Word: nigeria
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Slowly and somewhat painfully, the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Africa's richest, most powerful and most populous nation (about 60 million), is pulling itself together after the devastating civil war that ended two years ago. A reconciliation of sorts has taken place between the federal government, headed by General Yakubu Gowon, and the secessionist republic of Biafra, now Nigeria's East Central state. The scars of war, physical as well as psychological, have mostly faded. The sole reminders of the airstrip at Uli-Biafra's only gateway to the outside world during the long federal siege...
...Nigeria is full of boom talk, and the country has enormous economic potential. It is rich in cash crops -cocoa, peanuts, palm oil, coal and iron ore. Most important is oil, which was discovered there in 1956. With a current output of 1,700,000 bbl. a day, Nigeria has passed Iraq and Canada to become the world's ninth largest oil producer. The government's share of the profits is expected to surpass $1 billion this year and $1.25 billion next year...
Return of Dash. What's wrong? Bureaucratic bottlenecks account for some of the trouble; officials of Nigeria's twelve states claim they have yet to see development money supposedly appropriated by the federal government. Another factor is massive corruption-known as "dash"-which once again is a fact of Nigerian life. "When we ask what's happened to our money," says one state development official, "Lagos tells us it's on the way-that it's been put into the 'development pipeline.' But it never comes out. Either the pipeline is blocked...
...contrast to the rest of Nigeria, the war-damaged East Central state is healing at an extraordinary pace. Thanks largely to postwar medical attention and food supplies, a majority of Biafra's starving children have miraculously survived; the state has 1,100,000 children in school-more than it had before the war. New buildings are sprouting amid the wreckage, and the great market at Aba is booming again...
Back home in Biafra (now known as the East Central State of Nigeria), Ojukwu still has some admirers among the Ibo tribesmen, who tell each other, "Agaracha-a ga nata [The wanderer will return]." But they know he will not. Ojukwu, a man without a country, is also in danger of becoming an exile without a refuge...