June 12th last year was the day Nigeria came back into my life. After a three-decade love affair with Africa, for the past few years I had tried to put the continent out of my mind. But on 12th June I woke up in my hideaway in the Canary Isles, switched on my computer and read the BBC headlines. Olusegun Obasanjo was out of prison. I couldn't believe it. I rushed into the kitchen to tell my wife Jeany. She cheered. She knew how frustrated I had felt as Obasanjo's health deteriorated and his formidable spirits sank in the dank Nigerian jail where he had been dispatched by President Abacha in 1995. Obasanjo hadn't been short of influential friends. When I visited former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt two summers ago to talk to him about a European rival to the International Herald Tribune, we ended up discussing Obasanjo. "We've tried everything. Frankly," Schmidt said, taking a pinch of his eternal snuff, "Abacha needs to be bumped off."
I had worked with Obasanjo in 1976 on a disarmament commission chaired by the then Swedish prime minister, Olaf Palme. I had learnt to dislike politicians; the only one I got on with in a commission stuffed with ex-prime ministers and foreign ministers was Obasanjo, a military president, it is true, but the man responsible for engineering Nigeria's transition to civilian rule in the late 1970s. He had then been jailed for opposing the officers who had reduced his democratising efforts to dust.
In Moscow we went off fishing together—or rather he borrowed a rod off some boys we met on a walk and showed them how to do it. In Hiroshima we bunked off from one more boring reception and walked the streets. Later, he sent me an air ticket and I stayed with him on his farm; a couple of years after that I visited again. We ambled down to his old school, a mud-built structure on the edge of Abeokuta and he inserted his big frame into his old desk and smiled—the smile of a man who knew what he was doing and what he believed.
In 1979, at the age of 42, he had walked away from the presidential palace in the continent's most populous and potentially richest country, put on a pair of blue jeans, and started a chicken and vegetable farm. He was so obsessed by Nigeria's economic chaos, and the run down of the country's agriculture, that he decided to show what could be done with the land. Often, he used to sleep rough in the farm's makeshift buildings, watching over every detail with the same tenacity which made him a successful officer during the Biafran civil war, and took him to the top of the army and the country when he was only in his late 30s.
Obasanjo is a man of action. When Margaret Thatcher moved too slowly to restore British authority in Rhodesia after it was usurped by the country's whites, he nationalised BP Nigeria and threatened to boycott British exports. Some people believe that this pressure led to the free elections. Without a free Zimbabwe there would not have been a free South Africa.
The first time I went to stay with him he was five hours late picking me up. Driving to the airport he had come upon an accident. There were six bodies on the ground. A small crowd of onlookers and two policemen were standing idly by. No one was helping. Obasanjo ordered the crowd to help move the bodies to the roadside and commandeered a car to rush one of the dead women, who had been pregnant, to the hospital in the hope of saving the baby. He then directed traffic for three hours until the traffic police arrived. The next day he learnt that the hospital had refused admission to the woman because there was no police certificate recording the accident. "I should have done a Caesarean myself, by the roadside," he said.
We used to talk about Africa incessantly. Obasanjo spoke about the disequilibrium in Nigeria, a society propelled suddenly from ancient to modern. He talked of a four-generation transition, said that oil wealth had hindered more than helped, and praised aspects of traditional Nigeria. "What is wrong with our tradition which respects age and authority? Or the norm that everybody is his brother's keeper? Or the stigmatising of evil-doers and the indolent?"
8th June 1998: General Abacha, Nigeria's strongman, dies in bed at the age of 54 of a supposed heart attack. Three days later his successor, General Abubakar, lets Obasanjo walk free. I want to be there to celebrate.
2nd march 1999: "Obasanjo tops poll in Nigeria" is the headline in the Financial Times. So my old friend is going to be president again. Now I really do want to jump on a plane to Africa. I telephone the travel agent. It sounds so easy and quick from the Canary Isles. Then I realise I have no visa and the Nigerians say that they need five working days to issue one.
I decide to contact Obasanjo directly. That, in a country which hasn't repaired its telephone lines for 30 years, is easier said than done. I try for days. After 50 attempts I catch a polite young man at his home in Abeokuta. "He's never here," he says. "But try his e-mail." "E-mail? Do you have e-mail in darkest Africa?" I feel like saying, but bite my tongue, reminding myself of the old adage: "The darkest thing about Africa is our ignorance of it." I try the e-mail, many times. Nothing happens. I try the telephone again. Eventually I get through. "I wouldn't come now," the young man says. "In two days' time, he's off on a world trip."
