After 31 months in office, the Obasanjo government can, at best, be given a pass mark. The dividends of democracy have not been fully reaped. The government is pressing on, but the journey ahead is still long. Lekan Otufodunrin reports.

Anniversary broadcasts are normally opportunities for presidents to indulge in chest beating and self-congratulations. President Olusegun Obasanjo did not miss the opportunity in his recent 41st independence anniversary broadcast to list the “achievements” of his government.
Among these, according to him, are the anti-corruption measures, increased salaries of civil servants, provision of infrastructure and various economic measures.

He was, however, honourable enough to admit that, “what still remains to be done is vast and enormous, far eclipsing the modest achievements so far recorded”.

“Despite our determined efforts in the areas of poverty eradication,” he continued, “far too many of our citizens still remain poor. Our industries are being revived, and government has taken measures to support them, but industrial capacity is still far below the level we would like to see. Inflation is still with us; though, today, it is not as alarming as it used to be.”
Judging from the rot he inherited, Obasanjo is right to say his government has made some gains.
Expectations were high when he took over in May 1999. All sectors of national life had virtually collapsed. Though many will not agree with his claim that “so much has been achieved” in the last 31 months, there are indeed “drops” of success that the government can genuinely take credit for.

Telecoms

One major breakthrough has been in telecoms, especially the introduction of the Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) in August this year. Long after GSM had been in use in many less affluent African countries, it finally arrived in Nigeria when the government approved the license for three operators in August — Econet, MTN and NITEL. And the impact is already being felt.
Before the arrival of GSM, telephone services had been a nightmare even when people were ready to pay the exorbitant fees charged by the state-owned NITEL. Poor service was the order of the day, and most people could not use the phones most of the time.
Against the international standard of one phone to 100 people, Nigeria had been operating at one phone to 600. Yet the public network of 700,000 phone lines had been under-utilised as only 400,000 were connected for technical reasons.
However, with the introduction of GSM, it is now a common sight in major cities like Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt to find many people clutching mobile phones unlike before when it was a status symbol for the rich.
Compared to similar services in other African countries where full connection can be secured for as low as N8,000, the cheapest rate in Nigeria is about N30,000. It is hoped that as the operators expand their networks, the cost would come down to enable more people to have access.

Energy

In the energy sector, improving the electricity supply has been a major task for the government. So important has been the determination of Obasanjo to lay the electricity ghost, that he appointed the highly respected member of the opposition Alliance for Democracy (AD), Chief Bola Ige, as the mines and power minister. Ige promised to turn “stone into bread” but he could not fulfil his pledge until he was re-deployed as justice minister.
By 1999, the country was generating only 1,500 megawatts out of the installed capacity of 5,000 megawatts, thanks to the Abacha years when virtually all the power plants in the country broke down.
By July this year, power generation had increased to 2,200 megawatts with the promise that by the end of this year it would have increased to 4,000 megawatts.

Despite the noticeable improvement, Nigerians are still waiting for the substantial uninterrupted electricity supply that their less endowed West African neighbours enjoy.

If electricity becomes stable, the industrial sector, which is currently producing at 29% capacity, may be able to increase its productivity level and thereby boost the economy.

The supply of petroleum products, though still heavily imported due to the on-going maintenance of the country’s refineries, has also been relatively stable in the last 31 months compared to the acute shortages witnessed under Abacha.
So dear is the petroleum sector to Obasanjo that he personally took charge of the portfolio, with the former OPEC secretary general, Rilwanu Lukman, as his special adviser.

The possibility of increasing the pump price, however, remains unresolved as the country’s strong workers unions are opposed to it. The government insists, however, that an increase is inevitable, considering the high cost of production.
Economic policy

At the core of Obasanjo’s economic policy is the privatisation of state-owned companies with the view of making them more efficient. The Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE) is saddled with the task.

Referring to the policy in his independence speech, Obasanjo said his government had pursued privatisation and commercialisation “out of conviction that the primary responsibility of government is to provide for the people and for interested local and foreign investors, the necessary environment of adequate infrastructure and social stability, within which individuals and corporate groups can do what they are better able to do than government can”.

But the privatisation policy has been severely criticised by many people who say some government companies are national legacies and should be left as such. Examples have been cited of the failure of privatisation in many countries, including Britain where the government has had to intervene recently in the privatised rail industry.

In Nigeria, irregularities and sharp practices have already been noticed in the privatised corporations. Some top government officials, including serving ministers, have also criticised the BPE. So bad have been the intrigues surrounding the BPE that the vice president, Atiku Abubakar, who doubles as the chairman of the National Council on Privatisation, recently accused “some power-drunk” ministers of trying to sabotage the governments privatisation policy.

The unnamed ministers were alleged to have tried to stall the privatisation of some companies under their control, for fear of losing their supervising roles.

President Obasanjo has had to intervene in the face-off between the vice president and the ministers, warning that he would not tolerate any sabotage of the privatisation policy.
The sale of companies such as the Benue Cement Company (BCC) and African Petroleum (AP) is still raising some dust due to the “questionable” method of sale adopted by the BPE.

