by David Lamb
The idea of regional groupings is not new. Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda were linked at independence in the East African Community, which many economists viewed as one of the world’s best models of regional cooperation. The three countries shared a common airline as well as postal, transportation and customs facilities. Their currencies were convertible within the community, and residents of one country could move freely throughout—and work in—the member states. In West Africa, fifteen states of varying linguistic and political backgrounds have been loosely joined since 1975 in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea have formed what is known as the Mano River Union. And in 1981 Senegal and The Gambia established a union called Senegambia.
What sounds good in theory, however, is difficult to promote in practice. The communities have not worked out, for the same reason that a Cairo-Cape Town transcontinental highway has never been built: cross-border rivalries are stronger than the desire for neighborly cooperation. The East Africa Community was dissolved in 1977 due to political differences between capitalistic Kenya and socialistic Tanzania and militaristic Uganda. President Julius Nyerere closed his border with Kenya—it was still sealed in 1982—in a futile attempt to get European tourists to fly directly to Tanzania instead of transiting through Kenya. But all he managed to accomplish was the loss of valuable trade routes into Central Africa for both countries and the reduction of tourism in all East Africa. For just that reason, the oft-discussed idea of a transcontinental highway—similar to, say, the Pan American highway in South America—is an idea whose time has not yet come. Presidents would close it down out of petty jealousies, soldiers would blockade it to collect duties, governments could not afford to maintain it. Until Africa can develop continental transportation and communication networks, and can achieve regional harmony, most states will continue to find that it is cheaper to trade with Europe than with one another.
As for Africa’s failing currencies, the solution seems fairly straightforward. Individual national currencies should be discarded in favor of four or five regional ones that are closely linked with a European monetary system. This, in fact, has already proved effective. Thirteen French-speaking countries in Africa use the Communauté Financière Africaine (CFA) franc, a currency backed by France which is as convertible at a Paris bank as an American dollar or a British pound. There is an interesting historical aside here that shows that the system benefited both Africa and Europe. In the fifties and sixties, when France needed hard currency for its own development, all foreign exchange flowing through the thirteen countries or colonies eventually ended up in the central bank in Paris. Theoretically, the African governments could draw foreign exchange freely to meet their own needs, but the system and the issuance of import licenses was controlled by Frenchmen and little hard currency found its way back to Africa. Thus, the Ivory Coast sold its coffee to the United States for American dollars, which went to Paris and were used for France’s development. CFA francs, in turn, went to the Ivory Coast and were used to buy French goods. Neither party lost: Africa had a convertible currency to buy the goods it required, and France had $300 million a year that it otherwise would not have had access to.
Today much of the foreign currency goes directly to Africa. But because the CFA franc is convertible in France—and not in the United States or most other European countries—the thirteen African nations are obligated to buy mostly French goods. If the transaction sounds one-sided, just remember that countries like Guinea and Ghana can’t buy anything at all abroad with their sylis and cedis.
Undeniably, though, the West’s post-independence contributions to Africa have been paltry and often misdirected. The billions of dollars in aid money thrown haphazardly into Africa have accomplished no more than President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty did in America. They have created a welfare-state mentality, and governments have come to realize that there is no need to do anything for themselves because someone in Stockholm or Paris or Washington will do it for them at no cost. Poverty has become the engine that drives the African economy.
Why should Africa worry about producing more food when a Western government will ship in all the grain it needs as soon as some president hollers “Emergency!”? What the West should do is formulate a Marshall Plan for the Third World that places the emphasis on producing more and wasting less. It should help every country, regardless of its ideological persuasion, because to isolate the radical states only drains the cohesiveness and potential growth of the region as a whole. To use aid—as the United States does—primarily to reward those who share Washington’s political views serves to heighten cross-border rivalries and retards Africa’s development as a unit.
The West holds the key to Africa’s development. But for Africa to seek a closer economic alliance with Europe, for presidents to throw away the paper notes bearing their portraits in favor of a regional currency, would require a few people to swallow some national and personal pride. It would, though, be a significant move toward economic stability and regional collaboration. It would strengthen the weaker states and enrich the already buoyant ones, such as Nigeria. Some critics undoubtedly would say the suggestion is a neocolonial one. But if it helped the continent realize its awesome economic potential, wouldn’t Africa really be stepping into the future instead of slipping into the past, as it is doing today?
