The Power of Silence

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Nigerians have never given up the idea that their tumultuous but potentially powerful nation will someday have the democratic government it deserves. They may have started down that road in earnest last week when the city of Lagos, a boisterous, sprawling metropolis of more than 6 million, stood empty and silent. Businesses were shuttered, railway and bus transport brought to a standstill, the normally congested streets deserted. Thousands of police and riot-control troops out on patrol had the silent city to themselves. Citizens were staying home to protest the ruling military's refusal to hand over power to the man elected President on June 12 in the freest, fairest balloting in three decades. For a people accustomed to rule by force, the three-day strike was a brazen act of defiance.

Over and over, since Nigeria gained independence 33 years ago, the government has gyrated between short-lived civilian control and military regimes. From the day President Ibrahim Babangida, an army major general, seized power in a coup eight years ago, he promised an orderly return to democratic rule. He created two political parties and wrote their platforms: the Social Democratic Party tilted a bit to the left, the National Republican Convention leaned the same degree to the right. He handpicked their presidential candidates. But when Moshood Abiola, the millionaire industrialist candidate of the Social Democrats, won the election and insisted that he be sworn in as President on Aug. 27, Babangida voided the vote, claiming widespread fraud and vote tampering.

Since the June elections, Nigerians have been unwilling to let a few strongmen thwart the wishes of the many. Citizens took to the streets last month in violent demonstrations that left more than 100 dead. That stirred fears -- crudely exploited by the government -- of massive unrest or even a return to the tribal war that killed an estimated 1 million Nigerians two decades ago. But leaders of the Campaign for Democracy, a human-rights group spearheading the antigovernment demonstrations, insist that this is not an ethnic conflict. This fight is between those who want to bring democracy to Africa's most populous nation and the military leaders who have long imposed their will.

The situation is unlike the popular uprisings that forced Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos into exile and brought down the Berlin Wall. Rebellious Nigerians face a government willing to use force to keep itself alive. Anonymous circulars warning of tribal violence among the nation's three largest ethnic groups -- Yoruba, Ibo and Hausa -- appeared in Lagos' crowded slums, setting off a massive exodus. Those with means sent their families out of the country. The poor, the overwhelming majority, sent their children to home villages in the countryside. State security officers and riot police & rounded up human-rights leaders and interrogated them. False reports in a government-controlled newspaper claimed that critics of Babangida were secretly being financed by the U.S. embassy. "They want to use the threat of a new civil war to bring out their tanks again," said a human-rights activist.