Nigeria marks its first 10 years of unbroken civilian rule on Friday after emerging from nearly three decades of uninterrupted military dictatorship on May 29, 1999.

The political elite in Africa’s top oil producer are rolling out the drums to celebrate the milestone.  And why not?

Olusegun Obasanjo, a former military ruler who won elections in 1999, ended Nigeria’s pariah status and brought Africa’s most populous nation back into the international fold, helping secure an $18 billion debt write-off in 2005.

Power was then transferred to President Umaru Yar’Adua in 2007 - the first successful transition from one civilian leader to another since independence from Britain in 1964 - although the election was condemned by observers for widespread rigging.

Soldiers have so far stayed put in their barracks during the historic decade, despite mounting frustrations among ordinary people - most of whom live on less than $2 a day - that their lives are not changing quickly enough for the better.

Cause for celebration, given Nigeria’s post-independence history, when the army exploited such frustrations to truncate the First Republic in 1966 and the Second Republic in 1983.

But while the great and the good celebrate, many ordinary Nigerians feel indifferent about the landmark.

The poorest say democracy has done little to change their standard of living. The huge earnings from Nigeria’s mainstay oil and gas industry are still not improving their lives.

There is much greater freedom of speech and of association, but some say the only tangible change in their daily lives over the past decade has been the arrival of the mobile phone.

Critics say Obasanjo’s high-profile campaign against corruption - the monster that had held Nigeria back for decades - was little more than a weapon against his enemies.

Initial optimism over his tenure gave way to a feeling that he was just as overbearing and kleptocratic as his predecessors.   

Yar’Adua’s assumption of power two years ago was seen as a breath of fresh air, but again Nigerians have been left wondering whether their optimism was misplaced.

 Economic reforms have slowed, infrastructure remains shambolic in large parts of the country and electricity supply remains as intermittent as it was a decade ago, despite Nigeria being the world’s eighth biggest exporter of crude oil.

In moments of desperation, some even wonder if the country was better off under military rule. So where does the truth lie?

How much has Nigeria really changed in the decade since military rule?  Has the country come too far for it to be conceivable that the military could one day take power again, or does democracy still have only a fragile hold on the giant of Africa?

Much of the news that comes out of the Niger Delta, the vast network of creeks home to Africa’s biggest oil and gas industry, is generated either by militant leaders claiming spectacular attacks on oil industry installations or by the military, keen to publicise its victories flushing out crude oil thieves from camps nestled deep in the mangroves.

Rarely heard are the voices of the “boys” who have taken up arms and make up the rank and file of the militant gangs. Oil theft on an industrial scale or kidnappings for ransom make some of their bosses rich. Peace negotiations see others rewarded with the veneer of political legitimacy and a comfortable new government-funded lifestyle. But the grunts tend to share little of the spoils.

So an initiative to take them out of the militant camps and send them abroad to be immersed in the teachings of non-violent activists from Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela raised - after the initial scepticism - a strong dose of curiosity. After the attempt to “reorientate their psyches”, the candidates would be schooled in skills meant to make them employable once they returned back home.

Would they be convinced that they could renounce violence and still fight for their rights? Did they really believe that theirs was a political struggle or were they simply interested in emulating some of their leaders and growing rich from stolen crude, ransom money and government pay-offs?

There are precedents in West Africa. Former child soldiers in Liberia and Sierra Leone who spent their formative years living by the gun have been reschooled and retrained, some integrated into the national army, others starting lives with newly-learned skills as carpenters or welders.

Negotiators trying to build peace in divided countries such as Ivory Coast or Democratic Republic of Congo have brought former rebels into the fold by making them stakeholders in the future of their countries, with varying degrees of success.

Could the same philosophy of constructive engagement work with the armed youths of the Niger Delta?

Some of the young men waiting in Lagos airport to begin the overseas part of their “reorientation training” reminded me of former child soldiers I had met in Liberia and Sierra Leone, or young Tuareg rebels in northern Mali and Niger. They had similar aspirations as young adults anywhere — to earn a decent living, be able to look after themselves and win respect from their peers.

“Anybody in violence wants out of violence, it’s just a question of finding a way,” one of them, Patrick, commented.

So could the programme work? If, with new skills, these former militants can return home and earn a living, could they persuade others in the community to lay down their weapons? Or is it an expensive waste of money, rewarding former criminals with the sort of opportunities that many in Nigeria can only dream of?

Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua left for Saudi Arabia more than two weeks ago for the Islamic obligation of the lesser Hajj, a pilgrimage to Mecca. Yar’Adua, who is known to have a chronic kidney problem, has sought medical attention in Jeddah and has still not returned, raising fears about the state of his health. A medical source in Saudi Arabia told Reuters he had undergone an operation.

Government and presidency officials have been tight-lipped about the president’s condition and have not said exactly when he will be back. The opposition has demanded clarity on the president’s health, adding that his absence is having an adverse effect on the workings of government and that the official silence is fuelling speculation and uncertainty.

Should the head of state’s health be a private issue or is it a matter of public interest? Is his prolonged absence from Nigeria a cause for concern? As governor of Katsina state, Yar’Adua spent several months abroad for medical treatment without attracting much public attention, only to return, complete his term and win another one. Can he expect to do the same as leader of the nation?

What if the president leaves office early?

The lines of Europe’s carve up of Africa were finally taking shape. On March 11, 1913, Britain and Germany agreed who got which bits of a swampy corner of the continent that few in either of the cold and distant countries had heard of.

Two states that did not exist at that time put the border agreement into effect again on Thursday with Nigeria formally handing over the Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon.

That followed a ruling by the World Court in 2002 for which both countries supplied copies of yellowing colonial-era documents to justify claims to territory that had brought them to the brink of war.

Neither might have had as much interest had it not been for the expectation that there is oil there, but it again highlighted Africa’s commitment to colonial borders drawn without consideration for those actually living there.

Many people in Bakassi have made clear they would rather be in Nigeria than Cameroon. There have been recent attacks by groups very similar to those waging a different struggle further west in the Nigeria delta.

Nigeria said that by following the ruling it was showing its respect for international law, a demonstration of the change in the country since the end of military rule. On the other side of the continent, an international pronouncement on the Ethiopia-Eritrea border remains disputed.

Fights over historic borders go far beyond Africa of course, as the recent bloodshed in the Caucasus has made only too clear.

Does Africa have any choice but to stick with its colonial borders? There are several hundred ethnic groups in Nigeria and Cameroon alone. Would questioning borders mean the collapse of much of the continent in bitter disputes over who got what? Would it ease the ethnic tensions that poison many countries?

Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua moved quickly after taking office a year ago to try to  address the causes of unrest in the Niger Delta, where a violent campaign of sabotage against the oil industry has cut production and contributed to an unprecedented rise in world oil prices.

Yar’Adua announced plans for formal talks and freed two jailed militant leaders when he took office, but the peace process has made little real progress since then, with the rebel Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) continuing to blow up oil pipelines and kidnap foreign workers.
The government has called a summit for July meant to involve all stakeholders, but MEND and another group — the Ijaw Youth Council — have said they will not take part. Yar’Adua has said the summit aims to address the frustrations of the Niger Delta communities, who have seen their land and water polluted by oil production, but he has also said his government will not tolerate the presence of armed militants in the region.

What are the options for the government — at federal and state level — in tackling the problems of the Niger Delta? Should the government negotiate with armed militants? Are the militants anything more than common criminals, profiting from an illicit trade in stolen crude? What role should the foreign oil companies play in bringing peace to the region?

Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua took office a year ago promising to pursue free-market reforms launched by his predecessor, Olusegun Obasanjo, vowing zero tolerance for corruption and listing seven national priorities including improving power supply and reducing food insecurity.

A year on, his critics say economic reforms are grinding to a halt, his anti-corruption efforts are just window-dressing and his cabinet is largely a collection of ineffective bureaucrats who are but a shadow of an all-star cast in the former administration.

His supporters say his efforts to entrench the rule of law are a vital opportunity for Nigeria to make a break after decades of corruption and cronyism, and that while progress may be slow, he is laying the underpinnings for much stronger institutions in the country.

Does Yar’Adua have the political muscle he needs to lead Africa’s most populous nation? Is his oft-repeated mantra of the rule of law a step change in Nigeria? Or has the country lost the momentum it built up under Obasanjo? What do you think?

A special Nigerian tribunal upheld the 2007 election of President Umaru Yar’Adua, rejecting challenges from rivals who wanted the vote annulled because of massive rigging. Yar’Adua’s two main rivals in last April’s election, former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari and then Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, had asked the tribunal to annul the election, alleging widespread fraud, as pronounced by local and international observers.

