Nigeria's slow progress to democracy.

• Author: Onadipe, Abiodun
• Position: Under General Sani Abacha

General Sani Abacha's three-year political programme that is expected to usher in the Third Republic in October 1998 is almost half-way through with little to show. The first full year of this transition programme has essentially been spent running in place (even running in circles), giving the impression of movement without achieving much. However, the military junta in Nigeria believes that over the past year it made tremendous progress in its political programme, awarding itself high marks in the areas of human rights and democracy because it inaugurated a national human rights commission (a veritable paper tiger), released a handful of political detainees, and revamped a few controversial decrees (at the insistence of the United Nations). Above all, it believes that the transition time-table is on course.

In fact, the Abacha transition is displaying all the characteristics of Babangida's inconclusive programme of 1993: it is over-regulated with high official manipulation circumscribing participation and reducing confidence in the final outcome. Most importantly, the programme is steadily falling behind schedule; it failed at its first important test, the local government elections scheduled for last December, which had to be postponed at the eleventh hour, effectively embarrassing the junta. In effect, this new year has to be a politically active period if the objective of handing over to a democratically elected government, though very doubtful, is to be realised in 1998. The purpose of this article is to review the meagre achievements of the programme so far, while considering its future and highlighting areas of concern in the context of the state of the country. The involvement of the international community will also be examined, concentrating on the visits of the United Nations mission and the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) as well as the European Union's renewed attempts at strengthening its Nigeria sanctions policy.

Despised abroad because of the hasty execution of the renowned playwright and minority-rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists, and distrusted at home because its `brief tenure' has become five years, the junta kicked off its transition project with the first of two local elections in March (one on a non-party basis, while parties would contest the other nine months later), hoping that a successful poll would be a sop to world opinion and boost its popularity at home, especially against the backdrop of the legitimacy of the 12 June 1993 election, which had produced a winner in Chief Moshood Abiola, who is currently being detained by the junta.

Essential strategy

The regime's strategists thus had to devise ways of ensuring a high turnout and the `planting' of `loyalists' and `friends' of the junta as local council chairmen in order to endorse the new programme, killing off further 12 June agitation and effectively preparing the ground for the perpetuation of Abacha's rule. These objectives were partially achieved through a reasonably high voter turnout -- 24 million, according to official figures, though there were no independently verifiable sources like the voters' register, which was not used. The elections featured widespread disqualification of `opposition' candidates (those with alleged links to the ubiquitous National Democratic Coalition), who were screened out on spurious `security grounds'.

Thus commenced 1996, the Year of Political Exclusion. It was reported that General Alwaii Kair, then Chief of Army Staff, was sacked for his political indiscretion in advocating the cancellation of these elections because he believed the massive disenfranchisement of candidates on unsubstantiated security grounds discredited the spirit of the programme.(1) The elections also showed that the National Electoral Commission of Nigeria (NECON) was ill-equipped and unprepared to handle the exercise, for instance; voters' registers were not used, resulting in multiple voting and confusion. The `zero-party' arrangement, which allowed individuals to implement their own programme rather than that of a political party, has also produced an increase in corruption at the local level. The March election is thus far the only item of the transition that has taken place on schedule. Immediately after this the programme began to suffer from delays, postponements and uncertainty.

Convincing action

Nevertheless, the relatively peaceful conduct of this election was apparently enough to convince the international community of Abacha's resolve to handover power. Early in April the United Nations dispatched a three-man...