7th march: All weekend I mull over what to do. I don't want to sit in London for five days, waiting for the Nigerian bureaucracy to tick over. Last time, they refused me a visa because I had a South African stamp in my passport. It needed a cabinet decision to give me approval, which Obasanjo, then out of office, engineered. On the Monday I start telephoning again. The young man answers. "We got your e-mail," he says. "The general is on his farm phone." "So he hasn't dashed off on his world trip?" "No, not yet."
I dial the farm a few times and a voice, submerged in crackle, answers. "Hold on, I'll get the general." I wait for a few minutes. The man comes back. "Can you hold on another few minutes?" "Of course," I say, now starting-at the moment when success looms-to worry about my telephone bill. "Jonathan, are you there?" It is Obasanjo. "I can't believe it. I didn't know if I'd ever talk to you again. How did you survive?" "Only by the grace of God," he says. I love that voice-slow, rich and kind-but I also know his other side: a man, although bereft of arrogance, who doesn't suffer fools; who, when he chooses, can intimidate not only with his brain, but with his massive bulk. I once saw him react to one of his farm workers who had started to argue with him. Obasanjo picked up a piece of thick steel wire and made as if to whip him. This was how Obasanjo kept his troops in order, battling the Ibo insurgency in Nigeria's fratricidal Biafran war in the late 1960s.
"I want to see you soon. I want to do one of my long, full-page interviews with you." "Well, come," he says. "I'll get someone to meet you at the airport." I explain the visa problem and suggest that I should just come anyway. He doesn't sound keen on that idea-even the president-elect knows better than to waste energy tangling with Nigerian bureaucracy. "We'll do you a letter to the London High Commission," he says. "Talk to Ad-Obe, my assistant. He'll sort it out."
Ad-Obe comes on the telephone to tell me how difficult it is to come to Nigeria and that I should wait until Obasanjo comes to London. But my journalistic instincts have been triggered and I want to get that first interview, just as I caught Indira Gandhi two days before she swept back to power and persuaded her to give me two hours alone. I explain this to Ad-Obe, who says: "Nigeria isn't India-it's chaotic here."
11th march: Back and forth with Ad-Obe. I am soon convinced that he is a supercilious prat. How can Obasanjo know what his underling is up to? I suggest that maybe it is best to meet in Paris and I can fly back on Obasanjo's plane. Obasanjo is doing a one-day rush to France to see President Chirac. (The French are always trying to scoop the British in Africa these days, even in their backyard.) "OK, meet us in Paris." "But where? Do you have a contact in your Paris embassy?" I ask. "I don't know anyone there," Ad-Obe answers. The telephone goes dead. I decide to wait a couple of days before I try again.
14th march. I speak to Funmi, Obasanjo's helpful secretary. She tells me to call at 11pm. With some trepidation at the late hour, I dial again. This time the call goes straight through and Funmi's voice is as clear as a bell. Obviously, Obasanjo's lines are getting priority treatment-taps included no doubt. "Hello, Jonathan," she says, recognising my voice. "I'll put you through to his room. If he doesn't answer, it means he's sleeping." A mellow sleepy voice answers. "Where are you? Why aren't you here?" My nervousness at calling so late subsides. I am not the pain in the neck I had feared. I brief him on Ad-Obe's behaviour. "You don't need people like that at your side," I venture. "I am beginning to think you are right," he says.
I explain to him again how I think I know him well enough to bring out his real thoughts and give him a platform to the world. "I want to talk to you, too. Why don't you come on the 19th when I'm back from my African and Paris trips, before I go to London? Phone my friend Olokun, the ambassador in Madrid, and say I told him to give you a visa."
17th march: It's settled. At 8am I am on the phone again with Funmi. She will meet me at Lagos airport tomorrow evening. "Are you sure you'll be there?" "As sure as Christ's second coming," she shoots back. How am I supposed to take that? I had forgotten, beneath the corruption and violence which overwhelms Nigeria, how moral and religious ordinary Nigerians are. Away from official responsibilities-in personal life, with family, aged parents-they live the command to be their brother's keeper.
