Not a Great Re-Start for President Jonathan

This article was published in Prospect magnazine. Subscribers can access the published version here

Nigeria’s international reputation is bad. It’s even worse in Nigeria itself. The nation’s popular press blazon its bad news with shocking directness. Nigerians love to tell you stories about how terrible things are. Most stories end in laughter, but that doesn’t mean they don’t wish things were better.

After the inauguration of President Goodluck Jonathan in May, there was hope that Nigeria might just be starting to turn itself around. But then came ominous news. The oil minister, Diezani Allison-Madueke, who also happens to be one of the President’s closest friends, has secretly – and possibly illegally - given away large oil concessions to a company less than a year old which has never been in the oil business.

Oil wealth – unlike taxes – has been injected into the system without accountability, much of it straight into the President’s piggy bank. Over the past 55years, it has ruined Nigeria, economically, morally, politically. And Nigeria is the big one. Apart from oil, it has every mineral imaginable, unused fertile land and plenty of water, and almost 150m energetic and creative people. But while their parliamentarians earn $1 million a year in salaries and as much again in expenses, 70% of its people live on less than the equivalent of a dollar a day. Corruption blocks development. Despite being energy rich Nigeria provides barely 3,500 megawatts of electricity. That’s less than what Ireland uses for 4.5m people. Nigeria also imports all its 840,000 barrels of refined oil despite exporting about 3m barrels per day. Why? Because its kleptocratic owner-rulers, known as elites, who import generators and diesel are more powerful than those who want Nigeria to refine its own oil and use it to generate electricity. This is the way Nigeria has been for decades. Any development happens in spite of the owner-rulers, not because of them.

President Goodluck has been as good as his name. The former environmental protection officer with a zoology degree was remarkable for his total political insignificance when he was picked by the former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, as a safe pair of hands. He comes from the explosive oil-rich Niger Delta in the Christian south and Obasanjo hoped that Jonathan could represent—and possibly quieten—the rebellion in the Niger Delta and keep the petro dollars flowing for the elites.

Obasanjo ruled from 1999 until 2007 and picked his successor, a quiet northern Muslim aristocrat and academic, Umaru Yar’Adua, who died in office in 2010. No one expected Vice President Jonathan to last long but he did not put a foot wrong when he stepped up to complete Yar Adua’s term, ducking and weaving around the northern lords who control the ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). When Yar’Adua died, the northern Muslims in the PDP felt that they had should have a second bite of the cherry. But Jonathan sat tight and saw off two other heavyweight northern challengers to lead the party into the April election. The north claimed that he was breaking a fundamental PDP agreement that the presidency should rotate between north and south. Their man had died after only three years, so they wanted another northerner as president.

This fear is real. The north is losing political power and influence. Having ruled Nigeria for most of its first 40 years, northerners will not have another sniff of the presidency until 2015. After the April election, violence broke out in northern cities. The southeast has the oil, some 50bn barrels still in the ground. The southwest has Lagos, one of the fastest expanding cities on the planet and sucking in goods from the whole of West Africa. Unlike the rest of Nigeria it does not depend on oil money, finances itself and is increasingly well-run. If it were an independent country—and it periodically threatens secession—it would be the fourth largest economy in Africa. The north, however, is mostly dry savannah with little more than agriculture: cattle country. Sokoto, one of the north’s most important cities, has only one factory. Levels of poverty are extremely high, standards of education and health provision appallingly low. That’s why northerners have clung onto political power: it brings access to oil money. If the southwest and the southeast seceded, the rest of Nigeria would be severely impoverished. But the threat of secession by the north is not credible.

Where does President Jonathan go from here? His much-delayed cabinet announcement will indicate just how much political debt he accumulated in winning the presidency. The secret sale of the oil blocks is ominous. If he plays by Nigerian rules, repayment will also be in the form of lucrative positions in government for supporters who got him the presidency.

Many of his most powerful ministers and advisers appointed so far have been from his region: people he knows and trusts like Mrs Allison-Maduekwe, the mighty oil minister who has power to decide who gets to suck at the wells. The secretary of the federal government is Anyim Pius Anyim. Like Jonathan he is from the southeast, as is General Owoye Andrew Azazi, the national security adviser. This tribalism is to be expected in a country as divided as Nigeria but if the President delivers a better life for all Nigerians he will get away with it.

That seems to be Jonathan’s strategy, populist, reaching out over the heads of the elites to the people. In his inauguration speech on 29th May he said: “I will continue to fight for your future because I am one of you.” He promised to battle for improved medical care, access to education, jobs and an efficient affordable transport system. And electricity for all. If he only delivers on the last of these, he may still go down as Nigeria’s best president so far. But he will not be able to do it unless his government fights corruption instead of spreading it. The secret sale of the oil concessions is not a good start.

Richard Dowden is the Director of the Royal African Society