Nigeria's president retired Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo's meeting in Washington D.C., today Friday May 11, 2001, with U.S. President George W. Bush, serves well his preference for "talking" about west Africa regional interests, the war in Democratic Republic of Congo and such "international issues." While Obasanjo likes such a focus on "international issues", he has paid scant attention to the continuing drama of serial incompetence by his administration, increasing corruption and cornered contracts, ethnic bigotry against the Igbos of eastern Nigeria, complicated by shattered hopes of millions of Nigerians for the so-called "dividends of democracy" and unprecedented but dangerous delays in paying soldiers and federal teachers' salaries.

There's little chance that Bush will tell Obasanjo to look inwards, but may I humbly state that:

•Nigeria's democracy may become imperiled by the increasing corruption, Obasanjo's divisive ethnic agenda, yawning failure to serve the basic needs of Nigerians and deal with the environmental degradation of the Niger Delta.

•the U.S. has $7.4 billion worth of investment in Nigeria, and they could be imperriled by an unstable Nigeria.

•Obasanjo's responsibility should begin at home, and top his talks with Bush.

•a stable and democratic Nigeria is in the best interest of the U.S. and Nigeria's. Therefore, it should not be set around individuals but institutions and structures of effective governance which benefit business and civil societies in our two countries.

•Obasanjo and some members of his team continue to miss the key point of international economic development. Domestic infrastructure enhances inter-state commerce and attracts foreign investments. My solutional point and mantra, therefore is: Obasanjo, it's the domestic infrastructure, stupid!

Bush is meeting with Obasanjo, primarily, for one reason: oil, especially with the current energy prices and situation in the U.S.

Why?

Nigeria, the world's six largest oil exporter, produces around two million barrels per day accounting for around eight percent of U.S oil imports, and pumping millions of dollars into parts of the U.S. and the energy capital of the world, Houston, through Chevron, Texaco, ExxonMobil, oil services giant Haliburton (which had U.S Vice President Dick Cheney as CEO, a few months ago), and others. High oil prices brought the Nigerian government $14 billion dollars in 2000. Nigeria has earned $292 billion in oil revenues, according to data compiled by Houston-based PetroGasWorks.com, since the discovery of reserves in 1958 in eastern Nigeria, with very little to show for uplifting a majority of its people.

Those billions when set alongside my introductory quote from Prof. Achebe, the most translated writer of African heritage and author of the globally-acclaimed novel, 'Things fall Apart', offer a shorthand explanation of the increasing failure to serve the basic needs of Nigerians.

The Achebean damning thesis against most of Nigeria's rapacious and incompetent elite fills in a philosophic picture to understand the painful and embarrassing embodiment of incompetence of the government of retired army general Obasanjo in its handling of Nigeria's huge national resources. While Obasanjo prefers to speak about "international issues" to lend value to his declining stature and credibility inside Nigeria, Nigerians here in the U.S. and back home can only wish that Bush and and national security team inquired more about the direction and feeble foundations of the latest effort at democracy in Nigeria.

From rampant corruption in the awards of contracts to the cornering of juicy contracts by Obasanjo and his close network of friends and family, inside Nigeria, here in the U.S. and Europe, Nigerians are left scratching their heads as if they were possessed in a noon-time nightmarish dream.

From Obasanjo's refusal to condemn the anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic demonstrations in the northern Islamic state of Zamfara to his blatant and currently overt ethnic hostility against the Igbos (who led some neigbhoring eastern minorities to form the defunct Republic of Biafra from 1967-1970 for their survival against waves of genocidal slaughter by the combined armed forces of mostly the Islamic North and Obasanjo's southwest Yorubas), he has since abandoned any claims to moral leadership and platforms against prejudice.

Evident failures of his government are tucked away in massive pr blitz and global junkets. But we're not fooled. Karl Maier, a seasoned and credible chronicler of Africa's economic history and politics knows even better. Maier, author of best selling book, "This House has fallen: Midnight in Nigeria", summed it up thus: "This (Obasanjo) government has got very good public relations internationally but domestically, they are not solving the problems. And this government so far has not tackled the key problems. The unrest in the Niger Delta, the issue of the Sharia Islamic law in the North, the unrest in Lagos, and until they do that, trade agreements, new engagement with the international community will not make the difference." Bush & Co should take heed.