18th march: The crowd of returning Nigerians surges off the plane. There are few whites, so surely Funmi will have no trouble recognising me. There are plenty of people holding up cards with names on them. But mine is not among them and I obviously give the impression of being lost. A young man rushes up to me. "I was waiting for you. My name is Paul." "Jonathan Power," I say, shaking his hand. "Where is Funmi?" "She couldn't come. Mr Power, come this way." We walk down past the luggage carousel to the customs officers. "Give the man ?20," he says sotto voce. My jet-lagged brain slowly starts to wake up. Would Obasanjo, the politician who campaigned as the slayer of corruption, have a driver who asks me to dish the customs ?20? The customs man asks me what I have. Then, as is usual in Nigeria, he asks me if I "have a little something for him." "No," I smile. "These are new days. Obasanjo won the election." He laughs and lets me through. Paul is waiting, urging me on to his car. "Where are we going?" I ask. "To the Sheraton," he says. But Funmi had said most definitely I would be staying at the farm. I decide to play for time. If he is the legitimate driver, I don't want to insult the first African I meet after ten years away. "I must change some money," I say. I wait in the queue at the bank. A few minutes later I see a large lady with a green turban, accompanied by a younger woman, heading my way. Funmi recognises me immediately and I give her a hug of relief. "And this is Abimbola, General Obasanjo's daughter." We drive off and I tell them of my encounter with Paul. "You're lucky to be alive," Funmi says. "These types rob you, knife you and throw you out on the road."
The traffic is chaotic. It is rush hour. The light is failing and the owners of shops which stretch endlessly along the road light little lamps to illuminate their stock. There are hundreds of churches. I look at the crowds packed into the buses, people battling their way home, hours on the road after hours of hard work, only marginally better off than the cripples begging on the street. And what is this? A man bending over, bleeding. A woman pouring water over his wound. Was he hit by a rogue driver? They all seem to be rogue drivers. Our own driver is the fastest of all. This is Obasanjo's campaign Land-Rover and driver, Funmi says. The driver accelerates. There is nothing I can do, only accept that I am in another world.
I sleep well on Obasanjo's farm. I am fed well, and surrounded by the sexual and religious banter of Funmi, Abimbola and their friends. Life, to them, at least on the personal level, is seamless. There are no sharp corners, no mental compartments. Companionship is simply the most important thing in life.
At 11am, I am rushed to the airport from the farm, accompanied by Abimbola and a couple of her friends. I am dropped off at a charter service and told to wait for the vice-president-elect who will travel with me to the capital Abuja to meet Obasanjo. Two hours later, his entourage cancels. I am taken to the main airport and put on board Bellevue Airlines, a spin-off from an ex-Yugoslav airline. By mid-afternoon I am in Abuja. A town set in the middle of nowhere, it was chosen as the capital 20 years ago in an attempt to decompress the overcrowded Lagos. Surrounded by little villages of mud walls and conical thatched roofs, it is full of non-descript modern offices and hotels. If only the architects had been ordered to take their cue from the villages and the rocky topography around. But Abuja has its charm, too: an absence of crime; a towering cathedral whose cross can be seen for miles; a magnificent mosque with a golden dome, as large as Istanbul's Blue Mosque (about one third of Nigerians are Christian and nearly half are Muslim).
I meet up with the Obasanjo crowd of intimates and campaign workers; at 9.30pm we drive in a long cavalcade to the airport to greet him on his return from Paris. The presidential jet lands, the stairs drop and Obasanjo appears, draped in a deep reddish-brown toga. He pauses at the top of the steps, exuding self-confidence, and then descends. Obasanjo always carried his authority well. I linger at the back of the crowd, a lone white face, hoping he might look twice. He doesn't. I have no choice but to propel myself forward before he gets into the car. He sees me, pulls me close and we give each other a brief hug. I feel constrained. Perhaps he does too. Old friendship though it is, he will not want to show too much affection for a white man in front of such a crowd, all competing for his attention-and for jobs. "When can you fit me in?" "Tomorrow at 4pm," and that's it.
We rejoin the cavalcade which, on reaching Abuja, does not break up as I had expected. We follow Obasanjo's car up the long unguarded driveway to a large white house. "This used to be Abacha's house," someone whispers to me, as we slam the car doors shut and rush into the building. We walk into a large room. Obasanjo and his vice-president are sitting side by side. We are handed fruit juice by waiters in white suits and bottle-green buttons, the national colour. It is plush in a nouveau riche way. So is the retinue of hangers-on, sliding from one conversation to another, elegant in gold-braided cloth and leather shoes. Obasanjo is reading his mail and ignoring us.
