The Africans (55 page)

N
IGERIA
IS
NAMED
for the river Niger, which means black, and there is no place else in Africa quite like it. The contrasts are greater, the beat is faster, the dreams bigger. Every time I entered Lagos, the capital that seems a combination of Calcutta and Harlem, I shuddered, wondering if there wasn’t an easier way to earn a living than journalism; every time I left I felt exhilarated, my belief in Africa’s future rejuvenated, for I knew that I had been in the most exciting country in all of the Third World.

Nigeria is as large as California, Arizona and New Mexico combined. It has 250 ethnic groups, which speak a hundred different languages. Its coastal mangrove swamps extend to the wooded savannah of the central plateau and finally give way to the northern deserts, as barren and God-forsaken as the Sahara. Its cities are overcrowded and unmanageable, with slums and suburbs competing for the same turf, and Oxford-educated millionaires and unemployed illiterates sharing the same block. Contrasts and contradictions are everywhere. And everywhere there is a reminder that Nigeria moves to the rhythm of money, big money that springs from its plentiful oil wells. Nigeria is the Brazil of Africa. It is a country that has come alive and made things happen, even though it is far from immune to the problems that haunt every African nation.

Part of what makes Nigeria different from the rest of black Africa is its history, for it is no cultural upstart. The Noks were casting iron and producing terra-cotta sculpture before the birth of Christ. The
northern cities of Kano and Katsina were cosmopolitan terminals on the trans-Sahara caravan routes when William the Conqueror ruled England. And when the first Europeans reached Benin in the fifteenth century—a good many years before Columbus set off for the Americas—they found a highly organized kingdom with a disciplined army, an elaborate ceremonial court, and artisans whose work in ivory, bronze, wood and brass is prized throughout the world today for its craftsmanship and beauty.

The first whites to reach Nigeria were Portuguese explorers. Then came the traders, who bought strong young Nigerians for $4 each from local chiefs—the slaves sold for up to $130 apiece at auctions in the Americas—and the missionaries. The European powers recognized Britain’s claim to Nigeria at the Berlin Conference and the London-based Royal Niger Company was chartered to develop commercial ties. The British government took over the company’s territory in 1900, and fourteen years later the area was formally united as the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria. (Administratively Nigeria remained divided into the Northern and Southern provinces and Lagos Colony.)

By African standards Nigeria was an advanced society, and the British, realizing its economic potential, tried to make sure that it would develop as a truly
black
colony. There were fewer than 12,000 Europeans in Nigeria’s pre-independence population of 32 million, and no white man was allowed to enter Nigeria, much less work there, unless he could prove that his presence was necessary. Whites were not allowed to settle or buy businesses, and everyone who did enter had to post a sizable bond. Interestingly, the British seldom referred to the local population as “natives.” They called the people what they were, “Nigerians,” a mark of respect seen in almost no other colony. As far back as 1922, the British permitted African legislators to be included in a council for Lagos Colony and the Southern Province. In 1943 the British appointed three Africans to the Nigerian Executive Council, which was under the jurisdiction of the British Governor’s Cabinet. By the end of World War II, Britain was moving Nigeria toward self-government on a representative, federal basis. The reason was more self-serving than altruistic: London did not want to risk losing Nigeria as a member of the Commonwealth when independence inevitably came.

In October 1960 Nigeria passed, peacefully and uneventfully, from colonialism to nationhood. The enterprise of black traders and
businessmen, based on cocoa and palm-oil exports, was well established by then. There was, however small, an educated African middle class, a lively black press that had been functioning for more than a hundred years, an active parliament, a sturdy economy and an agricultural sector that produced enough food to feed the nation. Nigeria even had five hundred black doctors, a remarkable number considering that many new countries started off with none. On top of that, four years earlier, drillers had discovered deep pools of oil in the Niger delta. Even nature, it seemed, had smiled on Nigeria.

But black Africa’s biggest hope soon became its greatest disappointment. In the first sixteen years of independence there were three coups d’état, the assassinations of two heads of state, and one civil war that claimed a million lives. The country’s oil revenues were squandered in the biggest spending binge any African country ever went on. The soldiers came to power and proved themselves more corrupt and less efficient than the civilians they had overthrown for their corruption and inefficiency. The cities filled up and broke down. The farmlands emptied and stopped producing. The parliament dissolved, the economy deteriorated, the dreams disintegrated.

With many African countries, you could end the story right there. But not with Nigeria. It did what no other African country had been able to do: reverse the downward skid, revert from military to civilian rule and recapture some of the promises that independence was all about. For Nigeria, the 1980s brought membership in an exclusive club of one. It was emerging as black Africa’s first mini-power, a nation with enough clout to influence policy in capitals from Washington to Moscow. It is the one black country in Africa whose future really matters to the outside world, and the one country whose present is described in superlatives.

Nigeria (which retains its membership in the Commonwealth) is the most populous nation in Africa, and with more than 80 million people, it has a larger population than any country in Western Europe. Nearly one of every five Africans is a Nigerian.

Nigeria is black Africa’s wealthiest nation. Its gross national product is more than half that of the other forty-five black African nations combined (and is larger than South Africa’s).

Nigeria is the world’s fourth largest democracy (ranking behind India, the United States and Japan). The soldiers ended thirteen years of military rule in 1979 and handed over power to civilian
leaders whose new political system was modeled after that of the United States. It marked the first time any Third World country had chosen and implemented an American-style form of democracy.

Nigeria is the world’s sixth largest exporter of crude oil, about half of which goes to the United States. Only Saudi Arabia sells more oil to the United States. Nigeria’s oil revenues plunged from $26 billion in 1980 to $10 billion in 1983, but even with the decline, Nigeria was still earning more from its petroleum in a single year than a country such as Equatorial Guinea would earn from all sources in thirty-three years. (Nigeria’s revenues were cut by more than half by the oil glut of 1982, a setback that is no doubt temporary.)

In the 1960s, before world oil prices went crazy, Nigeria was banking a modest $400 million a year from its petroleum production. Then, almost overnight, that income soared to $9 billion a year, and by 1975 Nigeria was facing the prospect of a $5 billion annual surplus. Suddenly no dream was too distant, no vision too expensive.

Cocky as a teen-ager, Nigeria started walking with a swagger. Millionaires emerged; a privileged, middle-upper class was born. The able-bodied left their farms and poured into the cities in search of spoils. The government drew up a $100 billion development plan (1975–1980), the most ambitious ever underwritten by a black African government. It was designed to transform an ancient, heterogeneous society into a modern, unified state in five years.

While soldier politicians and businessmen collected millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks on each new project, plans were made or ground was broken for seven new universities, thirteen new television stations, thirty-four new prisons, three new international airports and a new federal capital at Abuja. With hardly a glance at the national checkbook balance, the minimum wage was doubled and the government granted all civil servants a 60 percent pay raise, backdated tax-free for ten months. Similar increases for the trade unions followed.

More than $3 billion was earmarked to overhaul the communications system, another $3 billion to build 13,000 miles of paved roads, and $2 billion more for a petrochemical plant. An international black arts festival was staged for $200 million, an international trade fair for $100 million. The vanguard of 50,000 young Nigerians was sent to the United States and Europe to learn the technical and professional skills necessary to run the New Nigeria.