Mixed views on Nigeria's Obasanjo

When Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo steps down from power Tuesday after two terms in office, some of the kindest tributes will come from abroad. Many world leaders see the former army general as a staunch reformer, a visionary, an enemy of corruption, and an architect of African debt relief.

As he ends his tenure with a tour of Sierra Leone and Liberia, where he played a leading role in bringing peace, some experts will praise him for his willingness to host talks and send troops to several African hot spots, including Darfur.

But in Nigeria's commercial capital, Lagos – a city that practically throbs with free-market energy but suffers from chronic power blackouts – Peter Williams, a middle-aged security officer, says he would give Mr. Obasanjo so-so marks as president.

"He scored average," says Mr. Williams. "When he came to power there was no communications, but now we have mobile phones and can communicate all over the world." He sighs. "The only thing is, we still have no electricity and that is part of his weakness."

History, of course, may yet point to the Obasanjo regime as a turning point for Nigeria, a time when a resource-rich country full of impoverished people came into its own. But Obasanjo's more immediate grade by ordinary people and academics alike focuses as much on the disappointments – failed schools, corrupt police, overwhelmed hospitals, and sporadic electricity – as on the periodic triumphs that Obasanjo has achieved since winning office in 1999. What is certain is that few Nigerian politicians have left as indelible a mark on their complex, vibrant, self-destructive country as the man most Nigerians refer to by the nickname 'OBJ.'

Pushed Nigeria forward

"What Obasanjo was about is pushing Nigeria so far forward that a U-turn was no longer possible," says John Adaleke, an independent financial analyst in Lagos. "He's created a government that probably works better than it did eight years ago. What he hasn't done is create an impact on the ordinary man on the street."

Turning a country of 140 million mainly poor people into a modern economy was never going to be easy, but it's especially hard in a country with as much entrenched corruption as Nigeria. Government ministries are often magnets for politically connected friends who consider it their right to steal from the public purse.

Nowhere is this more true than the Ministry of Power. When Obasanjo took over in 1999, the country produced about 4,000 megawatts of electricity with its gas-fired power plants. Today it produces around 2,500 megawatts, because of poor maintenance.

Confronting a culture of corruption

To deal with this corruption – in 2006, Transparency International listed Nigeria as one of the 20 most corrupt nations in the world – Obasanjo created an Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and gave it free rein to investigate anyone in government, including members of his own cabinet. It was this anticorruption drive, in part, that encouraged Western donors to forgive Nigeria's crushing $12.5 billion in foreign debt.

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