* Quoted from the New York Times (January 20, 1981).
* Kalabule is a Hausa tribal word, brought to Ghana by the traders from the north. It means “to take away without looking.”
* More than 40,000 Africans, half of them from Nigeria, are studying in the United States, and nearly 13,000 other Africans immigrate to the United States annually for reasons not related to education. In 1979, 2,667 Africans became naturalized American citizens.
* Each rhinoceros has two horns, which combined weigh about eight pounds. Despite their belligerent appearance, the 1.5-ton adult rhinos are generally placid, inoffensive vegetarians. They fear no predators except man and are easy prey for poachers. Rhinos once inhabited widespread areas of the eastern and western hemispheres but are now restricted to tropical Asia and Africa.
* Kenya’s 106 professional hunters—90 whites and 16 Africans—argued convincingly that their presence in the bush was actually a deterrent to poaching and represented no threat to the well-being of wildlife. Their livelihood, they said, depended on observing conservation regulations and avoiding reckless shooting. In the last year that hunting was legal, the professionals and their clients took only 6,000 trophies, a fraction of what poachers killed.
*Synder was hired by the Frankfurt Zoological Society to set up Sudan’s first wildlife preserve—the Boma National Park, a day’s drive from Juba. In June, 1983, while Snyder was in Khartoum on business, rebel guerrillas took five Western relief workers hostage at the Boma airstrip. The rebels’ demands included $189,000 in cash, 150 pairs of shoes, some pants and air time on the Voice of America. Government troops attacked a few days later, killing eighteen of the guerrillas and freeing the hostages unharmed. The project to establish the park was scrapped.
NIGERIA: THE FUTURE IS NOW
Nigeria marches on. Every day is a new day in this march forward. Where do you belong? To yesterday, today or tomorrow? Nigeria needs your contribution, a positive, meaningful contribution.
—Background voice on Nigerian TV each evening at 9 P.M.
NIGERIA 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, whic
h 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.
Predictably, the world took quick notice of Nigeria. Suitors arrived from everywhere, and both Washington and Moscow elbowed for influence. Nearly a hu
ndred foreign embassies were set up in Lagos, and the sauna-hot, jam-packed capital took on all the trappings of a frontier boom town. Diplomats and businessmen filled the hotels, stoically ignoring broken air conditioners, stalled elevators, power failures, water rationing, dead telephones and nightmarish traffic jams (known as “go-slows”). Lagos was suffocating in its own growth, but no one seemed to care. Everyone wanted a slice of the action, and in 1978 President Jimmy Carter made a state visit to Nigeria, telling gathered officials and journalists somewhat inexplicably, how much Nigeria and the United States had in common (even though Nigeria was then under military dictatorship).
But by the time Carter arrived a traumatic thing had happened: Nigeria had awakened one morning with a spending hangover. The party was over. Nigeria had priced itself out of the world oil market at a time when demand was falling. Its commitment to ongoing projects was four times the funding available. Frugality became the new order of the day. The government auctioned off two thousand official limousines, froze wages and prices to stem a 30 percent inflation rate, put most of its flashy development plans on ice and banned a long list of nonessential imports ranging from toothpicks to macaroni.
No one, to be sure, is crying poverty these days. Nigeria, which owns 55 percent of its nationalized oil industry, still has known reserves for about forty years at the extraction rate of 2 million barrels a day. It also has vast untapped quantities of natural gas. But Nigeria learned that petrodollars alone will not bring prosperity. It paid the price for having a one-commodity economy and discovered the dangers of trying to go too far too fast. The oil that was Nigeria’s blessing had provided as many curses as it had cures.
Like every African country endowed with mineral wealth, Nigeria forgot its farms—and the fact that a nation unable to feed itself cannot be truly free. As people flocked into the cities, food production tumbled and imports soared. The country that was once self-sufficient in agricultural produce now imports four times more food than it did a decade ago at an annual cost of $1 billion. Before the boom faded, Nigeria was spending $5 million a month just to fly frozen meat into Lagos, a luxury best left for Third World countries like Saudi Arabia. The rural exodus also strained the already meager urban services to the breaking point and beyond. Nigeria had become a prisoner of its own wealth, and Lagos was a capital that tourists avoided and numerous Western diplomats refused to be posted in.