Nigeria is the pig skunk slime of Africa

The following article reveals what is no secret to anyone in Africa -- that Nigerians are universally loathed as the scum of Africa by everyone in the rest of the continent. I'm an ex-South African, and let me tell you one thing that happened when South Africa finally became a free nation under Nelson Mandela: Nigerian coke dealers moved in wholesale and corrupted South African youth like there was no tomorrow. All those internet scams of people who have a lot of money in a locked account somewhere and need your help to release it, which will net you millions -- they all come from Nigeria. Nigerians are basically a nation of crooks. In New York, if I get into a cab with a driver from Africa, all I have to say is "those fucking crooks, those fucking Nigerians," and the cabdriver will immediately tell me some story to prove Nigerians are even bigger slimeballs than I thought. Call me an anti-Nigerian racist -- I'm quite happy to wear the badge.


Money and Violence Hobble Democracy in Nigeria -- by LYDIA POLGREEN

ADO EKITI, Nigeria — Early one Sunday morning in June, a mysterious text message flashed across Kayode Fayemi’s cellphone.

“Since you continue to oppose Governor Fayose, we shall kill you,” the message read, referring to the bare-knuckled incumbent at the time, Ayo Fayose. It was signed, “THE FAYOSE M SQUAD.”

Mr. Fayemi, a candidate for governor in this tiny state in southwest Nigeria, tried to brush off the threat. But if there was any doubt what the M in the message stood for, it evaporated six weeks later, when another candidate for governor, a World Bank consultant, was stabbed and bludgeoned to death in his bed.

So lucrative is public office here that even in a backwater like Ekiti, a state of only 2 million people in a nation of 130 million, the state house and the spoils that come with it are apparently worth killing for. Of Nigeria’s 36 governors, 31 are under federal investigation, mostly on suspicion of corruption, and 5 have already been impeached, including Mr. Fayose in October. He is now in hiding.

“This is democracy at work in Nigeria,” Mr. Fayemi muttered as he drove between campaign stops in Ekiti in early November. “Murder and money, violence and fraud.”

It has been seven boisterous years since Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and an anchor for the entire region, shed its military rule and ostensibly became a democracy. But the transformation has been slow and stumbling, hobbled by a political culture of graft and intimidation that has led to widespread neglect and disillusionment.

Despite some progress by the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo in fighting corruption and improving the economy, Nigerians are deeply disappointed with how their country has turned out. In 2000, suffused with the euphoria of new freedoms, 84 percent of Nigerians said they were satisfied with the state of their new democracy, according to the Afrobarometer public opinion survey. But six years later, the same survey found that just 25 percent of Nigerians felt that way.

New democracies naturally suffer from the letdown of high expectations, but the drop in Nigeria is virtually unparalleled on the continent. Of the 12 African countries surveyed in 2005, only Zimbabwe, which the Bush administration has called an “outpost of tyranny,” had a lower score.

“Confidence in the new democracy has crashed,” said Peter Lewis, director of the African Studies program at Johns Hopkins University , who was among the researchers who conducted the survey. “Nigerians expected a democratic dividend in 1999. They expected more economic opportunity and better governance.”

In small states like Ekiti, it is plain to see why confidence in democracy has fallen so far, so fast. Nowhere is Nigeria’s democracy in deeper trouble than at the state and local levels, where the most bruising contests for power take place in a bloody, winner-take-all system in which the voters are all but superfluous.

“Greedy politicians are literally killing their own people by stealing the money for health care, for schools, for clean water, for everything the state should provide its people,” said Sola Adeyeye, a member of Nigeria’s national assembly who once served as a local government chairman.

In April, Nigeria is to hold its next election, choosing a president, governors and legislators in its third contest since making the transition to civilian rule in 1999, after 16 years of military domination. Though the election is still months away, political chaos and electoral violence are already gripping the nation.

The main political parties hold primaries in December, and the ruling People’s Democratic Party may splinter over its nominee. The wave of impeachments has left statehouses in disarray and sparked violence that has killed dozens.

If Mr. Obasanjo, who is barred from running again by the Constitution, successfully passes the baton to an elected president next spring, it will be the first time this troubled giant of a nation has handed over power from one civilian government to another. That would cement its place in the growing family of democratic nations in Africa and further stabilize an uneasy corner of the globe.

But if the election fails — and there are indications that it might, given the political chaos, electoral violence and lagging voter registration — analysts worry that a number of grim possibilities could play out, including a military takeover that could steer the country back toward despotism.

Failure would have broad consequences. One in six Africans is Nigerian. Nigeria is the fifth largest supplier of oil to the United States. It is the economic, social and political fulcrum on which West Africa balances.

Mr. Fayemi, the gubernatorial candidate here in Ekiti, says he hopes to transform the political culture. He spent much of the 1990s in exile opposing military rule, and now brings his résumé, studded with graduate degrees and international accomplishments, to the local political scene.