Abba, whom I had befriended in the car ride, a former press secretary of the last democratically-elected president, Shehu Shagari, pushes me forward. "Show him that column you wrote in 1984," he says. I had written after the coup that the generals one day would have to bring Obasanjo back if the country were ever to stabilise. I pull it out, and give it to Obasanjo. He reads it slowly. "You were always ahead," and takes my hand. "How long do you need? Will an hour do?" "Not really. Perhaps I could travel back on your plane to London?"
I retreat into the crowd. Slowly, around one in the morning, people drift away. I think it is time to go too. I don't want to disturb Obasanjo again but, with Abba prodding once more, I call out "goodnight" and start for the staircase. "Jonathan," I hear a big voice. "You haven't told me how your love life is!" I turn and laugh. "Come and sit down and fill me in. I am so out of date." The last time I stayed with him, 11 years ago, I was with Mary Jane, whose vivaciousness Obasanjo found appealing. But the doubt and the pain of leaving my first wife Anne with the children must still, in those days, have been written all over my face. "I haven't talked to Mary Jane for 11 years." He wants to hear more. I explain it all. "You were never lucky with women, Jonathan," he laughs. "But you are looking good, something must be going on." I tell him of my happy marriage to Jeany, an opera singer, and of our eight-year-old daughter. He smiles. He is happy for me. "She must come and sing here." The ice is broken again, or so I think.
20th march: The interview starts well enough. Obasanjo talks about how he has been physically reduced by his imprisonment but spiritually strengthened. He has always been a God-fearing Christian but this is a different degree of religiosity. He tells me that he wrote two books on spiritual meditation during his three years behind bars.
After 40 minutes, however, the mood changes. I am pressing him on his plans for privatising the national oil company, notorious for its corruption and inefficiency. His voice, usually soft, starts to rise. His eyes tense. "Why should we give away what no one has yet put a price on?" We carry on, but I have rattled him. Third world politicians, even enlightened democratic ones, like Obasanjo, who enjoy nothing more than a good argument in private, find it unsettling to be challenged by journalists. I had questioned him about army excesses during his last presidency and about allegations that the funding of his campaign came from rich generals of the old order. But the question of oil, its use and misuse, is the most sensitive issue of all in Nigeria. He is annoyed, makes some remark to the effect that an ambassador is waiting for him and ambassadors are "much more bloody important than this" and leaves. I decide I have nothing to lose but to follow him, calling out, as if nothing untoward had happened. "Could we finish it on the plane tomorrow?" "We'll see," he says, and disappears. I decide to wait. I have a very incomplete and unmarketable interview, and if I get pressed out of the timetable by the army of visitors waiting their turn I might never get what I want.
Half an hour passes and my spirits begin to sink. Suddenly Funmi appears, miraculously transported from the farm. "The general wants you to eat dinner with us." I am led into the dining room, with about 20 people around the table, and plonked at the far end. I am clearly an afterthought; they are all tucked into their first course. "We've known each other for 20 years," Obasanjo tells everyone and we launch across the length of the long table into a dissection of the journalistic art. It is a conversation full of laughs and merriment. Old stories told and scores settled, on both sides. The company is bemused as we slip into our old repartee. "I get nervous when you raise your voice," I explain. "I was getting angry," he says. "Your question made it sound like you wanted me to give away my country. Anyway, if you're my friend I can shout at you." "As long as I can shout back!" "But not in public." And so we go on.
Now we are airborne together, on the presidential jet. Obasanjo holds my hand as we talk-this is the custom in Africa between male friends. The interview is good. I have what I want. After the tape is switched off we gossip about people like Helmut Schmidt whom he thinks the world of ("but he can be very rude") and David Owen, the ex-wunderkind of British politics, and about what's going to happen to the Clinton marriage after he leaves office.
We talk most about Nigeria. I am convinced, I tell him, that if real progress is made in the next four years in restoring ethnic harmony (between the three big groups the Hausa, Yoruba and Ibo, and countless smaller ones), improving the economy and maintaining democracy, it will have a profound effect on the rest of Africa. A number of African countries are already making good progress. Nigeria itself can be another Malaysia. He concurs. "I feel that too. But will I live to do it? There could be a coup. It could come from the military; it could come from some civilian group. Even in my immediate entourage there are people whom I cannot really trust." "Why do you have them around you, then?" I ask. "Because of politics. They represent certain regions, or political groups."
Africa slips away. Europe beckons. I start to daydream. Obasanjo interrupts my reverie. "Why don't you come to live in Nigeria?" "Why?" "Then we could always talk." He pauses. "I don't suppose your wife would want to." "I'll ask her," I say.
