Nigerian Says Many Initiatives Unfinished

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By Craig Timberg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, April 3, 2006; Page A11

OTA, Nigeria, April 2 -- Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said Sunday that he remained undecided about whether to seek a third term but that additional time in the office -- if approved by lawmakers and voters -- could allow the reforms he has initiated in the past seven years to become "anchored."

In his clearest comments yet on what has become a heated national debate, Obasanjo said in an interview that he was committed to the democratic process and would decide whether to run again after the national assembly voted on a proposal to revise the constitution to allow the president to seek an additional four-year term.

Obasanjo, who was elected in 1999, has spent much of his presidency focusing on debt relief, fighting corruption and reforming Nigeria's large but uneven economy. He said many of his initiatives remain unfinished. His second term is due to end next year.

"The reforms that we are putting in place have to be anchored, anchored in legislation, anchored in institutions," he said at his farm here outside Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital.

The issue has come to dominate politics in Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa and the most influential in troubled West Africa. The country is a major oil exporter and the fifth-largest foreign supplier of oil to the United States.

Opponents of the move say that rewriting the constitution to accommodate Obasanjo would undermine Nigeria's fragile democracy and possibly lead to the dissolution of a country that already is fractured along ethnic and religious lines.

Critics also allege that forces aligned with Obasanjo have resorted to bribery -- offering thousands of dollars in coveted U.S. currency rather than Nigeria's own, more volatile naira -- to win over lawmakers.

"Democracy is in peril," said Sen. Uche Chukwumerije, a member of the president's People's Democratic Party, speaking in his office in Abuja, the capital. "When people feel that they do not have legal ways to address their concerns, they will find other ways."

Chukwumerije and other opponents of a third term have formed the "2007 Movement," a multiparty coalition.

Obasanjo dismissed allegations of improper influence and bribery, saying, "Those who know me know I will not put a penny of government money into bribing people."

Nigerians interviewed at a market in Abuja expressed little enthusiasm for a third Obasanjo term, saying that the human rights situation and the economy have not improved under him.

"We need a change from somebody else, not from him," said Marian Echenbu, 30, an artist.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00729.html