ABUJA, Nigeria (AP)
In his first two months in office, Nigeria’s shy, aristocratic president has faced a nationwide strike, violence in the country’s oil region and accusations that he is too timid for the job.
But these challenges pale compared with the country’s corruption, decaying infrastructure and poverty. This nation of 140 million expects a lot from President Umaru Yar’Adua.
“These big men always have big talk,” said Raymond Olanre as he hawked newspapers on a potholed road. Mr. Yar’Adua “says he will give us water and light, but that is just what the previous [president] said.”
Electricity and clean water are just some of the basics that Africa’s largest oil exporter has failed to deliver to its citizens. Mr. 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.
Mr. Obasanjo plucked the former state governor from obscurity and made him the governing party’s presidential candidate last year. Mr. 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 Mr. Obasanjo, Nigeria had eight tumultuous years of democracy, the longest such period since independence from Britain in 1960. But corruption and poverty remained rife.
Mr. 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 Mr. Yar’Adua, a reclusive former chemistry teacher from a royal Muslim family, is preparing for real change, according to 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,” Mr. Ibrahim said.
Every step forward so far has left Nigerians clamoring for more.
In a surprise move, Mr. Yar’Adua publicly declared his assets — the first Nigerian president to do so — and urged his officials to do the same.
Yesterday, Vice President Goodluck Jonathan gave in to opposition pressure by making public his personal assets of $2.3 million.
Mr. Jonathan came under attack by the news media and opposition parties for failing to emulate Mr. Yar’Adua who, within less than a month in office, made public his personal assets in June.
Mr. Yar’Adua said he decided to make his worth public in order to have enough moral ground to continue the war against corruption in a country, which is seen as one of the world’s most corrupt.
Also, Mr. Yar’Adua reversed the contentious sale of two of the country’s broken-down refineries to a shadowy consortium headed by Mr. 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 revenue 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 Mr. 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 [Mr. Yar’Adua] to prove to them that he does not need a back-seat driver.”
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