Out of Heathrow, I find a quiet caf?nd listen to my tape. For the life of me I can't think why he got so anxious. Here are the highlights:
u u u
Jonathan Power: When you were in prison I talked to Helmut Schmidt about what could be done to get you out, and he said: "Nothing will happen until someone bumps off Abacha." Did someone bump off Abacha?
Obasanjo: I think God did it.
JP: The New York Times published a story saying that some army officers brought over four Indian prostitutes who poisoned him. Do you believe that?
O: I think that he died in the company of prostitutes. That is an open secret now. Whether those prostitutes poisoned him, I don't know.
JP: Are your own hands clean? Your critics recall the time when you were president before, when there were bloody crackdowns on students and the anti-establishment singer, Fela, was persecuted. It is said that your soldiers threw his 77-year-old mother from the top floor of her house and she died as a result.
O: As the leader at that time, the buck stops with me. But Fela intentionally wounded a military policeman who was on traffic duty. The soldiers were enraged. They attacked Fela's house. I don't condone what the soldiers did, but I also don't approve of Fela's action.
JP: Critics say that you are in hock to some parts of the army. Former strongman, Ibrahim Babangida, bankrolled your election campaign. There are also army officers now serving who will be very disgruntled if you stop the corruption on which they feast.
O: People who believe that Babangida is the one who made me must have their heads examined. And it is not only army officers who indulge in corruption; many civilians have the same mentality.
JP: So you are going to crack the whip?
O: I will not only crack the whip, I will use it.
JP: Are you going to ask Switzerland, Britain, the Lebanon, to freeze the relevant Nigerian accounts? Abacha himself is said to have stolen $800m.
O: I will set up an anti-corruption body which will be empowered to seek and recover Nigerian money and property anywhere in the world.
JP: : Twenty years ago you walked away from the presidency and became a chicken farmer because you said your people must stop thinking about oil and start thinking about the land. Even today, 60 per cent of your countrymen make a living from the land.
O: Yes. That is the only thing that can give us the type of employment we need to generate income for our teeming millions. Even if we had an unlimited flow of foreign investment, there is a limit to the jobs you can create in the manufacturing and service areas. But in agriculture you can take the job to the people, rather than trying to take the people to the job.
JP: How can you change the attitude towards agriculture? A lot of people regard it as old-fashioned.
O: You have to show an example and bring in appropriate technology. If farmers have been using bad tending hoes, improve the hoes and that makes farming less tedious and less painful. Simple things. Then you have to introduce other inputs, like improved seed or fertiliser—things that will lead the farmer to consider farming profitable and interesting.
JP: About 80 per cent of government revenue comes from oil, but the Financial Times estimates that $225 billion in oil revenue has been wasted over the past 25 years. Are you going to privatise the oil industry? The Daily Post Express accuses you of slowing down the privatisation process of the military government.
O: I don't know what the paper said, but what I have said is that privatisation will not be done just for the sake of privatisation; it must have a purpose behind it. To me the purpose of privatisation is to bring efficiency and investment. But you must also find the proper method of privatisation and establish the value of what you want to sell.
JP: So you have doubts about privatisation?
O: I don't have doubts about privatisation, I have doubts about the method. There must be openness and transparency. Who are you selling to and at what price? That is the question. Michel Camdessus, managing director of the IMF, was here today and he, too, said: "We want a slow process. We want transparency."
JP: People of the oil-rich Niger delta have watched billions of dollars flow out of their soil as they have grown poorer. One of the leaders, the novelist Ken Saro-Wiwa, was executed by Abacha. Do you have a plan for repairing the moral and political damage wrought by your predecessors?
O: Yes. I have talked to the Ijaw people and the Ijaws are, quite rightly, bitter because of the terrible injustice, which you can see all along the Niger delta. The insensitivity that some parts of Nigeria have exhibited is unbelievable. The first thing is to understand what has gone wrong in the Niger delta. Then we have to devise what will work.
JP: Your Nobel prize-winner, Wole Soyinka, says that Nigeria is a nation on the verge of extinction.
O: I don't believe this.
JP: And another human rights activist, Beko Ransome-Kuti, has said that if we can't live as one people we are better off living separately. Is that true?
O: No. When some groups of Nigerians have wanted to go it alone, it is for reasons of injustice. What is important is justice and democracy. The Ibos fought a war of secession less than 30 years ago, but the Ibos and the rest of Nigeria were reconciled a long time ago.
