No regime exemplified this rot more than that of the country’s former military despot, General Sani Abacha. Between November 1993 and June 1998 when his villainous life was cut short by prostitutes imported from India, Sani Abacha sought, by whatever means necessary, to sanitize anything that came between him and power. As the evil megalomaniac came to his wits’ end, Nigeria became the haven for charlatans of every shape and color while journalists and human rights activists became his prime target.

Of course, Abacha’s onslaught against journalists was not without precedent. In the early 1970s, a journalist had his hair shaved with the remnant of a broken bottle after he had been publicly flogged. His offence: daring to report the birthday celebrations of a military administrator. In 1984, two editors were imprisoned because they allegedly broke a law which forbade journalists from reporting about public officers.

And then in October 1986, the most horrendous of murders took place. Dele Giwa, arguably one of Africa’s finest journalists and editor-in-chief of NewsWatch magazine at that time was cut down in his prime by a letter bomb delivered to him as he was having breakfast. The parcel, according to sources, bore the inscription ‘from the office of the Commander-in-Chief’. Giwa was blown to pieces, his limbs dangling from a badly mangled body and scorched face.

This C-in-C was the self-styled evil genius, General Babangida, but he commanded nothing other than a bunch of addle-brained, gun-totting soldiers whose only ambition was to rule and ruin. When they were not bombing public places as a pretext to arrest opponents or looting the national treasury, they were hounding journalists.

I left Nigeria in November 1996, in the midst of this madness. I have not returned ever since. There are times I am overwhelmed by a feeling of betrayal, of abandoning my country in her time of crisis. But again, I look back at the friends and colleagues I lost; the wasted opportunities and careers; the dislocation and diminution of human life and I heave a sigh of relief. Eight days of detention in May 1995 left me flustered and bitter. But then I was lucky. For their reports on a coup d’etat, four editors, including mine, were sentenced to life imprisonment. The tribunal accused them of being ‘accessories after the fact’.

I love my country, her breathtaking ecosystem, her picturesque landscape and hospitable people, her dogged, innovate and versatile groups and her cultural diversity. But I hate her rulers. I have always since I began taking active interest in her politics about a decade and half ago. At 34, I have only witnessed two elections if they can be called that. I don’t know what it means to vote in an election, at least not in the practical sense of the word.

Seven years ago when a presidential election was held after a decade of military misrule, the results ended up in a thrash can literally. The winner of the election, Moshood Abiola was subsequently detained after he insisted on claiming victory. One morning, four years later, he died in his cell after sipping tea given to him by his jailers in the presence of an American diplomat. Well, Abiola not only lost the presidency and his life, he lost his businesses and wife as well. She had to suffer a more painful death. Gunned down in the streets of Lagos, the chaotic former capital of Nigeria, Kudirat Abiola represented a new phase in political activism in Nigeria. And she made the ultimate sacrifice.

October 1 marks 40 years of independence in Nigeria. But there won’t be much to celebrate in Africa’s most populous nation, except for potbellied politicians and their hangers-on toasting to the windfall they are enjoying. For the better part of their first year in office, legislators in both the lower and upper houses spent more time haggling about furniture allowances than they spent in making laws. The former had demanded three million naira (30,000 USD) while the latter settled for five million naira (50,000 USD)

Nigeria is indeed a sad commentary in nationhood. Sadder still is the realization that this ‘Open Sore of a Continent’, as one of her most illustrious sons, Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, once described it remains Africa’s worst nightmare. As part of its resume, Nigeria boasts of being the battleground of Africa’s worst civil war to date. More than one million people died and about three times that number displaced between 1967 and 1970 in a human tragedy so mindless it is better forgotten. Add to this, countless religious and civil disturbances. This is probably the only country in the world that operates with no definite population figure. There has never been a population census since independence without goats and sheep raising eyebrows.

Coupled together in 1914 by British invaders, nothing seems to go right for this oil rich country. Indeed, oil has proved a curse rather than a blessing. Huge oil revenues have been frittered away in conspicuous consumption. One political commentator once remarked that ‘oil has made the Nigerian ruling class mad and obscene’. Billions of dollars of oil money every year has left the generals who have misruled Nigeria since independence dizzy.

The country was recently adjudged the most corrupt nation in the world by the Germany-based anti-corruption agency, Transparency International (TI), by extension declaring her the most unreliable place to do business. But Nigerians do not need TI to realize the extent of corruption in the country. Over-inflated contracts, reckless disbursement of foreign reserves and outright thievery by public officials have become, over the years, cardinal principles of state policy. Under General Babangida, more than 12 billion dollars extra in oil revenue during the Gulf War went with the wind. At the time of ignominious death, General Abacha had in Germany, Switzerland and even Liechtenstein money far in excess of the country’s foreign debt. In the words of one writer, ‘the generals who have ruled Nigeria are so well beyond accountability as to make hypocrisy unnecessary’.

Nigeria is the seventh largest oil exporter, yet she ranks among the poorest countries in the world. The bold display of ‘no fuel’ signs and long queues at fuel stations all year round tell the harrowing story of persistent fuel scarcity in a country that produces three million barrels of oil a day. Nigeria has an electricity corporation with the acronym NEPA: National Electric Power Authority. But it makes sense to describe it as ‘Never Expect Power Always’. Living with incessant power outages has become part of the national psyche.

There is a new democratic order. A new president, Olusegun Obasanjo, but in reality, old wine in new wineskin. General Obasanjo was military ruler between 1976 and 1979. The new democrats have indeed lived up to expectations. In just one year of the new regime, the upper legislative house, the Senate, has had three presidents. The first was kicked out for certificate forgery. His successor lost his lucrative job because of fraud. The speaker of the lower house had earlier been thrown out for multiple criminal offences. His colleagues shed tears as they bade him farewell. The courts fined him the equivalent of 20 US dollars and a few months later he received presidential pardon.

Nigeria’s problem is partly the crisis of leadership. The country has not had leaders in the mould of Kwame Nkrumah, independence leader of Ghana, Patrice Lumumba (Congo DR), Julius Nyerere (Tanzania) Sekou Toure (Guinea) or Nelson Mandela (South Africa), leaders whose only thoughts were what they could do to improve the lives of their people.

Ethnic division and religion are Nigeria’s other problems. With three major ethnic nationalities and countless smaller ones, about 250 languages and a huge population of Christians and Moslem, with a sprinkling of animists and other fringe groups, Nigeria presents a complex study in nationhood.

Last October, Islamic fundamentalists in the north introduced Sharia, the body of Islamic religious laws as the legal system. Nigeria, constitutionally, is a secular nation. Not for these latter-day Talabans who have vowed to Islamize the whole nation and have threatened Fatwah on anyone who stands on their way.

Sharia came with such menacing rules that would make apartheid South Africa took like paradise. Men and women must ride in separate buses; separate schools and social facilities; public flogging for drinking alcohol and amputation for theft. Last March one Buba Jangedi had his right hand amputated for allegedly stealing a cow. Only recently, another state spent close to one million dollars on the construction of Sharia courts and importation of amputation machines. Yet in many of these states, it is much easier to buy a can of Coke than to get a glass of clean drinking water.

Not a few people believe this jihad may sound Nigeria’s death-knell. Presently, the country hangs precariously on the cliff, its unity and survival threatened by various conflicting interests. Undoubtedly, Nigeria requires some kind of national catharsis to get her out of the doldrums. But the big question remains: who will bell the cat?