Slow Progress in Nigeria

...Much of this will be provided by oil exports in the coming years...

...The troops acquire the best housing available wherever they are stationed, even at times converting secondary schools into barracks...

...Visitors to the Lagos area quickly learn how the soldiers keep busy...

...Fanning out around the land from their native southeastern corner of Nigeria, they began to take over jobs where their training and nationalist spirit gave them an advantage...

...Far more devout and messianic than the Arabs of North Africa, the Hausas pay political allegiance to the rigid hierarchial leadership that traditionally regulates both tribe and religion...

...They come, moreover, not from the coastal Lagos area at all, but from the vast northern region, where the Moslem Hausa tribe predominates...

...One local industrialist, a Lebanese, told me that new machinery he ordered from Holland was finally deposited at a port in the neighboring country of Dahomey...

...Thus, only a trickle of these supplies reaches the former secessionist area...

...Most Hausas can get along very well without automobiles, refrigerators, or the factories in Lagos...

...But he also knows who wields the real power in the country, and where his true constituency lies...

...There is even talk of shifting many of the government ministries from Lagos to the Hausa city of Kaduna...

...These ranged from electrical engineering to government administration to the retailing of imported goods...

...The potential threat posed by all of these armed men who cannot be sent home may well be the only problem causing the Head of State, Major General Ya-kubu Gowon, to lose much sleep...

...The government has reopened the roads needed to truck goods through to other parts of the country, especially the oil-producing areas...

...Nigeria's most ambitious project at the moment is a road-building program that within a year will connect the north to the Lagos area by one of the best highway systems in West Africa...

...During the war, Ibos exchanged their Nigerian currency for Biafran notes and coins, which have been impounded without anything being issued in return...

...The men who control the country today, and who will continue to do so for years to come, prefer to conserve traditional values...

...General Gowon himself is not a Hausa, but a member of a minor northern tribe...

...Since the Hausas no longer need to compromise with the Ibos (Lagos had been made an independent district, like Washington), Kaduna may someday become the capital...

...The merchandise has now been in Dahomey more than a month, storage fees are mounting, and the industrialist does not know how to bring the machinery to Lagos...

...Indeed, money is so scarce that one visitor who tried to purchase a one-shilling pineapple in the market in Enugu, the state capital, could not find a single person able to provide change for a five-shilling note, worth about 50 cents...

...The Federal government is not about to panic simply because Western observers complain there is a lack of "progress...

...Shipping firms, beginning to realize that the harbor delay costs them more than they earn from many of their cargo loads, sometimes refuse to stop in Lagos at all...

...As for the rest—high prices, the scarcity of foreign manufactured goods, the disturbances to industrialists and motorists, the needs that are not being met because of soldiers' salaries—these seem to inspire the same kind of concern the Nixon Administration exhibits for Americans who have lost their jobs because of anti-inflationary measures: It's too bad, but...

...Day-to-day prices, which used to be a bit higher than in the south because of transportation costs, are now far below those in Lagos or Benin City...

...In fact, however, while some efforts at reconstruction are being made, the government is not disturbed by the slow pace of progress here...

...Many yorubas nave moved north to fill important positions once held by Ibos...

...Outside the war zone, the worst problem may be the presence of an estimated 100,000 unneeded soldiers, whose relatively high salaries drain the national budget of funds that could be used for reconstruction...

...With the battle lines drawn between Hausa and Ibo, both sides watched to see which way the other tribes would turn, particularly the country's third major group, the Yorubas of the southwest...

...Few travelers are allowed to pass without paying tribute, the alternative being a time-consuming and harrowing search...

...Post, and is presently touring Africa...

...Nevertheless, when independence was finally granted in 1960, Britain helped organize the Nigerian Federal government in a way that gave the Hausas, with their superior numbers, dominance...

...As for the soldiers, the north sees little of them...

...The Koran and cattle-raising, they feel, are all their children need to know...

...That is why they are not worried about the ships idling in the harbor...

...Gowon will probably see to it that industrialization continues, and that his southern supporters get the economic improvement they want...

...Cars can be purchased only by officials with special authorization...

...As a result of the import limitations, many goods are in short supply...

...The jam is caused largely by the continuation of wartime regulations to prevent goods from reaching what was once Biafra...

...And they certainly do not care about the Ibos' reconstruction...

...The shipping company explained it could not afford the wait in Lagos...

...Generally, though, the Hausas are content to leave the Ibo gap unbridged, at least for a while...

...Meanwhile, an appalling tie-up in Lagos harbor is forcing incoming vessels to wait up to three or four weeks before they can obtain a berth, and the city's factories often stand idle because needed raw materials are sitting at sea...