The tribunal ruled that Buhari, Yar’Adua’s main opponent, had failed to prove that violations of the electoral law were substantial enough to invalidate the overall result. The five judges of the tribunal also rejected Abubakar’s challenge.

Read what leading analysts said before the ruling and have your say on how the tribunal’s dismissal of the challenges will impact on Nigeria’s politics and economy.

Patrick Smith, Africa Confidential (see full analysis)
“Nigeria’s post-election crisis has taken a very different turn from Kenya’s. Unlike Kenya’s thwarted politicians, Nigeria’s opposition leaders are contesting the election results through the courts and this time seem to be confident of success - even if they have to take their claims to the Supreme Court.”

Bismarck Rewane, Financial Derivatives Company (see full analysis )
“The Nigerian judiciary, in trying to entrench the principle of the separation of powers and its independence, might seize the historic opportunity of the election tribunal to redeem its battered reputation.”

Antony Goldman, PM Consulting (see full analysis)
“If the court says the April 2007 presidential election was unfair on the grounds that it was rigged - which is what Buhari and Atiku are arguing - presumably someone is guilty of the rigging. It seems strange to say one candidate rigged an election to such a degree that it must be re-run, only then to allow that candidate to have another go, apparently without any censure or sanction.”

Amin Dalhatu, politician, northern Nigeria (see full analysis)
“The much anticipated verdict of the Nigerian presidential election tribunal will leave us in deeper political quagmire than we already are in, whichever way it goes.”

Nigeria’s post-election crisis has taken a very different turn from Kenya’s. Unlike Kenya’s thwarted politicians, Nigeria’s opposition leaders are contesting the election results through the courts and this time seem to be confident of success - even if they have to take their claims to the Supreme Court.

Along with many observers, I would say that Nigeria’s vote counting in April 2007 looked even more inventive than Kenya’s last December. Indeed, Nigeria’s President Umaru Yar’Adua has acknowledged that the widespread criticisms of the performance of the country’s Independent National Electoral Commission need to be addressed.

Yet in Nigeria, there are no visiting UN secretaries general, no high-level mediation and no talk of power-sharing. There’s just a simple demand from the opposition politicians - Abubakar Atiku and General Muhammadu Buhari - that the election should be rerun under an independent electoral commission.

I went down to the Niger Delta to report on the election last April where there had been several violent clashes before the elections. On the day before the Presidential elections in Bayelsa, a group of militants stormed into the state capital Yenagoa, released some of their comrades held in a police cell and blew a hole in a local hotel.

Across the country there was plenty of election day violence. But after the result was announced, there was an almost eerie calm - even the Delta militants announced a truce of sorts. Neither of the opposition contenders seemed ready to take their battle to streets.

General Buhari told me that he expected the ’cause of free elections’ to be taken up by civil society groups and he wasn’t the sort of politician who would lead protest marches through the capital.

So against expectations, Nigeria is facing the prospect of a quiet revolution as the courts overturn the ruling People’s Democratic Party’s election victories. So far the courts have overturned the governorship election results in six states, as well as ruling against the election of several senators and representatives in the National Assembly.

Now Nigeria is to enter unknown territory. The Presidential Election tribunal is due soon to announce its verdict on the mass of evidence and petitions presented to it by Abubakar’s and Buhari’s lawyers. That judgement is unlikely to be definitive: whichever side loses is likely to appeal. So there is the prospect of a lengthy legal battle ahead.

Should, the tribunal rule against President Yar’Adua and the PDP, all sorts of imponderables come into play: firstly, who will run the country? In the event of the elected President and Vice President having to stand down, the President of the Senate has to take over and organise fresh elections within 60 days. However, the current President of the Senate, David Mark, faces his own election petition. If he loses, who then takes over?

Nigerian civic activists point out that a rerun of last year’s elections without fundamental reform of the electoral commission is unlikely to be much of an improvement. Yet the prospect of another vote has sent the political class into paroxysms of plotting, the ruling PDP is to hold a national conference early in March at which some of its more ambitious members will scheme to replace Yar’Adua’s name on the ballot with their own, if there is a rerun.

And the old military politicians in the party - Generals Olusegun Obasanjo and Ibrahim Babangida - are still mentioned as kingmakers, if not kings trying to get back on the throne. The opposition candidates have their own problems: General Buhari has fallen out with some of the leading members of his own party who joined the Yar’Adua government and doubts persist about Abubakar’s seriousness as a presidential contender.

