Obasanjo tackles world role, local woes

And today, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo will welcome the leaders of 52 countries -- including Britain's Queen Elizabeth II -- for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meetings in Abuja.

But for all those high-stakes international moves this year, Obasanjo faces an increasingly unhappy situation in his own country, Africa's most populous at roughly 130 million people.

In the last several months, Obasanjo, a former military ruler, has hosted President Bush, lured Liberian President Charles Taylor into exile, and sent two battalions of peace-keeping troops to Liberia. He has also traveled to the Ivory Coast in hopes of defusing a volatile situation and helped Sao Tome President Fradique de Menezes reclaim his job from army coup leaders.

And earlier this week, Obasanjo, as the host of the gathering beginning tomorrow, made the difficult political decision not to invite a fellow African leader -- Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe -- because of allegations that he rigged his reelection.

But five years after the sudden death of the notoriously corrupt military ruler General Sani Abacha, Nigeria' nascent democracy remains mired in problems. For many, poverty and corruption top the list. Despite vast oil reserves in the south, Nigeria's gross domestic product is less than $300 per person.

"If Abacha wasn't dead, we couldn't sit out here and complain about the government. So that's an improvement," said Mohammed Farouk, a political activist, as he ate freshly grilled fish on a Lagos beach last month. "People would follow you all over the place. It was dreadful. But now the man, Obasanjo, is under fire from the left, right, and center for a host of domestic problems. And he thinks people have no right to criticize him."

Akin Jimoh, an activist who promotes awareness of HIV and AIDS, sat next to Farouk. "What we have is an African president," he said. "He wants to go down in history as an international statesman, but he is doing that at our expense."

Obasanjo, who briefly held the presidency in the 1970s as a military ruler, won reelection in April in a vote that was marred by violence, intimidation, and ballot-rigging. Human Rights Watch found that much of the violence was carried out by supporters of the ruling People's Democratic Party. Yet, governments in the United States, Europe, and Africa welcomed the election.

Human Rights Watch this week called on leaders at the Commonwealth summit to denounce the electoral abuses and further press Obasanjo to deliver on his promises to fight corruption and promote good government and human rights.

Femi Fani-Kayode, special assistant to the president for public affairs, said in an interview that Obasanjo has significantly improved the country "in virtually every sphere you can think of, in the economy, manufacturing, you name it."

Even though Transparency International, a government watchdog group, has in recent years ranked Nigeria the world's most or second-most corrupt nation, Fani-Kayode said that perception does not fit with the reality.

"We do need to do something ourselves to change the perception," he said. "Plus, if you want to talk about aiding and abetting corruption, and people receiving stolen goods, go look at Swiss banks."

Nigeria has been urging Swiss banks to release hundreds of millions of dollars taken from state coffers by Abacha, who died in 1998. The banks recently said they would return the money if they could be assured that it would not be stolen again.

"Can you believe how condescending that is?" Fani-Kayode said.

And yet the day-to-day stories of corruption can be heard almost everywhere in Nigeria. Moriyike Jimoh, 74, returned to her home one afternoon last month in Oyo, 120 miles north of Lagos, and found a teenage relative dead. She discovered his body hanging at the end of a rope tied to a backyard tree, an apparent suicide.

The distressed woman reported the death to local police. The police listened, then detained her. After a night in jail, police released Jimoh without any criminal charge -- after her daughter arranged to pay them the equivalent of $250.

"In this part of the country, if you don't say, `thank you,' to them, they can create problems for you later," Tayo Awofolajin, the daughter, said in an interview.

Further tension is felt in the south of Nigeria, where residents have long battled to receive more of the country's oil wealth that is produced under their feet.

It also is felt in northern Nigeria, which is mostly Muslim; the south is largely Christian. In the north, leaders, chafing at being out of power for the last five years, have had increasingly rosy memories of Abacha, despite his thievery.

"The present leaders are more kleptomaniac than Abacha," said Sheikh Muhammed Nasir Muhammed, chief imam of Waje Central Mosque in Kano. "Many people here wish Abacha were alive."

Not so for those eating fish on the beach in Lagos. They, however, want Obasanjo to focus more internally. "We still need to lift the veil over a lot of proceedings," said Farouk, the political activist. "Obasanjo's intentions are good, but he has to find a way of reconnecting with Nigerians."

John Donnelly can be reached at donnelly@globe.com