Jonathan’s train misses the station
CROSS-COUNTRY SERVICE WITH CONSTANT BREAKDOWNS IS AN EXAMPLE OF NIGERIAN PRESIDENT’S REFORMS
It’s Friday evening and a group of Nigerian train staff scream at each other as they battle to get power working on a revived cross-country service from Lagos to Kano, the nation’s two largest cities.
Rolling out of Nigeria’s southern commercial hub more than eight hours late, plainclothed policemen cock their AK-47 assault rifles as they try to push back young men launching themselves onto the carriages to hitch illegal rides as the train chugs through Lagos’ shantytowns. It breaks down repeatedly, and power to the air-conditioned sections cuts out permanently a third of the way through the 42-hour trip.
“It’s not fixed — this is Nigeria,” said Mohammad Khalled, a 21-year-old student heading to the central city of Minna, on his first train ride as a safer and cheaper alternative to the badly maintained road network.
Restarting the train service in December 2012 after more than a decade of inconsistent service along the 1,126-kilometer track traversing the length of Africa’s most populous nation is one of the achievements touted by President Goodluck Jonathan’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) before elections next month. Other gains include the sale of power utilities to private investors and fertiliser subsidy reform. Many of these reforms, like the train line, haven’t gone smoothly.
The elections themselves were delayed from February 14 to March 28 after Jonathan’s security adviser said the military couldn’t ensure a safe vote because it was planning an offensive against the militant group Boko Haram in the northeast.
The opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) led by Muhammadu Buhari, a 72-year-old Muslim northerner and former military ruler, has sought to capitalise on the perceived corruption and security shortcomings of Jonathan, a Christian and member of the ethnic Ijaw minority from the oil-rich south.
An almost 50 per cent crash in oil prices last year exposed the nation’s crude-dependent finances and sent the naira tumbling 18 per cent against
❝ The death toll [because of Boko Haram attacks] is piling up by the days and weeks, and it’s like it can’t be controlled.”
Raji Itopa Student
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the dollar in the past six months. Nigeria’s benchmark stock index has dropped 27 per cent this year in dollar terms, the world’s worst performer after Ukraine, according to Bloomberg data.
Jonathan’s campaign posters urge Nigerians to vote for continuity and to “move forward” under the PDP, which has governed since the return to civilian rule in 1999. Buhari’s campaign uses the APC party symbol of a broom to promise change from corruption and insecurity.
Radical threat
Buhari has pledged to end the war against Boko Haram, which Yvonne Mhango, a subSaharan Africa economist at Renaissance Capital, called “a stain on Jonathan’s record that wasn’t resolved and escalated.”
As the train sat stuck in the southern city of Osogbo, Bashir Raji Itopa, a 26-yearold economics student heading to Minna in second class, said he’s concerned about the worsening conflict.
He quit studying in the northeastern city of Maiduguri because of Boko Haram’s attacks in the region. The group, which has declared a caliphate the size of Belgium in Nigeria’s northeast, killed at least 1,600 people in January, Bath, Britain-based risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft, said in a February 11 report. More than 4,700 people died last year in militant raids, double the number in 2013, according to the consultancy. “The death toll is piling up by the days and weeks, and it’s like it can’t be controlled,” Itopa said.
In his 2011 campaign, Jonathan, 57, who has a PhD in zoology, vowed to bring electricity to Nigerians, the vast majority of whom live without regular access to grid power.
After selling state-owned generation plants, the government had to intervene with a $1.3 billion (Dh4.7 billion) industry bailout in September, while demand still far outstrips supply. “Has it been meaningful for the average person in terms of an increase in power supply to the grid and the cost of power? No, not as yet,” Mhango of Renaissance Capital said.
A petroleum industry bill has languished in parliament for six years, deterring investment in the oil and gas industry of Africa’s biggest crude producer.
Even as Jonathan’s party said it would run an issues-based campaign, it’s sought to portray Buhari as an extremist and has questioned the authenticity of his secondary school certificate, allegations the opposition leader has denied.
Buhari, who ruled between 1983 to 1985 after instigating a coup and is running in his fourth presidential campaign, is wooing voters in the south outside his northern power base. His backers say his earlier stint in power showed him to be uncompromising on corruption and security.
The election is set to be the tightest ever, with both parties garnering 42 per cent support among likely voters, according to an Afrobarometer poll released January 27.
Kano, Obinna Chibuike, a first-time train rider said that despite his disappointment with the railway’s shortcomings, his vote is for Jonathan. “I haven’t seen complete change, but ... I’m impressed.”