By Stephen Williams

This house has fallen

By Karl Maier

?18.99 Allen Lane

ISBN 0-713-995-238s

Karl Maier describes Nigeria as “the most confounding, frustrating, and at the same time engaging place I have ever visited. It simply overwhelms the senses, one of those rare examples in which the sum of its parts is, at least to date, immensely greater than its whole. It is a work in progress, though one is never too sure whether it is being assembled or torn apart.”

In this book he summarises the social and political events that have shaped Nigeria, and attempts to explain how 40 years of independence have transformed what was once Africa’s brightest hope as a independent nation-state into a byword for repression, lost opportunities, corruption and economic decline. He takes as the book’s title a quotation from the Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe: “This is an example of a country that has fallen down; it has collapsed. The house has fallen.”

Compelling narrative

In a compelling narrative, the author provides an analysis of the crisis that’s facing Nigeria. He places a fair amount of the blame for Nigeria’s condition on the conceits of the British colonialists who determined that a democratic nation state of quite bewildering complexity - today with a population of some 110m and comprising of some 300 ethnic groups - could possibly be constructed from three rival regions which under colonial rule had been governed by quite different systems.

Post-independence, some effort was made to align regional interests in the interest of national cohesion. These efforts ultimately failed, leading to Nigeria’s first military coup by the charismatic Yakuba Gowan in 1966. Tensions persisted, and within a year the withdrawal of the Eastern Region from the Federation and the declaration of the Republic of Biafra fractured Nigeria’s shaky federation.

Two months later fighting broke out and the three year Biafran war erupted - claiming at least one million, mainly civilian, lives by the time the Federal Government quelled the Biafran rebels. Gowon vowed a policy of reconciliation, declared an amnesty to all who had fought on the side of Biafra and, aided by a surge in oil revenues - as Nigeria became one of the world’s top 10 producers - embarked on a policy of reconstruction.

Murtala Mohammed’s coup

But if Nigeria oil-revenues served to heal at least some of the wounds of a bitter brutal civil war, those revenues were also instrumental in creating the cancer of high-level, unbridled corruption and ultimately resulted in a bloodless coup, led by the hugely popular General Murtala Muhammed.

Under Muhammed’s new military regime, a bold policy of forced retirements was enacted with around 10,000 civil servants, diplomats, police, academics and military officers being dismissed from their posts for corrupt practises and inefficiencies. In six months the purge was completed and Muhammed announced a four year transition period leading to fresh elections and a return to civilian rule.

Before he could complete this promise, he was assassinated in an ultimately unsuccessful coup attempt, quickly defeated by Major-General Ibrahim Babangida who transferred power to Muhammed’s then Chief of Staff, Olusegun Obasanjo.

Under Obasanjo’s leadership a new constitution was enacted, political parties legalised and elections held in 1979. The Presidential election saw Alhaji Shehu Shagari the victor, but relief at the ending of military rule was soon tempered by the new government’s crack-down on press reporting on continuing corruption, and a rapid economic downturn.

Shagari, despite growing unpopularity, managed to secure another election victory in 1983, but soon after was deposed in another bloodless coup under Major-General Mohammed Buhari who suspended the constitution, enlisted assistance from elder statesmen of the Muhammed administration (including Olusegun Obasanjo) and announced a crack-down on corruption under the banner of a ‘War against Indiscipline’.

Increasingly autocratic, Buhari arrested many of the regime’s critics, continued to harass the press and introduced hardline government decrees severely curtailing human rights - while imposing deeply unpopular austerity measures in an attempt to counter the country’s growing economic malaise.

Babangida enters the stage

Eventually, senior colleagues led by army chief Babangida orchestrated a coup in 1985.

Initially, Babangida’s Armed Forces Ruling Council promoted a more liberal political climate releasing many political prisoners and ostensibly preparing the nation for fresh national elections.

But a declared economic ‘state of emergency’ - including a four-fold devaluation of the Naira and the lifting of state subsidies - led to widespread protests, strikes and demonstrations accompanied by heightened ethnic and religious tensions, soaring inflation and a plummeting GDP.

Babangida postponed elections three times between 1990 and 1992, and even when they were eventually held in June 1993 - won by Moshood Abiola - Babangida annulled the results.

Abiola fled the country, but two months later, Babangida unexpectedly stepped down, although not before imposing an interim government under Ernest Shonekan. Shonekan’s tenure was brief. He attempted to remove state subsidies on fuel, leading to a 600% rise in petrol prices. Riots erupted in the capital and other major Nigerian cities and a proposed general strike promised economic meltdown.

Enter General Sani Abacha who had previously been instrumental in the coups that toppled Shagari and Buhari, and a new era of military rule characterised by incompetence and brutality, arbitary arrest, assassinations and executions of government critics, repressive press controls, a souring of international relations, raging inflation, a banking crisis, fuel shortages, and soaring poverty for most Nigerians.

Abacha’s death in June 1998 signalled a transitional government headed by Abdulsalaam Abubakar who quickly released many political prisoners including Obasanjo, legalised political parties, renewed negotiations with the IMF and introduced a timetable for a return to civilian rule.

Return to civilian rule

The two Presidential candidates that emerged were both veterans of previous military administrations - Chief Olu Falae was a former secretary to Babangida, and Olusegun Obasanjo a former Head of State - but undoubtedly men who had the probity to encourage Nigerians that a real opportunity for change was presenting itself.

Some 15years after the country’s last elected government had been convened, Olusegun Obasanjo’s won victory in the 1999 Presidential election.

Karl Maier’s first chapter begins with the May 29, 1999 Obasanjo inauguration ceremony in the specially built Eagle Square stadium in Abuja, built at a reported cost of $30m. There, he and other representatives of the international press joined over 20 Heads of State, numerous foreign diginataries, parliamentarians and traditional monarchs in witnessing the installation of Nigeria’s first civilian President in 16 years.