...In the summer of 1966, the Hausas rose up and slaughtered an estimated 100,000 Ibos, burning their homes and stores, and causing the survivors to flee back to their homeland...

...halted, people still exist on subsistence diets and live in deplorable conditions...

...Wartime importation restrictions—imposed because all foreign exchange was needed to buy arms—are being continued to help rebuild Nigeria's formerly solid reserves...

...In the most heavily populated Hausa area, only 5 per cent of the children go to primary school, whereas in the south the great majority attend free...

...This is not due to a shortage of schools in the north...

...Apart from Federal occupation troops, the entire Ibo Central-East state is virtually penniless...

...It is not surprising, then, that the Hausas were reluctant partners in the southern tribes' independence movement of the 1950s...

...He is acknowledged, too, as being responsible for the decision to grant a general amnesty to the conquered Ibos...

...In the end, the Yorubas and other southern tribes sealed a pact with the Hausas, and the Ibos were overwhelmingly smashed in the ensuing war...

...AFTER THE CIVIL WAR Slow Progress in Nigeria BY JONATHAN KWITNY Lagos To a stranger visiting Lagos, Nigeria might seem to be agonizing in problems brought on by the bloody, 30-month civil war that ended in January...

...According to the manager of a leading automobile import company, vehicles bought in this manner at the government-regulated price are soon sold on the black market for twice as much...

...Not many Hausas speak English —the official language of Nigeria, and the lingua franca of its southern tribes—and most consider their tribal tongue superior...

...Prices in this capital city and surrounding areas have inflated to 2550 per cent above their prewar levels...

...Lagos is full of refrigerators that do not work and cannot be replaced...

...and the Moslem tribesmen wanted little part of what the southerners termed "progress...

...Officially, these are inspections for weapons—in practice, they are shakedowns...

...it is a reflection of how few parents want their offspring to receive a Western-style education...

...But there has been no effort as yet to rebuild the miles of bombed-out homes, stores and schools in the Ibo homeland...

...But what the Ibos saw as corruption, the Hausas called tradition...

...To understand this attitude in the face of the apparent confound-ment of national development, one must recall that the Nigerian civil war was started and won by people who thought "progress," as Westerners define it, was coming too fast in the mid-'60s...

...His is just one in a long and growing list of such cases...

...Many nations have tried to send aid to the hunger-plagued Ibo region, but all shipments must still be channeled through Lagos, 300 miles away, and undergo thorough inspection...

...Nor has inflation hit the Hausa lands...

...The Federal Army was recruited from the unemployed, who by now have grown used to earning some 25 pounds a month (a laborer might expect six or eight) and would face joblessness again if demobilized...

...Under his direction, the massacre of captured Ibo civilians was terminated during the conflict, and although looting and rape were common, no widespread killing followed the Bi-afran surrender...

...The destruction in many areas is nearly total...

...Roadblocks have been set up on major routes, frequently at 10-mile intervals...

...In Benin City, for example, they have occupied new buildings originally erected as headquarters for the expanding government of the oil-rich Midwest...

...The soldiers, waving pistols and machine guns, often point them directly at motorists and ask for gifts of specific items they see in the cars...

...Since jobs are practically unavailable, and no salaries are being paid for most of those that do exist, hardly anyone has enough cash to buy the goods that are starting to appear in the markets...

...the few roadblocks one encounters there do not appear to be manned by uniformed bandits...

...All cars are stopped, except those driven by other soldiers...

...The predominantly Hausa junta that took over in July 1966, touching off waves of anti-Ibo rioting, put Gowon forward as leader precisely because he might prove more acceptable to the Yorubas and others...

...The Hausas won the war, and their cause was tradition...

...Most of the Ibos had primary educations, many were university graduates, and they had little patience for a government run by a tribal hierarchy whose decisions were based on bribery and nepotism...

...These have sunk so low that the Nigerian pound—as strong as Great Britain's in 1966—is being traded on the black market for about $1.80, a full dollar under its official value...

...But this position became increasingly threatened in the mid-'60s by the rise of the Ibo tribe, which was in a hurry to build a modern state...

...Most Nigerians, Ibos included, credit Gowon with having exercised considerable restraint on the war plans of some of the more bloodthirsty Hausa officers...

...and though starvation in the literal sense appears to have been Jonathan Kwitny taught at Nigeria's Western Boys High School in 1966-67, has since been an investigative reporter for the N.Y...

...But he has consolidated his power and is clearly popular throughout the country...

...The local administration of what is doubtlessly the most flourishing state continues to function in scattered, temporary accommodations...

...With a few exceptions, Lagos has not even sent money to meet government payrolls...

...The Ibos, underestimating the resentment their own advancement had created, felt sure the Yorubas would join them...