A year into his presidency, Nigerian leader Umaru Yar’Adua is struggling to make good on promises to establish law and order and use the country’s huge oil wealth to make it one of the world’s top economies
The courts are still hearing challenges to his election on May 29 last year, guerrillas are playing havoc with oil production in the key Niger Delta, and corruption is a stain on the country’s reputation.
Before taking over from the all-powerful Olusegun Obasanjo, Yar’Adua was the little known governor of the northern state of Katsina. Nigerian and international observers said there was widespread fraud in his election.
But, calling himself the “servant president”, he put forward an attractive programme aiming to establish the rule of law, peace and development in the oil-rich Niger Delta, boost electricity production and set Nigeria on the way to becoming one of the world’s top 20 economies by 2020.
It was billed as a clean break from Obasanjo’s administration that Justice Minister Michael Aondoakaa recently qualified as “lawless” and “anarchic” before saying his comments had been twisted.
Ending endemic corruption and using petro-dollars for development has been a daunting task, not least because Nigeria risks losing its position as Africa’s premier crude producer to Angola.
Yar’Adua has failed to pacify the Niger Delta where attacks on oil industry targets continue unabated.
For most of the past two years, Nigeria has lost about one quarter of its daily crude production, meant to be 2.1 million barrels, to insecurity.
Yar’Adua says he has not given up hope of settling the Niger Delta conflict. “I’m hoping that with all that we are doing, we should be able to see the end of it (Niger Delta unrest) in the next three years,” he told AFP in a recent interview.
He has also set an ambitious target to be one of the world’s top 20 economies by 2020.
“We hope between 2010 and 2011 we will be able to get minimum of 10 percent annual growth and minimum of 13 percent annual growth by 2020. Within the next decade or decade and half, we will be able to achieve the transformation of this nation,” Yar’Adua said.
He has succeeded in distancing himself from Obasanjo, the southern Christian who essentially hand-picked Yar’Adua as his successor.
In recent months several parliamentary inquiries have started into the former general president, on accusations ranging from mismanagement to embezzlement.
Yar’Adua has spent a good part of the past year undoing what the previous administration did.
“Yar’Adua is not enthusiastic about governing because he didn’t fight to come to power. The result is a dull style of management with no vision and no direction,” says Gani Fawehinmi, a politician and leading moral crusader in Nigeria.
Nigerians want to see concrete results from the presidency: better roads, better security and, most of all, more electricity.
Yar’Adua promised to declare a state of emergency in the power sector but he has yet to do it and Nigeria’s 140 million inhabitants now have less electricity now than when he came to power.
With a population three times as big as South Africa, Nigeria has about 20 times less electricity.
Nobody questions his probity — he is the first Nigerian president to have made public an inventory of his property — journalists and diplomats have been asking whether Yar’Adua himself is really in charge.
The question has been made more pressing as Yar’Adua’s health has, according to rumours, deteriorated.
The presidential administration insists that Yar’Adua is in good health and in control. No medical report has been published however and the president has been twice hospitalised in Germany — the first time in the middle of the election campaign.
He also faces a legal challenge to the legitimacy of the 2007 election. Eight of the federation’s 36 state governors elected the same month have seen their elections voided for fraud.
“If the vote is invalidated, I’ll step down immediately,” Yar’Adua told AFP.
“Without political stability, nothing really much can be done,” he said, alluding to the widespread doubts about Nigeria’s elections. “Without a credible electoral process, it is going to be difficult to anchor democracy,” he acknowledged.