Washington — If diplomacy is the art of the possible, the death of Nigerian military strongman Sani Abacha offers what may be a momentary opening to provide effective support for the country's democracy movement, a chance the Clinton administration passed up three years ago.
"This is a golden opportunity to turn things around," said Walter Carrington, who until last year was the United States ambassador to Nigeria. "The question is whether reformers or military hard-liners end up with control and whether outside pressure is used to let the military know they have to go," said Carrington, who is currently a resident fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard.
Abacha's unexpected death at age 54 gives Washington what could be its best possibility to encourage change for some time to come, according to several Nigeria specialists and human rights advocates. "The whole country can exhale now," said Gay J. McDougall, executive director of the Washington-based International Human Rights Law Group, which has been supporting pro-democracy efforts in Nigeria. "What this offers is a chance to make a real transition to civilian rule and democracy."
Political change in Nigeria could have far-reaching consequences. The nation is Africa's most populous, accounting for one out of every six people on the continent. Its wealth in natural resources and its skilled and educated human capital -- the product of more than a dozen universities built with the early proceeds from petroleum exports -- could fuel development throughout the region. Nigeria is also key to stability in west Africa, where conflicts throughout the 1990s have uprooted millions of people, claimed thousands of lives and costs millions of dollars in humanitarian aid.
Nigerian activist and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka has been a vocal proponent of U.S. action to topple the Nigerian regime, arguing that repression inside the country was so severe that only outside support could force a change. After Abacha's death, Soyinka told the Associated Press that Nigerians were fed up with dictatorship. "So it's up to the military to recognize this," he said, "and up to the international community to say that we're sick and tired of the degeneration of a potentially great society."
Soyinka's view that the main responsibility for change in Nigeria lies outside the country has not attracted wide support, but many experts agree that international action could play a crucial role in fostering change, as it did in South Africa, where international sanctions strengthened that country's internal anti-apartheid struggle. There is also broad agreement that an essential element for an effective global campaign for Nigerian democracy is active support from Washington, which has been consistently reluctant to undertake bold African initiatives.
In Nigeria, the stakes for the United States are considerable. The west African oil giant currently ranks as the fifth largest supplier of oil to the American market, and U.S. firms account for nearly half of Nigeria's output of petroleum and natural gas. The country produces a highly desirable light, low-sulfur crude, which is refined to provide most of the unleaded gasoline and much of the aviation fuel used in the eastern United States.
The last time worldwide attention focused heavily on Nigeria was in late 1995, when prize-winning author and environmentalist Ken Sara-Wiwa and eight others were executed by the military regime. Nelson Mandela, who previously had advocated dialogue with Abacha, was personally affronted when the hangings were carried out just ten days after the sentences were announced, despite strong appeals for clemency from prominent international figures, including the South African president himself.
Amid the international outcry sparked by the executions, Mandela placed a personal Saturday morning telephone call to President Clinton, seeking American backing for a full-scale embargo against the military regime, according to U.S. and South African officials familiar with Mandela's efforts. But Clinton sidestepped the chance to quickly mobilize pressure on Abacha by capitalizing on Mandela's unique international reputation. Instead, he insisted on referring the issue to the United Nations Security Council, where Chinese opposition to linkage between human rights and sanctions ensured that no substantive measures would win adoption.
The lack of economic reprisals for the execution appeared to embolden Abacha to further consolidate personal power. He has exiled, jailed or executed nearly every apparent rival, including, earlier this year, his second in command, General Oladipo Diya, who was convicted of plotting a coup and sentenced to death.
The result has been a spreading tragedy, said Emory University political scientist Richard Joseph, a Nigerian specialist. "What Abacha has been doing for the past five years has been so destructive not only for Nigeria but for the region and the continent," said Joseph. "He represented a counter-movement to the democratic directions that Africa has been traveling since the beginning of the decade."
Abacha has been a member of every successive ruling clique since the army ousted the last civilian president, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, on December 31, 1983. "His death makes it more urgent than ever for the United States to press an unambiguous demand for authentically democratic government in Nigeria," said Jennifer Davis, executive director of the American Committee on Africa in New York, which has been organizing a grass-roots Nigerian sanctions campaign in the United States, similar to the organization's anti-apartheid efforts in the 1970s and 1980s.
General Abdulsalam Abubakar, Abacha's successor, is regarded as a professional soldier who may be interested in easing the army towards the barracks, after decades in power, according to Carrington and others who know the new head-of-state personally.
But persuading Nigerian generals to give up their firm hold will be no easy task. The wealth that military leaders amass from the corrupt system they oversee outstrips anything they can hope to accumulate from their day jobs, and popular resentment is so strong that their personal safety could be in jeopardy if military rule is lifted.
Even at today's relatively low oil prices, the country earns more than $10 billion a year from petroleum, and the military's plunder of those revenues has climbed steadily. A commission established by Abacha just after he grabbed power in 1995 calculated that the theft of petroleum proceeds between 1990 and 1994 by General Ibrahim Babangida's regime exceeded $12 billion, an amount nearly equal to the annual national budget at the time. Abacha, who was Babangida's second-in-command, is widely believed to have skimmed off an even larger proportion of national resources during his five-and-a-half years at the top.
Any successful diplomatic effort to end military rule would have to find ways to make continuation of the status quo more costly than democracy. For that reason, the regimes' opponents advocate an oil embargo to cut the money flow at its source. To give such an embargo teeth, critics contend, would require a naval blockade, an action no sea power seems likely to undertake.
Current American sanctions against Nigeria, which date from Babangida's annulment of the 1993 election, include prohibitions on high-level bilateral contacts and on travel to the United States by government officials, as well as restrictions on foreign assistance. In 1994, the State Department added Nigeria to the list of leading drug trafficking nations, which automatically mandated a U.S. vote against loans to Nigeria at all multilateral institutions and halted all non-humanitarian aid.
In 1996, Clinton aides drew up a list of new economic measures designed to boost pressure on Abacha, stopping short of an oil embargo. But the proposals got no support from major European powers. Without multilateral support, administration officials contend, sanctions would be completely ineffective. Washington tried another tact last month, naming a high level delegation headed by Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering to visit Nigeria and encourage Abacha to institute democratic reforms. But the idea was quickly rebuffed.
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Despite a reluctance to act on the part of governments, public pressure is mounting. Last month, in an action reminiscent of anti-apartheid divestment campaigns, a resolution on corporate responsibility in Nigeria was presented to shareholders of Mobil Oil Corporation. Sponsored by Franklin Research and Development Corporation, a Boston-based socially-responsible investment firm and the Washington-based Service Employees International Union, the measure won the votes of 6.8 percent of the company's shareholders, enough to qualify it for submission again next year.
The sponsors also won a pledge from Mobil Chairman Lucio Noto to raise the detention of Nigerian oil union leaders with government authorities on his next visit to the west African nation. Chevron, another major American oil company, and Royal Dutch Shell are facing similar campaigns.
The concern, on the part of investors and most observers, is that a continuation of military rule may lead to internal upheaval. General Abubaker's promise to cede power to civilian authority has been met with widespread skepticism, in light of the repeatedly unfulfilled pledges of his predecessors to do the same.
One signal that is awaited is the release of prominent government critics, including political figures like Moshood K.O. Abiola, the businessman who won the aborted 1993 presidential elections, and General Olusegun Obansanjo, the only military head-of-state to hand power to an elected president, journalists such as Chris Anyanwu, George Mbah, Kunle Ajibade, and Ben Charles Obi, and activists such as Beko Ransom-Kuti, head of the Campaign for Democracy, and human rights lawyer Bola Ige.