He also has a network of high-level contacts that includes, among many others, the liberal American financier George Soros , whom he befriended while serving on the board of Mr. Soros’s Open Society Justice Initiative.

“We have allowed our politics to be so debased by money and violence that of course nothing but misery can come of it,” Mr. Fayemi said. “It is the politics of the belly, and it is destroying us.”

To spend a few days with him on the campaign trail is to experience democracy as it is lived for most Nigerians. It is not pretty. The leaders of Nigeria’s 36 states are princes of a political system that rewards executive power and does little to curb corruption. Governors get a check each month that represents their state’s cut of Nigeria’s booming oil fortune, and have almost no one to answer to for how they spend the money.

Here in the state of Ekiti, that check is typically $14 million, but lately it has been more than double that because of soaring oil prices. In a tiny state like this, that money could go far toward meeting the basic needs of the population — schools, roads, health clinics, running water.

In reality, many governors steal with impunity, buying the loyalty of the legislature and using state money to erect systems of patronage that help keep incumbents in office, analysts and political leaders say.

Ekiti’s most recent governor, Mr. Fayose, is a case in point. In October, he was impeached after an investigation found that he and his associates had pocketed millions from the state treasury. In one instance, he is alleged to have spent close to $7 million, mostly in contracts to political allies, supposedly for a poultry farming project, but the money simply disappeared and the project has yet to produce a single egg.

Several of his top aides have been arrested in connection with the killing of the gubernatorial candidate in August. A report by a presidential security panel last year said that Mr. Fayose “has zero tolerance for opposition,” “consistently sets in motion activities that will lead to violent acts” and “is said to be a user of hard drugs, which makes him to be highly unpredictable.”

“Under this man we lived in a state of siege,” said Dipo Kolawole, a top administrator at the University of Ado Ekiti. “It was worse than colonialism, worse than military rule. He was never the choice of the people. He imposed himself upon us.”

While international observers ultimately deemed them to be largely free and fair, Nigeria’s last two elections were marred by widespread allegations of ballot stuffing, intimidation and fraud. In 2003, Mr. Fayose bullied his way into power in Ekiti by paying off party bosses and using the police to intimidate opponents, according to analysts and political leaders here. Mr. Fayose’s excesses were so egregious that, even though he was a member of the ruling People’s Democratic Party, he has since been repudiated as an “error” by Mr. Obasanjo.

But even now, with Mr. Fayose and his style of politics discredited, candidates in Ekiti are expected to spread cash around. Mr. Fayemi’s campaign treads the treacherous middle ground between the high road, on which pro-democracy advocates have traditionally marched directly to defeat, and the bruising, money-driven politics that dominate Nigeria’s electoral contests.

Mr. Fayemi has spent freely on this election, handing out stacks of Naira notes as donations to local party organizations, with extra thrown in for the women and youth sections. On a recent campaign swing, he handed out nearly 500,000 Naira, or $4,000, in a single day. He estimates that winning the election will cost him $4 million, a sum he has raised from allies and friends in Nigeria, as well as from his contacts in the West.

As he crisscrosses Ekiti’s rutted roads, Mr. Fayemi navigates the messy world of Nigerian politics. At a meeting with the bosses of his party, the opposition Action Congress, he knelt before them to receive their blessing. He promised development projects, like a local polytechnic, and handed out fat envelopes of cash at another party meeting. The money was intended as a donation to the local party machinery, but what actually happens to it is anyone’s guess.

After one rally, as Mr. Fayemi tried to leave town, a fracas erupted among some youths who crowded around his car. A dozen young men began arguing with one of his aides and blocking the car.

Apparently the campaign had given money for a local youth wing to a man no one could identify, and he had absconded with the cash. Mr. Fayemi would need to pay them again, the young men explained, surrounding his car as they pressed their case.

Mr. Fayemi threw up his hands. It had been a long day of hectic and sometimes antagonistic meetings with party bosses.

“This is what we live with,” he said.

The aide argued with the young men, but their mood darkened as the dispute stretched for several minutes. Finally, Mr. Fayemi relented.

“Just pay them,” he said.

The leader of the young men seized the stack of cash, carefully counting the notes in the glow of the car’s headlights: 10,000 Naira, or about $80. Once he confirmed the amount and nodded his assent, a cry went up.

“Excellency, Excellency!” the young men shouted, using the honorific for governors, opening the cordon and allowing Mr. Fayemi’s car to pass through.

“This is our politics,” Mr. Fayemi said, an edge of disgust in his voice.

Such payoffs clearly make him uncomfortable, but he said he hoped that the ends would justify the means. Once installed in the governor’s office, he says he can begin to change the political culture. But first he has to get elected.

“Money,” Mr. Fayemi said. “It is the language of Nigerian politics. As much as you want to get away from that, you also have to be mindful of those short-term things you must do.”