Word: nigerias
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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That becomes more urgent with every boost in OPEC prices, and the increases now occur with taunting frequency. Since last December the cartel has increased prices by 61%. Now Nigeria, Algeria and Libya appear to be preparing to raise their price of oil by as much as $5 per bbl. If they do, the $23.50 "ceiling" that OPEC set only last June will be shattered, and the cost of all petroleum products, including heating oil, will move up yet another notch...
When that happens, Nigeria will have come full circle to the democratic system it inherited when it won independence from Britain in 1960. Since then, the country has had a shaky coalition regime, a short-lived parliamentary republic, three coups, a bloody civil war and the assassination of a head of state. Nigeria has simultaneously been afflicted by social and economic strains that have grown along with its wealth, which comes from its copious reserves of easily refinable "sweet" light crude oil. Largely because thousands of peasants have deserted their farms to seek bloated wages in booming Lagos, the country...
Shagari's pragmatism could spell success for Nigeria's reborn democracy, if he can curb the excesses of his party followers, who finished strongly in races for the federal senate and state assemblies. But it might also spell disaster if he permits the country to fall back into the fractiousness of the past. Says a Western diplomat in Lagos: "A lot of people have their fingers crossed on this...
Last September Obasanjo ended the nation's twelve-year-old ban on political activity, and more than 55 parties exploded into noisy life. But only five, among them Shagari's National Party of Nigeria (N.P.N.), could generate a following wide enough to qualify their presidential candidates. The freewheeling and occasionally violent campaign that followed persuaded some Nigerians that the experiment with democracy was premature. Said a professor: "There are two kinds of people here, the pessimist who says civilian rule will fall apart before it begins in October, and the optimist who says that it will fall apart...
...spellbinder with crowds, Shagari, a chain-smoking, onetime science teacher, edged his two main rivals, who hinted after the election that they might challenge the results. The two were Yoruba Chieftain Obafemi Awolowo, a major architect of Nigeria's independence, and Nnamdi Azikiwe, an Ibo leader who was the nonelected President during the brief parliamentary republic. In the campaign, Shagari emphasized his experience as a minister of finance, education and other departments in previous regimes. Though once a leader of an organization that advocated "national unity" under Hausa domination, he picked an Ibo running mate. Moreover, he managed...