwhehningly re-elected last August, highlighted the pattern of failure that has plagued black Africa in the quarter-century since most of its nations became independent. The problems of Nigeria are, by and large, those that afflict the entire continent: abject poverty, rampant corruption, gross mismanagement, tribal enmity, uncontrolled population growth. If, in spite of its assets, Nigeria cannot break out of the vicious cycle of political instability and economic decline, the prospects for most of the continent's other countries appear all the bleaker (see following story).

After 13 years of military rule and a civil war that had taken at least 1 million lives, the nation known as the "African Giant" had in 1979 painstakingly embarked on its second attempt at democratic government, this time under a federal constitution closely modeled on that of the U.S. The mild-mannered Shagari, a Muslim from the north and a former schoolteacher, had been elected President and re-elected last August, winning 47% of the popular vote and at least 25% of the ballots in 16 of the country's 19 states.

When Shagari first took office, Nigeria was riding the crest of the oil boom. Its wells were producing up to $26 billion a year. The affluence led the government to press ahead with several expensive development projects, including the construction of a new capital city at Abuja, 325 miles to the northeast of Lagos. Shagari initially promised an end to corruption, but he soon learned that his room for maneuver was limited by the narrower aims of the northern political barons, whose support had ensured his election. Fueled by the oil boom, corruption flourished. Explains a newspaper editor: "It is not that corruption didn't exist before. It is just that there was suddenly more money around, so the asking price became higher and higher, and the corruption became more and more obvious."

Alas, by 1983, Nigeria was suffering from the worldwide oil glut and the resulting drop in prices. Its oil revenues had fallen to about $10 billion a year, while its foreign debt rose to an estimated $15 billion. After his reelection, Shagari seemed determined to deal more forcefully with corruption and the growing economic problems than he had before. He created a new ministry charged with rooting out corrupt officials. Just two days before the coup, he delivered an austerity budget aimed at reducing the government's capital spending by 30% and imports by 40%. The belt-tightening was greeted with grumbling by Nigerians, already beset by high food prices and 50% inflation and angry over the ostentatious luxury enjoyed by many of the country's leaders, though not by Shagari. Said a Nigerian economist: "Palm oil is more than ten times as costly as it was a few months ago. Yet you see more BMW and Mercedes cars in Nigeria than you do in West Germany."

The army moved on the last day of 1983, pulling off a well-planned and almost bloodless coup with efficiency. At 2:30 a.m., troops in widely scattered parts of the country moved out of their barracks and set up roadblocks at strategic points. By 3 a.m. they had secured the radio and television stations in Lagos and had begun to take prominent politicians into custody. They temporarily cut international telephone and telex lines and closed down airports, border posts and the port of Lagos. At 7:30, a member of the new junta, Brigadier Sana Abacha, announced over Nigerian radio that the Shagari government had been overthrown. For the most part, Nigerians seemed to accept the news with a shrug and an instinct that the change was not going to make matters any worse.

The only reported bloodshed occurred in the partly completed capital, Abuja. When soldiers went to the official residence to arrest President Shagari, their commander, Brigadier Ibrahim Bako,.was shot dead by a bodyguard. Shortly afterward, Shagari surrendered and was taken into custody. The junta subsequently denied early reports that he had been brought to Lagos in handcuffs.

The man who heads the new government, General Buhari, is a figure to be reckoned with. During the previous military government, he served as Nigeria's Oil Minister and before that as governor of Borno state. He attended the British Officers' Cadet School at Aldershot, near London, and the U.S. Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pa. Like Shagari, he is both a Muslim from the north and a political moderate.

Buhari moved swiftly to reassure both his countrymen and foreign governments of his junta's intentions. He declared that the 1983 elections had been "anything but free and fair" and complained that the Shagari government was turning Nigeria into "a nation of beggars." He stressed that people were worried about the rising prices of such basic foods as rice, sugar, yams and tomatoes, and pointed out that many civil servants had not been paid for months. "The armed forces could not stand idly by," he said, "while the country was drifting toward a dangerous state of political and economic collapse." The new government, he said, would "do its best" to settle its debts, but he added, "Let no one be deceived that workers who have not received their salaries in the past eight awful months will be paid today or tomorrow." Asked whether Shagari and other former officials would be put on trial, Buhari replied with careful ambiguity. His 19-man Supreme Military Council believes "you are innocent until proved guilty," he said, "but our technique may prove to be a bit unorthodox."

Three days after it seized power, the military council made a payment of about $60 million that Nigeria owed to 66 international banks on debts of nearly $2 billion. In the meantime, said Buhari, Nigeria would continue to negotiate with the International Monetary Fund for some $2 billion in emergency loans. Buhari also announced that Nigeria would remain in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, and that it would not cut its oil prices sharply in an effort to find a short-term solution to its pressing economic problems. This was good news to other members of OPEC, who had feared that the coup in Nigeria might lead to a new round of price cutting in the world oil market.

Most Western countries, including the U.S., believed that the generals would maintain most of the previous government's external policies and were probably sincere in their desire to put Nigeria into better working order. The junta, however, has inherited Shagari's balance sheet and most of his problems. Food prices fell sharply, if temporarily, in Lagos last week. But it will take more than the announcement of a crackdown on profiteering to make Nigeria self-sufficient in food production, as it had been until a few years ago. As for corruption, it has long been endemic in Nigerian life.

As the Times of London observed last week, "The history of military coups in Nigeria and elsewhere shows that power corrupts soldiers as fast as it corrupts civilians."

Whatever the arguments to the contrary, General Buhari's coup was a setback for democracy throughout Africa.

As an exiled Nigerian lawyer put it, "Far better to have a shabby democracy in which people have some say in the running of things than a shabby military regime in which they have none." The liberal Rand Daily Mail of Johannesburg feared that the coup would bring "foolish and shortsighted satisfaction" to those "who believe black African states are congenitally incapable of moderate, democratic, civilian rule." The coup also brought disappointment to those who believed that the restoration of Nigerian democracy had been a sign that Africa was coming of age. In 1979, Shehu Shagari said, "In this country there are, in the end, only two parties, the civilians and the soldiers."

Unfortunately he was right. Last week it was clear that the Nigerian "opposition," using the means at its disposal, had come to power again. -- William E. Smith

Reported by James Wilde/Lagos

With reporting by James Wilde/Lagos