So much is hanging on the court’s decision that Nigeria’s literati have taken to rewriting those lines in Shakespeare’s King Henry IV part II: “Uneasy lies the head that wears a judge’s wig …”

The Nigerian judiciary, in trying to entrench the principle of the separation of powers and its independence, might seize the historic opportunity of the election tribunal to redeem its battered reputation. Hitherto the Court system was believed to be corrupt, slow and weak. However, election issues are not just criminal or of a Common Law dimension but have major implication son stability.

The judges will not be oblivious to the violence and chaos in Kenya and the possibility of a contagion across Sub-Saharan Africa. Nigerians remember too well the problems in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast and dread a repeat in their country. Therefore the judiciary could be caught between horns of a dilemma in trading off strong judicial precedents of obiter dieta in the defence of plural democracy and stability of the nation.

The immediate and remote consequences of any decision will impact on the political equilibrium, business/financial dynamics and the levers of control in Nigeria. Assuming that the election is annulled and a fresh one is held, the incumbent is expected to have a strategic advantage, assuming he can secure the nomination of his party, the PDP.

The PDP is already in the middle of a squabble over its leadership. Even though there are no strong ideological differences of opinion, the struggle and acrimony over control of the party is vicious. In the eye of the storm is ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo whose legacy and influence is being threatened. Therefore, even though conventional logic points to a no-contest for the incumbent, it will be fool-hardy to assume that Yar’Adua’s nomination is a fait accompli.

However, if Yar’Adua bows out because of his lack of interest (a rumour that has been widely circulated) then it could be a free-for-all amongst the northern elite who will produce a candidate, according to PDP rules. A fiercely fought political battle in what was considered the monolithic northern establishment is a dreaded situation.

In the meantime, Yar’Adua has maintained a strong hold on the purse and upheld fiscal discipline much to the dismay of the influence peddlers. A vicious political struggle and the attendant trade-offs could compromise these gains and lead to undesirable macroeconomic consequences.

Two constituencies that need to be watched at these times remain the military and the oil-producing Niger Delta. The military have a history of destabilising political systems in Africa whilst the Niger Delta crisis even though ebbing could easily become effervescent again.

There are a few things that strike me as curious about the process in Nigeria.

If the court says the April 2007 presidential election was unfair on the grounds that it was rigged - which is what Buhari and Atiku are arguing - presumably someone is guilty of the rigging.

It seems strange to say one candidate rigged an election to such a degree that it must be re-run, only then to allow that candidate to have another go, apparently without any censure or sanction.

Nor, for that matter, was there anything to suggest that the presidential election was somehow altogether out of step with the rest of the electoral process in Nigeria. A handful of governors have been ordered from office by courts - but on technical grounds relating to interpretation of the electoral commission’s powers rather than because of proof of cheating. The problems in the presidential election were not isolated - they were a function of Nigeria’s political class.

Was it a question of a few bad apples? Or was the whole barrel rotten? And in civilian politics in Nigeria, are those elected to office ever more accountable to, or representative of, the broad masses of voters below, or a handful of barons above? Perhaps in 2007 the real difference only was that the illusion of democracy was just too thin to be credible.

And if the court does order a re-run, what guarantees are there that the process will be fairer, with the same electoral commission and the ruling PDP in an even stronger position in the states? The process should be managed by David Mark, the Senate president. But his election to the Senate has also been challenged. If he has to go, the PDP’s support for the zoning of top offices means his replacement will also have to come from the north central zone. Of the zone’s 19 senators, five are from opposition parties; of the remaining 14 at least 8 face challenges to their elections. The contest for Senate president could be almost as frenzied as those that took place last April.

Unless of course the PDP were to engineer a change in its candidate - and it’s worth remembering that there was nothing terribly democratic about how any of the presidential candidates secured their original nominations - which might mean that Atiku and Buhari had gone to all that trouble potentially only to give former president Olusegun Obasanjo, their nemesis, another crack at putting a more reliable place man in the job.

As with Kenya - can a political problem be fixed by anyone other than politicians? Let’s not forget, the courts in Rivers state decided the PDP governor should stand down because he ought not to have been the party’s candidate in the first place. That was a fairly contentious ruling - but the court then went on to say that the man who it said should have been the candidate should immediately be sworn in as governor, because the PDP had won the election - in a state where many observers said little or no polling took place at all! So in the interests of due process, someone who was never a candidate and who did not stand in an election that in any case did not happen rules over a state with a budget this year of close to $2bn.