Tough battle ahead for Obasanjo

Union, human rights and political leaders say they are closely watching the man who on 29 May will become Nigeria's first civilian president after 15 years of military rule. For Salihu Lukman, organising secretary for education research of the Nigerian Textile, Garment and Tailoring Workers Union, protecting the local currency and national industry heads the list of issues Olusegun Obasanjo needs to tackle once he is sworn in. Lukman told IRIN his union wanted Obasanjo to shore up the poor purchasing power of the naira and to raise duties on textile imports because cheap foreign goods attracted by the current low tariffs are killing local industries. "We want the raising of import dues of foreign textiles at the worst and, at best, a ban," Lukman said. The textile industry, he said, received a heavy blow between 1997 and 1998 when no fewer than 15 firms were closed, causing at least 3,000 redundancies. The union therefore expects Obasanjo to act on this immediately, Lukman said, "because once the government settles it may find it impossible to change (policy)". The executive director of Nigeria's Civil Liberties Organisation, Abdul Oroh, told Reuters recently that one major challenge will be for Obasanjo to restore a powerful military seen by the public as corrupt and oppressive, having committed murder and torture with impunity. "We are going to demand that they be punished and no crime should be left uninvestigated and unpunished," Oroh told Reuters. How Obasanjo - a former army general and until now the only military ruler in Nigeria to have handed power to an elected civil government - will react to this demand remains unknown, although he has hinted at caution, saying the military should not be humiliated. The other major challenge awaiting the incoming Nigerian president is how to appease residents of the volatile Niger Delta region, where militant Ijaw youths have been seizing oil installations and kidnapping employees. Militants have been demanding that oil companies clean up the environment and calling on the government to pump more money into development of the area. Meanwhile, the Constitutional Rights Project (CRP) and the Human Development Initiative (HDI) say that for Nigerians to have the freedom to act in a truly democratic environment, the 56 decrees passed by successive military administrations since 1984 will have to go. The two groups call these decrees a violation of constitutionally guaranteed rights. One decree they want scrapped before Obasanjo takes office is the Special Tribunal (Miscellaneous Offences) Act that allows the head of state to create tribunals whose sentences may be reviewed only by the military's Ruling Council. "We recommend that all offensive and unconstitutional provisions of this act be expunged," the CRP and HDI said in a statement on Monday.