Last weekend the countdown to the electoral and presidential elections due in April 2007 started when the voter registration programme began and, amidst allegations of corruption and use of irregular armed groups, it is easy to foresee a hot electoral campaign. Nevertheless, according to government officials, something is changing even in the most corrupted country in Africa.

Corruption. Last week, with the electoral campaign in the background,  Nuhu Ribadu, Head of Economic and Finance Crime Commission, denounced that 31 out of 36 of the country governors might be under judicial investigation on suspicion of corruption. “These are figures which should make us think” says PeaceReporter Osita Nwajah, spokesman of Efcc, “and which show that the way to  clean up our country is still long, although some progress has been made in the last few years”. Nigeria, in fact, has slightly improved its position in the Transparency International rating where it was at the bottom of the list only some years ago and this thanks to the work of Efcc and to a renewed interest in the fight against corruption on behalf of the authorities which has recently made a high-ranking victim: vice-president Atiku Abubakar.

Blows below the belt. At the end of September, Abukabar, one of the most outstanding candidates to succeed the outgoing president Olusegun Obasanjo, has been suspended for three months by the People’s Democratic Party just for allegations of corruption which now could drive him out from the race for nomination inside the Pdp and, therefore, from elections. For his part, Abukabar maintains to be victim of a political plot especially considering the time coincidence between allegations and the beginning of the electoral campaign. In his opinion, this is the umpteenth proof that in Nigeria electoral campaigns are fought more with blows below the belt than with political programs. A few days ago the thesis of the vice-president has been partly supported by an International Crisis Group report according to which some candidates would have hired armed groups of the Niger Delta to put their opponents out of action with shotguns.

A new climate. According to the report, among the groups involved there would be the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, a rebel group responsible for most of the attacks to oil plants and of the kidnappings of employees of foreign companies since the beginning of the year.
The alliance between rebel groups and candidates is not new: during the latest elections there were hundreds of victims of violence related to the electoral campaign and most of them were candidates summarily put out of the way. It is the government party, the Pdp, to be mainly accused of these unorthodox methods, but, in Nwajah’s opinion, the problem is wider than it may seem. “It is not only the Pdp to be involved in this system, it’s the whole Nigerian political culture to be wrong. Nevertheless I feel confident that, thanks to our work, next year’s  elections will witness a considerable improvement in terms of transparency. Now that Nigeria has accepted to watch out for this problem, we have far more resources”. Is this the proof that the political leaders’ accusations are not so exploitable as it may seem? “It may be that their denunciations have political reasons”, our interlocutor sums up “but this doesn’t mean that they are unfounded”.