His observations describes the simultaneously chaotic, festive and ironic occasion. Amongst the Nigerian dignitaries on hand were Shagari and the soldiers that overthrew him - Babangida and Buhari - as well as Abubakar who was to do what only one other military strongman had ever done before: transfer power to an elected leader.

That the only other military leader to have handed over power was in fact Obasanjo himself 20 years earlier - in an inauguration ceremony parade commanded by Abubakar - was the supreme irony.

Length and breadth of Nigeria

President Obasanjo’s inauguration is the book’s springboard from which the author leads us through fascinating encounters with a wide array of Nigerians.

Travelling the length and breadth of this huge nation, Karl Maier does not simply focus on the power brokers, politicians and intellectual elite in his portrait of Nigeria, nor is the book simply a historical treatise or political polemic.

Rather, the author has sought to listen and report the attitudes of many ordinary Nigerians. Civil war veterans (including the Biafran leader Ojukwu), area boys, angry youths from the slums of the cities, human rights activists, Muslim militants and Christian fundamentalist preachers are all given their voice along with some of Nigeria’s former rulers. Intertwined in these narratives is a biting commentary on the cynical relationship between international finance and Nigeria’s corrupt rulers.

Frequently the author relates his own experiences in Nigeria where he lived for two years - like the Port Harcourt ‘go slow’ traffic jam and the altercation between his driver and a traffic policeman, or his first arrival at Lagos’ airport, and the inevitable shakedown at the hands of customs officers - which gives the book an almost travelogue character.

But essentially, Karl Maier is speculating on the future as Nigeria reaches what is surely a crucial point, perhaps the last chance for this giant nation to face up to its failures, resolve to build a better future and realise the true potential of its peoples.

Mali

By Ross Velton

? 13.95 Bradt Guides

ISBN 1-898323- 93-3

This dedicated guide to Mali, formerly the colony of French Sudan, covers all the country’s fascinating towns including the fabled city of Timbuktu and capital city Bamako together with Djenn? - historically at the heart of West Africa’s oldest civilisation.

Beyond major settlements, the guide encompasses the cliff villages of the Dog-star worshipping Dogon people and the Saharan expanses that are home to the nomadic Toureg.

Lesser-known aspects featured include the elephant migration to the Gourma region of central Mali, one of the country’s eight official regions, and rock-climbing routes in the Hombori mountains. Dramatic architecture, colourful markets and some of Africa’s best music and dance are just some of the highlights covered in this Mali guide. The author, Ross Velton says of the book, “I have written the guide for travellers who are serious about exploring independently, using public transport and finding their own places to stay and things to do. I have tried to point travellers in the right direction by giving ideas and supplying what I think is useful information. The actual exploring is up to them.”.

Order books through The Middle East Books Dept., IC Publications, 7 Coldbath Square, London EC1R 4LQ, UK. Telephone: +44 (0)207 713 7711 Fax: +44 (0)207 713 7898. Orders should include the nine-digit ISBN, book title, price and postage for each book — UK ?3, Europe (airmail) ?5, Rest of World (airmail) ?10. Payment must accompany each order, by sterling cheque drawn on a UK bank and made payable to IC Publications Ltd or by credit card giving number and expiry date, together with the cardholder’s name, address and telephone or facsimile number.

The Death of Gentlemanly Capitalism

By Philip Augar

?20 Penguin

ISBN 0-14-028667-5

With so much focus now on African stockmarkets joining the globalised economy with the new London listings of South African companies like Old Mutual, Anglo and Billiton, Philip Augar’s book - a study of ‘Big Bang’s’ transformation of The City of London - is useful reading.

It also serves as a cautionary tale of how completely unforeseen effects can accompany the modernisation of financial markets. Late in 1986, London’s financial markets were deregulated. Those markets, known collectively and confusingly as the ‘City of London’ or simply ‘The City’, are in fact located in a square mile of the capital. The Bank of England, London’s Stock Exchange and all leading pension funds, bankers, insurers, stockbrokers and commodity dealers have their headquarters here.

The Big Bang was part of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s ‘financial revolution’. It is an example of monetary policies that embraced both a wholesale privatisation of state-owned assets and a laissez faire ‘let the markets determine’ attitude to economic management.

Big Bang was sold to the City by the British government as a vital means of meeting the challenge posed by competing world financial centres - primarily New York, Frankfurt and Tokyo. It proposed that financial companies attain ‘critical mass’ through merger and acquisition to remain globally competitive in financial services. In turn, the government proposed compliant regularity regimes and free-market competition legislation.

Graduating from Cambridge, Augar virtually fell by accident into a research job in the City at the start of the 1980s. He describes the City still under the sway of gentlemen capitalists, a world where demarcation between banking, stock broking and jobbing was as entrenched as the factory shop-floor of its day. This was a world that would see the long, liquid business lunch replaced by American model power-breakfasts. Hunting, shooting and weekends in country houses, all enjoyed with handsome salaries and bonuses, would be forsworn to deal with hostile take-over battles - generating even higher salaries and commissions.

Less than four years after Big Bang’s introduction, the sale of Schroder’s Investment Bank to the world’s largest bank, Citybank, signalled the last major British banker falling into foreign hands.

As for the stockbrokers (who had become so intertwined with banks), none of the top 10 firms of 1983 are recognisable today. Philip Augar sums it up: “By the time management got to grips in the 1990s, boom times on Wall Street had enabled the Americans to mop up in London.” He should know. After steering NatWest’s Equities Business into a leading position, he built up a securities business for Schroders and was a member of its negotiating team for the sale of the bank to Citibank. .

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