The economy

Nigeria’s economy was in a battered state before the second coming of Obasanjo. It still is. Obasanjo has promised revitalisation; regrettably the more he tries the further the economy drives into the abyss of recession.
The government’s Poverty Alleviation Programme (PAP) was to cushion the effect of inflation but inflation is rising, according to the half-year report of the Central Bank of Nigeria released in late September.
For the average worker, the battle to earn a decent wage to cope with the rising cost of living continues. It took a nationwide strike to get the government to accede to last year’s increase in public sector salaries. The government appears to be reneging on its promise of a further increase agreed during negotiations with the Nigeria Labour Congress, a situation that may lead to another strike if a compromise is not reached soon.

Various groups of workers, including university lecturers and health workers, have gone on strike for better conditions over the past year, and the end is not in sight as the government seems incapable of meeting their demands.
As Obasanjo promised in his inauguration speech on 29 May 1999, his government has mounted an anti-corruption crusade through the establishment of the Corruption Practices and Other Related Offences Commission.
Although the level of awareness has been raised, the problem still persists. The recent Global Corruption Report published by Transparency International on 15 October, ranked Nigeria as the second most corrupt country in the world, only better than Bangladesh.
Government officials still demand gratification for performing their official duties, and cases of inflated contracts still continue.

Human rights

Expectedly, the human rights record of the Obasanjo government has been a great improvement on the past military regimes. The setting up of the Human Rights Violation Investigation Commission (headed by Justice Chukwudifu Oputa) to probe human rights abuses, as far back as independence in 1960, is a major plus for the government though the Commission lacks the force of law.
Three former military heads of state have refused to appear before the Commission, but the revelations at the Commission have been enough to set a precedent for government officials to account for their past misdeeds.

The media have also been freer under Obasanjo to perform its role of making the government accountable to the people.
There are still, however, cases of human rights abuses by law enforcement agents, which the government has to curb.
Deployment of armed forces to quell crises such as the recent Odi Case in Rivers State, where some policemen were killed, resulted in the mass killing of villagers and destruction of property by soldiers. The same thing was repeated in Benue State where 100 people were summarily killed by soldiers sent there in October to restore law and order.

A major minus of the Obasanjo government is its inability to find a solution to the recurring ethnic and religious crises in the country. For many analysts, the crises would have been avoided if the government had taken decisive steps to preempt them.
Worried by the level of insecurity in the country, Obasanjo said in his independence broadcast, that the government would establish a Commission on Security to “enhance security generally in the country and stem the tide of sporadic violent eruption of incipient and dormant disputes which have become the order of the day”.

Political future

Politically, the country has remained unstable with politicians demonstrating various levels of intolerance. As a result, the nation’s future is threatened. In fact, people fear that the military may be tempted to intervene again through a coup d’etat.
With politicians barely halfway into their tenure, the battle for re-election has become fierce across the country, raising fears that the 2003 election may make or mar the present democratic experiment.

With threats and counter threats from all sides, the political future of the country remains uncertain. Worried by the situation in the country, the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria, like many political watchers, has expressed doubts over the likelihood of holding any election in 2003.
“While the nation burns and the people die in their thousands, our leaders at all levels have generally displayed a shocking degree of insensitivity. They are busy bickering over political fortunes and investing in re-election,” the Catholic Secretariat said in a recent statement titled “Stop the Madness”.

The issue of the need for a sovereign national conference and control of natural resources have also been a major bone of contention. The southern governors have been very vehement in their campaign, even going as far as the Supreme Court over the control of natural resources.
Itse Sagay, a former dean of the Faculty of Law of the University of Ife, maintains that the country’s political future will not be guaranteed unless there is a national conference to resolve the disagreement. The restructuring of the country to give room for natural resources control is inevitable if there must be peace in the country, he says.
Chief Gani Fawehinmi, Nigeria’s foremost human rights lawyer, also believes that the nation’s fledging democracy may fail if the government does not urgently set up the national conference.
“Nigeria needs a sovereign national conference now more than ever before because the
signals that we are heading for doom are ominous,” Fawehinmi says. “There are ethnic and religious crises everywhere. When the bombs of inaction begin to explode, the confines of justice would not be defined. No one would be spared when the holocaust and catastrophe begin.”
Obasanjo is, however, not convinced. He says a national conference is not practicable. “Of what use will the national conference be in the age-long feud of the Tivs and Jukuns. What purpose will it serve the Umuleri-Aguleri people fighting in the East? People just talk without considering the practicality of what they say,” Obasanjo said in a recent interview with the National Radio Network.
Instead of a national conference, Obasanjo suggested community, local government, and state conferences, which he said, would be a better avenue for discussing and solving the disagreements.

After 31 months in office, Obasanjo can, at best, be given a pass mark. There is a lot to be done for the dividends of democracy to be manifest. Given the government’s programmes in motion, the nation could be said to be on the road to recovery. But the journey ahead is still long.

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