JP: Do you expect that now that you have a democratic system, the strains can be more easily contained?
O: Naturally. That is what democracy is all about.
JP: Democracy is now returning to Nigeria, but in many parts of Africa there is still very little hope. Many observers in the west are now saying that there is nothing we can do to help Africa. Is that right?
O: Yes and no. Yes in the sense that most of the things that will endure in Africa must come from within Africa. Of course we need assistance and cooperation from outside to sustain democracy. And we must never imagine that the single event of an election is democracy. I often wonder at the number of international observers who go into a country for an election, then, after the election, all the assistance that we need to sustain democracy fades away. Take Nigeria. There is no way Nigeria can sustain its democracy under the present burden of debt. We must be able to deliver to Nigerians, particularly in the social and economic areas. Otherwise, two years down the road, Nigerians will be saying: "Hey, what is all this about? Our situation has not changed, there is still no food on our table." This then creates the incentive for somebody to stage a coup. On the other hand, the success of democracy in Nigeria will have implications for the whole of Africa. It will mean that 20-25 per cent of the population of Africa south of the Sahara is under some form of democratic rule. South Africa is there, Nigeria is there. You have other smaller countries which have been bastions of democracy for a long time. Nigeria will then be in a position to help other African nations become real democracies.
JP: To preserve a government, supposedly to preserve democracy, Nigeria is engaged in the civil war in Sierre Leone. Is this the way to spread democracy?
O: I don't know. I will not go into how Nigeria found itself in Sierre Leone, but having found itself there, Nigeria is under an obligation not to abandon it without bringing some form of order and security there.
JP: The UN has just pulled out of Angola. The western powers just threw up their hands when the Tutsis of Rwanda were massacred five years ago. Then Clinton went to Africa last year and apologised for not intervening. Where do we go next? Where does the world community go next, with the many civil wars now raging in Africa?
O: We should establish what is fundamentally wrong in each case, then take collective action to do what is right, to help that country. I was in Paris a few days ago. President Chirac and I went over almost all the conflict areas of Africa. I was satisfied at the end of our discussion that the situation in Africa is not hopeless. But we should not expect an overnight wonder.
JP: Was it a mistake for the UN to pull out of Angola?
O: I believe it was a mistake. Remember that it was UN withdrawal which led to the massacre in Rwanda.
JP: Do you believe that even in a situation as serious as Rwanda before the genocide, with the right kind of UN deployment, the massacres could have been avoided?
O: The massacres could have been avoided. It was the fault of everyone who looked away.
JP: When President Mandela steps down, we are going to see a period of transition in Africa. Do you feel that South Africa has more serious problems in terms of division and inequality than Nigeria?
O: Not really. I think they are of a different nature. Ours is what you call ethnic and theirs is racial and class related. Our problem hasn't evolved into a class division but it may. Differences in Nigeria are not so evident. If I ask you to choose between a Yoruba and an Ibo man standing side by side you won't be able to. So our own case is easier than some.
JP: Do you think that it is possible to have a viable multiracial society in Africa?
O: I believe that it is. We shouldn't underestimate what has been achieved in South Africa.
JP: Do you still believe in the disequilibrium problem, from being rapidly propelled from ancient to modern?
O: Yes. When you go to most of our cities you will find that most well-off people have information technology. The internet is there, e-mail is there, and then you go ten kilometres out of town and they don't even have good drinking water or electricity. This is not sustainable-it is morally wrong and socially dangerous. It reminds me of the story of a priest who used to go to a village not far from the capital, Abuja, a new modern city, and they asked him to leave his car and wade through a stream which didn't have a bridge. The priest said to the village head man that there must be something wrong in our country-in Abuja we have bridges where there are no rivers and in your village, where there are rivers, we have no bridges. We got development wrong. We imported things and stopped doing things for ourselves.
JP: You are still relatively young and healthy. What journey would you like Nigeria to embark on in the next 25/30 years of your life?
O: I have four years ahead of me. I don't know whether I will live that long. If for the next four years I live, and things work in Nigeria, I will be happy. I want to take Nigeria out of the rot of the past 20 years and make it a country to be reckoned with again.
The biggest problems in Nigeria today can be summed up simply: corruption, human rights abuse and a tendency to anarchy. The first is pervasive and has been for 35 years. While working in Tanzania, I remember receiving a letter from a friend teaching in Nigeria, soon after the country became independent, complaining of how widespread corruption was in her school.
