The importance of the forthcoming vote in Nigeria

It is an election that is not likely to get much coverage in the mainstream western press, but it is one which will be hugely significant for the African continent. In fact, it is not going too far to say that this will be a defining moment for political freedom and democratic development in Africa - a moment, perhaps, where some of the obstacles that have held back political progress throughout the continent will be removed.

The country in question? Nigeria.

Say "Nigeria" and more likely than not the things that will spring to mind, for most people in this country, are fraud scams, and immigrants from West Africa - the kind so brilliantly parodied by the black comedian Felix Dexter. And yet, despite such stereotyping, Nigeria is probably the most important country in Africa. One out of every seven people living on the African continent is Nigerian. The country is a leading member of Opec. Its production of crude oil is of critical importance to western economies - including the United States, which gets 15 per cent of its petroleum from Nigeria.

The amount of trade Europe does with Nigeria, covering dozens of different industries, is also of huge significance, not least for the UK. However, the country's significance goes much further. Nigeria has been the paramount symbol of the best and worst political, economic and intellectual developments in Africa since the end of colonial rule.

Of Britain's imperial possessions in West Africa, Nigeria was the largest and most prestigious. Yet the optimism and sense of hope that came with the end of colonial rule in 1960 were short-lived. The newly independent federal republic, modelled on the US system, unravelled under the onslaught of ethnic rivalry of a kind that continues to scar politics in many African countries. In response to this came repeated flashes of that other ugly side of post-colonial African politics: military coups, the first occurring in 1966. A year later came the civil conflict that set the benchmark for the collapse of the post-colonial African state - the Biafran war.

Biafra was the first time a global audience saw images of starving children from Africa. Before Rwanda, before Somalia, Biafra was the image of ethnic civil war that seared itself on to the world's mind and reappeared whenever post-colonial Africa's problems were considered. It was a legacy that Nigeria was unable to escape for many years. Despite numerous attempts at democratic handovers to a civilian government, military rule stayed the norm until 1999.

Despite its importance, the self-confidence of its people, its oil wealth and its superpower status on the continent, Nigeria is a democracy that has always been fragile and has always been under threat, either from military rule or from ethnic and religious divisions in Nigerian society. Over the past 20 years these have erupted in violent communal clashes that have left thousands dead.

In the coming weeks, Nigeria will have the chance to turn an important corner. The election on 21 April will mark the first transition of power from one civilian president to another. This may sound like a small step, something to be taken for granted rather than celebrated, but that is how symbolic these elections are.

Nigeria's recent history so encapsulates the big issues that have stunted and derailed the development of political freedoms and institutions across Africa, that the success of these elections will speak volumes about the extent to which the whole continent has left behind the spectres of ethnic and religious rivalry. It will also test the strength of democratic politics.

The election will do nothing to cure the country's myriad social and economic ills. For all the impressive statistics one can reel off about Nigeria's wealth, international trade and strategic importance, the country's economy, like its political system, has been abused and pillaged. Nigeria may supply the US with a fair proportion of its oil, but the majority of Nigerians see little of the proceeds. Life expectancy is 47, little more than in Afghanistan.

That is just one stark measure of how deep and endemic corruption in Nigeria is. If the country does not get to grips with this, it will face a social and economic hurdle that may prove too high for the federal republic to leap and still hold together. According to the United Nations, Nigeria is experiencing one of the world's most explosive population growths.

The UN projections show that Nigeria will account for a significant part of the world's total population increase by 2050. We are already seeing what the future may look like if the government in Abuja does not deliver more of the benefits of petroleum wealth to the people, instead of delivering it into the foreign bank accounts of politicians and generals.

In the oil-rich southern states, the number of kidnappings of foreign oil workers employed by big international oil companies has been rising. These firms have turned a blind eye to the looting of oil largesse by large, armed and often popular militia groups. They would not be so popular if so many Nigerians had not been driven to despair by decades of feeling politically and economically abandoned.

Zimbabwe and Darfur are ghosts that stalk Africa's political landscape. But, on 21 April, Nigeria will have the chance to turn a new page and hold up a beacon of hope to the rest of the continent.

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