Nigeria

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End of Abacha’s Rule

In April it emerged that August’s presidential election would have only one candidate—Abacha, who secured the backing of the last of the five officially approved political parties, in effect turning the election into a referendum requiring voters to vote only on whether they would support him. Each party agreed to be given US$250,000 (about £150,000) and was told to nominate Abacha for the presidency. This prompted the Commonwealth countries meeting at the October 1997 Edinburgh summit to impose sanctions, already implemented by the United Kingdom, if democracy had not been restored by October 1998. General Abacha’s sole candidacy made it clear that this would not happen.

At the end of April a Nigerian military court sentenced to death six people, including the former deputy head of state, General Oladipo Diya, for trying to overthrow the military government in the December 1997 coup. Abacha died of a heart attack on June 8, 1998. General Abdulsalam Abubakar took over as president and said that he would adhere to the transition programme intended to return Nigeria to a form of civilian rule in October 1998.

In July the Cabinet and a number of institutions associated with the purported transition to democracy that had been initiated by Abacha were dissolved. Abubakar released a draft of a civilian constitution in September, which had been prepared by constitutional conference in 1995 but suppressed by Abacha. In local elections in December, which were the first free elections since 1993, the recently formed centrist People's Democratic Party (PDP) achieved a landslide victory. The PDP achieved a similar success in state and gubernatorial elections in January 1999, gaining control of 20 of the 35 states, and in the legislative and presidential elections in February, with healthy majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Former general Olusegun Obasanjo, now leader of the PDP, was victorious in the presidential election.

In May Abukabar promulgated a new constitution, which gave substantial autonomy to the country's constituent states. This coincided with Nigeria's readmission to the Commonwealth. Obasanjo was inaugurated as president in May, and in June, when the National Assembly sat for the first time, he appointed a new Cabinet.

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Challenges for Obasanjo

One of Obasanjo’s first acts was a radical purge to remove from office all senior military officers who held positions of power between 1985 and 1999. He also instigated an investigation into alleged human rights abuses committed during that period, and put forward an anti-corruption bill to try to tackle one of Nigeria’s major problem areas.

Late 1999 and early 2000 brought internal stability concerns. Controversies arose around the issue of Islamic Shari'ah law, which had been introduced in some states, including Zamfara in January 2000 and the state of Niger in February. Full implementation of Shari'ah was suspended as religious, ethnic, and economic tensions surrounding the issue became unmanageable. In February 2001 Bauchi became the tenth state to embrace Shari’ah law.

In early 2001 Nigeria was successful in obtaining the restructuring of a large amount of its overseas debt after negotiations with the IMF and the Paris Club. Despite this breakthrough, Obasanjo’s ongoing attempts at solving some of Nigeria’s economic problems were being hampered by increasing agitation from militant factions and separatist groups as well as accusations of ethnic and religious bias.

The summer months of 2001 were marked by fighting between Christians and Muslims in Jos and Kano; the violence intensified following the Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on the US cities of New York and Washington, D.C. In clashes in Benue state over 200 people were killed. Bola Ige, the attorney-general and minister of justice, was assassinated.

An explosion at a munitions depot in Lagos killed over 600 citizens in January 2002; as many as 1,000 people were also thought to be missing. Most of the deaths were caused not by the explosion but by the stampede that followed which led to many people drowning in nearby canals.

The International Court of Justice awarded the oil-rich Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon in the dispute between the two countries. The ruling was challenged by Nigeria despite the fact that the decision cannot be overruled and for many months Nigeria refused to hand over the area. Talks continued to try to end the dispute. In November, rioting over the staging of the Miss World beauty pageant led to the deaths of over 200 people; the rioting was also in response to a ruling passed down under Shari’ah law to stone to death Amina Lawal, a woman found guilty of adultery.

In April 2003 in the first presidential election since the end of military rule in 1999, Olusegun Obasanjo was re-elected to serve a second term. At the same time, legislative elections returned President Obasanjo’s People’s Democratic Party to power with an outright majority. The elections were marred by allegations of vote rigging.

In July 2003 fuel price increases led to a nationwide general strike and rioting in Lagos. The strike was called off after the government agreed to lower oil prices.

Nigeria continued to refuse to comply with the International Court of Justice ruling that the oil-rich Bakassi peninsula should be awarded to Cameroon. UN’s Secretary-General Kofi Annan brokered talks which in October 2003 led to Nigeria’s agreement to hand over 33 border villages near Lake Chad to Cameroon. Despite an agreement in January 2004 to introduce joint security patrols in the disputed Bakassi peninsula, and to open consulates and exchange ambassadors, Nigeria continued to reject the ruling on the status of the territory and failed to hand over the territory by September’s deadline. Finally, in 2006, the dispute was resolved in favour of Cameroon and Nigeria agreed to withdraw troops from the region.

In August 2003 ethnic violence erupted between the Ijaw and Itsekiri people in the port of Warri, leading to around 100 deaths and 1,000 injuries. In September 2003 Amina Lawal was acquitted by an Islamic appeals court in the northern state of Katsina. Her case had been closely monitored by international human rights campaigners. Nonetheless, Nigeria’s human rights record was criticized by the US-based Human Rights Watch in a report published in December 2003; the report accused the government of silencing critics by using violence and intimidation.

President Obasanjo’s attempts to modify the constitution to allow him to stand for an unprecedented third term of office met with failure. Instead, the elections held in April 2007 saw victory for his approved successor, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua of the People’s Democratic Party, with around 70 per cent of the vote; however, international observers doubted the credibility of the vote.