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National Geographic : 1979 Mar
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Nigeria Struggles With Boom Times By NOEL GROVE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC STAFF Photographs by BRUNO BARBEY T HE OLD CHIEF'S DEATH became the source of a revelation to me. I attended the funeral on a day when mourners had gathered in the great one's compound in eastern Nigeria to discuss the chief's long life. What happened demonstrated to me the view that many Nigerians hold not only of themselves, but also of the world. A masked figure appeared suddenly and, as it came toward me, I saw a smiling, benevolent face and bright, cheery clothes. Then it wheeled, and the opposite side, garbed in black, presented a hideous, fanged visage. As the figure turned one way, then the other, villagers fell back in silence, and an educated Nigerian said to me quiet ly, "It represents the dual nature of human character, the good and the bad in all of us." Oil-rich Nigeria is booming, and its rapid ly changing populace sees both the good and the bad in national growth. "Unless we learn to use our new wealth wisely, our oil boom may become our oil doom," intoned a schol ar one day in the courtyard of Lagos's Ikoyi Hotel, a popular forum for the exchange of ideas about this West African nation. This is the dilemma of Nigeria, one of half a dozen or so Cinderella oil nations of the seventies. Like Cinderella, she suffers the pangs of a maid unprepared for the ball. But never was one more eager to learn, to match the steps of the developed world. A livelier, more responsive people I have never met. I was hustled, jostled, even threatened by Nigerian citizenry, but so was I gently cared for by strangers when I lay ill. I was turned away from meetings with pub lic officials sensitive about publicity, but I was never turned away from a home. I saw fights break out over traffic inci dents and arguments erupt in grocery lines, but most outspoken confrontations seemed to subside as suddenly as they mounted. Seared by northern heat, parboiled by coast al humidity, feelings seemed ever ready to surface into kindness or violence, charity or self-interest, human emotions turning this way and that, like the masked figure at the old chief's funeral. Emotion is one thing, efficiency is often quite another. The experience of my friend Anthony Akinduro is a case in point. When I first met the young United Steeped in tradition, a palace guard in Kano still dyes his turban in prized indigo. Yet such rubrics of the past provide few answers to the questions that trouble modern Nigeria, the second largest exporter of crude oil to the United States. Despite torrents of oil, the man in the street finds his increasing income eaten up by inflation and bureaucratic inefficiency. Still, a spirit of gritty optimism prevails. 413
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