try on an unprecedented scale, by as much as four
billion dollars according to some estimates. The
lucky ones shared in the fortunes, skimming con-
tracts, accepting bribes that made generals, state
governors, civil servants and Abachas’ cronies rich
beyond their dreams. The money was sent abroad,
deposited in currencies which, unlike the Nigerian,
retain value. But Nigerian corruption had to be
matched by the readiness of firms doing business
with Nigeria to comply with the condition set, and
by banks in London, New York and Switzerland
who until recently accepted huge cash deposits of
dubious provenance. In November 1995 the
world’s attention was drawn to the brutality of
the regime when the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and
eight activists were hanged for campaigning for
the autonomy of the Ogoni people. Nigeria was
suspended from the Commonwealth; sanctions did
not bother Abacha. Elections were drawing near in
1998 with Abacha as only candidate when fortu-
nately for Nigeria he had a heart attack apparently
during the course of a Viagra-assisted sex orgy.
After a brief period of military rule under
General Abdulsalam Abukabar with the promise
kept to hand over to civilian rule, the elections in
February 1999 brought another ex-general to the
presidency, Olusegun Obasanjo. Obasanjo’s cre-
dentials were better than that of previous gener-
als. When previously in power (1976–9) he had
voluntarily handed it over to a civilian govern-
ment. In April 2003, Obasanjo won the elections
for a second term in office. Although the elec-
tions were far from free of local manipulation and
corruption – state offices, and so the ability to
acquire money, being dependent on party and
personalities in power – Obasanjo would have
won anyway though by a smaller majority in the
multi-party contest.
Nigeria is the largest and most powerful coun-
try in the continent with a population almost
three times as large as South Africa’s but a Gross
Domestic Product of only a third, its export trade
consisting of practically nothing other than oil sent
mainly to the US. Yet, too little of what Nigeria
earns from oil benefits the people, whose standard
of living has not improved, indeed, has declined.
Hospitals, schools and public services have deteri-
orated. Obasanjo has promised to root out corrup-
tion, but it is so embedded and endemic that it will
require a wholly transformed civil service as busi-
ness and contracts remain predominantly con-
trolled by the state. The religious and tribal fault
lines added to the country’s problems when the
Muslim renaissance in the north and the attempts
to introduce sharia law were met by the resistance
of the Christian minority; in the Nigeria delta, the
people see the oil wealth taken from them. After
Abacha, Obasanjo could not fail to be an improve-
ment. Economically progress has been slow, cor-
ruption persists, but for the first time civilian rule
has been established, the military curbed, human
rights respected during Obasanjo’s presidency. A
devout Christian, he has tried to steer a middle
course between religious tolerance and checking
excesses. The future is a little brighter.
Conflict and turbulence since independence are
not just consequences of European colonial rule
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This is
shown by the history of Liberia and its war-torn
condition in the early 1990s. Liberia was the only
part of West Africa to avoid outright European
colonisation. It is unique in Africa in another way:
the overseas settlers who imposed their rule on
the indigenous African peoples were not white
but black. Early in the nineteenth century the
philanthropic American Colonisation Society had
the romantic notion of undoing some of the harm
done by the slave trade by resettling freed slaves
in Africa and so returning them to an African way
of life. The Society induced indigenous African
chieftains to allow a settlement on the coast of
what became Liberia. The first freed slaves landed
in 1822. But it was a white American, Jehudi
Ashmun, who during his stay in the territory
(1822–8) organised the government of the black
settlers and so became the real founder of Liberia.
The dependence on Anglo-Saxon Americans was
to be characteristic of the next 150 years of
Liberia’s history. Its independence was recognised
by the European nations in the mid-nineteenth
century, but it remained under American protec-
tion, though the US was actually the last major
nation to recognise its independence, in 1862.
A constitution modelled on that of the US was
adopted and the capital was named Monrovia in
1
THE END OF WHITE RULE IN WEST AFRICA 735
