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Authors: Howard W. French
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regime could offer Jesse Jackson, Kingibe wondered aloud, why did Jackson remain so ill informed about Nigeria, and so obstinate in his criticism of the government? What would it take to get Colin Powell to give Nigeria a fresh look, instead of dismissing the country as “a nation of scammers,” as he once had? Nigeria was the world’s largest black state, Kingibe said. America depended on Nigeria for its oil supply. Surely there must be a basis there for a good working relationship.
As I grew weary of all the questions about how Nigeria could “settle” black Americans, I began asking some of my own. I couldn’t resist. What about Abiola? What about the canceled elections in which you stood on his ticket? Why don’t you let the Lagos courts hear the treason charges? Why take the extraordinarily dubious step of changing the venue?
“Let me explain something to you, Mr. French,” Kingibe said to me in his effete nasal drawl, equal parts West African privilege and Oxford polish, as his eyes narrowed menacingly. “This Abiola problem has nothing to do with the courts. It has nothing to do with the law. Do you understand now? Is that clear? Now you may leave.” My evening had just ended.
Back in Lagos the next day, I looked for Fred Eno, Abiola’s chief of staff, hoping to be brought up to date on what was happening in the democracy movement, but he had left the hotel. In fact, all of the opposition types who had been haunting the place had disappeared. I learned later that Eno had been jailed, like countless others who had tried to resist Abacha openly. Others had simply been killed. I would never speak to Eno again.
Nigeria under the generals, I thought, was like a decadent Rome, a place that had unraveled to such an extent that the only hard-and-fast rule that held any longer was the oldest rule of all—might makes right. The country’s only greatness was its unrealized potential. To paraphrase Charles de Gaulle’s famous, irony-dripping put-down of Brazil, Nigeria was a land whose future would always remain bright. With Abacha at the helm, I wondered whether even this might not be too generous.
The immensity of the problem here started, of course, with the population—more than 100 million people—but could be seen almost anywhere one looked, from the endlessly long bridges in Lagos that choked and froze twice a day with traffic jams, or go-slows, to the scale of thievery and injustice on display every day. Life had hardened people so thoroughly that when a pedestrian is hit by a car along one of the city’s major highways, no one even stops to help. I had always thought this was Nigerian urban legend, hyperbole, until I saw for myself the remains of a man run over so many times he had been reduced to the thickness and consistency of wallpaper paste.
Just as there are places I love to visit, there have always been African cities it gives me great pleasure to leave, and Lagos under Abacha was at the top of the list. On this trip, the first of my tour, after I boarded an Air Afrique jet for Abidjan, and the pilot waited for permission to pull back from the gate, Nigeria reserved one final unpleasant surprise for me. A soldier climbed aboard with rifle in hand to demand a few bottles of champagne from a French-speaking crew member. With this kind of example being set by the military, I thought, how could this sort of lawlessness ever be stopped? The soldier got his champagne.
Visas to Nigeria had always been hard to come by during my stay in the region, and over the next year, they became even harder to obtain. The Abacha dictatorship was steadily tightening its grip, growing more isolated and more paranoid by the week, and the best proof that the dictatorship’s shock treatment was working was that usually dauntless Nigerians were becoming scared.
Habeas corpus was suspended. Union leaders were rounded up. Leading newspapers were closed. Even the army’s officer corps faced constant purges. Without
As I grew weary of all the questions about how Nigeria could “settle” black Americans, I began asking some of my own. I couldn’t resist. What about Abiola? What about the canceled elections in which you stood on his ticket? Why don’t you let the Lagos courts hear the treason charges? Why take the extraordinarily dubious step of changing the venue?
“Let me explain something to you, Mr. French,” Kingibe said to me in his effete nasal drawl, equal parts West African privilege and Oxford polish, as his eyes narrowed menacingly. “This Abiola problem has nothing to do with the courts. It has nothing to do with the law. Do you understand now? Is that clear? Now you may leave.” My evening had just ended.
Back in Lagos the next day, I looked for Fred Eno, Abiola’s chief of staff, hoping to be brought up to date on what was happening in the democracy movement, but he had left the hotel. In fact, all of the opposition types who had been haunting the place had disappeared. I learned later that Eno had been jailed, like countless others who had tried to resist Abacha openly. Others had simply been killed. I would never speak to Eno again.
Nigeria under the generals, I thought, was like a decadent Rome, a place that had unraveled to such an extent that the only hard-and-fast rule that held any longer was the oldest rule of all—might makes right. The country’s only greatness was its unrealized potential. To paraphrase Charles de Gaulle’s famous, irony-dripping put-down of Brazil, Nigeria was a land whose future would always remain bright. With Abacha at the helm, I wondered whether even this might not be too generous.
The immensity of the problem here started, of course, with the population—more than 100 million people—but could be seen almost anywhere one looked, from the endlessly long bridges in Lagos that choked and froze twice a day with traffic jams, or go-slows, to the scale of thievery and injustice on display every day. Life had hardened people so thoroughly that when a pedestrian is hit by a car along one of the city’s major highways, no one even stops to help. I had always thought this was Nigerian urban legend, hyperbole, until I saw for myself the remains of a man run over so many times he had been reduced to the thickness and consistency of wallpaper paste.
Just as there are places I love to visit, there have always been African cities it gives me great pleasure to leave, and Lagos under Abacha was at the top of the list. On this trip, the first of my tour, after I boarded an Air Afrique jet for Abidjan, and the pilot waited for permission to pull back from the gate, Nigeria reserved one final unpleasant surprise for me. A soldier climbed aboard with rifle in hand to demand a few bottles of champagne from a French-speaking crew member. With this kind of example being set by the military, I thought, how could this sort of lawlessness ever be stopped? The soldier got his champagne.
Visas to Nigeria had always been hard to come by during my stay in the region, and over the next year, they became even harder to obtain. The Abacha dictatorship was steadily tightening its grip, growing more isolated and more paranoid by the week, and the best proof that the dictatorship’s shock treatment was working was that usually dauntless Nigerians were becoming scared.
Habeas corpus was suspended. Union leaders were rounded up. Leading newspapers were closed. Even the army’s officer corps faced constant purges. Without
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