Obasanjo has also surrounded himself with some of the same ruinous gangs who loot(ed) Nigeria's national treasury and have since the past 40 years turned Nigeria into their barnyard and playpen for corruption. Many of them, late dictator Sani Abacha's henchmen and praise singers, co-sponsored Obasanjo's (s)election as President in May 1999. Any wonder that the Nigerian leader's pre-occupation has been probes which go largely after the dead than the living miscreants who ruined Nigeria's emerging destiny and still spit into our faces.

I toured the major cities in the Northern, Western, Eastern and oil-rich delta and riverine states (see OIL in NIGERIA: Liquid Gold or Petro-Dollars Curse? by Chido Nwangwu), shortly after concluding my assignment to report former president of the U.S. Bill Clinton visit to Nigeria, August to September 2000. The same questions Nigerians asked then, today, remain: when shall we have only 500 minutes of uninterrupted power supply in Nigeria? When will the water pumps cough out enough to fill a glass? Although, among the world's leading oil producers, Nigerians, sometimes, park their cars at fuel stations overnight, on lines stretching almost one half of a mile or more, to get gas/fuel/diesel. Worse, the costs per visit are nearly half of an average worker's monthly salary.

Funnily, Nigeria's leader Obasanjo continues to blame the same late, murderous Abacha, who died almost three years ago, for the current fuel shortages inside Nigeria, and would rather discuss "the war in Congo", regional politics and the concert of medium powers in the world! Cry for my beloved country!

Shred of all fine talk, Nigerians, at home and abroad, continue to wonder why Obasanjo is putting them through another routine of promises unfulfilled and opportunities squandered. Why will a president use his bully pulpit to fester ethnic hatreds?

An example: The really sad part about how divisive Nigeria's leadership has become is that when bonafide citizens of the oil-producing Imo State of eastern Nigeria asked for fair location of federal projects long denied them, Obasanjo told them not to worry, he'll site some federal prisons and federal mental homes! Such crass, serio-comical banality from Obasanjo would have been funny except that many Nigerians are driven insane from the pangs of poverty. In fact the joke, now is on Obasanjo who seems to feel more comfortable junketting abroad than among his mentally-pressured kinfolk.

Worse, it reveals the sheer impudence and the pomposity with which Nigeria's rulers insult their citizens, especially the 26-million Igbos of eastern Nigeria who are known as the trading backbone and enterpreneurial catalysts of Nigeria.

Consequently, I believe that this is a time when Nigeria requires leadership not dealership; sacrifice not sanctimony; seriousness not serio-comical charlatanry, accountability rather than the financial shenanigans and a new low in the vulgar cannibalization of the country's national discourse.

Far be it from Nigerians to demand the "vision thing", a sense of higher national purpose for Nigeria from Obasanjo who revels in the oversized garb of an international statesman where he can "discuss" the concept of regional powers and the war in Congo with Bush than tackle the basic bread and butter needs of Nigerians.
Nwangwu, an adviser to the Mayor of Houston on international business (Africa), is an analyst on CNN International's Inside Africa, is the Founder & Publisher of the first African-owned, U.S.-based professional newspaper to be published on the internet, USAfricaonline.com, USAfrica The Newspaper, The Black Business Journal, BBJonline.com, and CLASS magazine. He is the recipient of the Journalism Excellence Award (1997) and writes commentaries on current U.S. and Africa issues in major newspapers in the two continents, and has served as a panelist at the BBC World Technology Forum in San Francisco, VOA WorldNet television and a number of other broadcast networks.

(The preceding commentary first appeared in the the Houston Chronicle as 'Nigeria's problem sits across the table from Bush (Houston Chronicle, May 10, 2001); AllAfrica.com as Why Bush Should Focus On Dangers Facing Nigeria, and a number of other sites and newspapers).

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