“From April 1999, I went round the countries in Europe, twice over, I went to Japan, to America, to Canada and got good words . . . but no action at all.”

Olusegun Obasanjo is the target of a waspish political pamphlet just published under the title The Absentee President of Nigeria.

The document, produced last month by Gani Fawehinmi, a lawyer and human rights campaigner, contrasts the frequency of Mr. Obasanjo’s trips abroad since his election in 1999 with Nigeria’s failure to win relief on its $28bn of foreign debt.

“In three years, I went round the world and I didn’t get anything,” the back cover quotes Mr. Obasanjo as saying in an interview earlier this year. “From April 1999, I went round the countries in Europe, twice over, I went to Japan, to America, to Canada and got good words . . . but no action at all.”

Mr. Obasanjo’s perplexity highlights the unusual position of Nigeria – Africa’s most populous nation and one of the world’s poorest countries – and raises wider questions about the politics of debt relief.

International campaigners have joined the government in asking why Nigeria is ineligible for debt reduction under the heavily indebted poor countries (HIPC) programme set up in 1996 by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and extended three years later.

Nigeria is excluded even though its per capita income levels and ratio of debt to gross national product are comparable with those of the 42 countries included in the HIPC initiative, which covers every other state in mainland west Africa south of the Sahara.

Figures supplied by Jubilee Research, the group campaigning for debt relief for poor countries, suggest Nigeria’s debt is 93 per cent of its GNP -ahigher percentage than at least 15 countries on the HPIC list, including Burkina Faso, Senegal and Uganda.

The government has reached a number of bilateral agreements with creditors to reschedule debt payments but has made little progress in negotiating wholesale reductions.

The Debt Management Office says a large part of the problem stems from debts incurred by the venal 1979-83 civilian regime of Shehu Shagari and augmented by the failure of successive military governments to keep up repayments. The office, which says it expects Nigeria to honour half or less of the more than $3bn due in debt repayments this year, argues the country is paying the price for the profligacy of former rulers. “It’s a matter of the past catching up,” says Akin Arikawe, the office’s director-general.

Jubilee Research says the west has a responsibility to help Nigeria after banks in rich nations helped process money stolen from the country by the family and associates of General Sani Abacha, the late dictator who ruled between 1993 and 1998.

Romilly Greenhill, economist at Jubilee Research, argues western countries have avoided giving debt relief to Nigeria because they think it will be too expensive for them. “We do see it as quite a cynical decision, essentially,” she says. “Our interpretation is that [creditors thought it] was going to be too large and too costly.”

Nigerian government officials say they are disappointed that rich countries have made no concessions on debt despite the landmark elections in 1999 that ended 16 years of increasingly brutal military rule. This is especially when the list of countries eligible for relief under HIPC includes Burma and Liberia, which have become international pariahs because of their repressive regimes.

Nigeria’s failure to secure relief is particularly striking given the global political welcome for Mr. Obasanjo, who ruled as a military leader in the late 1970s and is a co-founder of Transparency International, the anti-corruption organisation.

Mr. Obasanjo is one of the main architects of Nepad, the African development plan drawn up by a committee of the continent’s leaders and praised last month by the Group of Eight industrialised countries.

Magnus Kpakol, the president’s chief economic adviser, says rich countries should take account of the regional and global political significance of Nigeria, one of the world’s top 10 oil producers and a leading supplier of crude to the US.

“Nigeria occupies a strategic position and a pivotal position,” he says. “When you talk about supporting Africa and making Africa less poor, I don’t see any way you can bring that about without giving significant support to Nigeria.”

The official logic for Nigeria’s exclusion from the HIPC list is that its $20bn annual exports of oil mean it fails one of the tests set by the World Bank to decide countries eligible for aid. “The bank feels that, with the oil, Nigeria can service its debts,” a bank official says. “If Nigeria can put its resources into proper use . . . it can actually develop the country.”

Other reasons why the big economies say they are reluctant to give debt relief include the strained relationship between the country and the IMF, which led the two to break off formal links earlier this year.

A further obstacle may be Nigeria’s notorious culture of public corruption, which the president’s advisers insist is being tackled through measures such as the introduction of an anti-corruption commission and increased supervision of government spending.

Supporters of anti-corruption work in Nigeria, such as Britain’s Department for International Development, are more circumspect, noting “encouraging signs” but adding that the impact on corruption has been “slow to materialise”.

“The introduction of anti-corruption legislation and a commission were important initial reforms introduced recently,” the department says. “But the lack of real impact on the ground has been disappointing.”

The question is whether the Nigerian government and international campaigners can convince the rich nations that targeted debt relief would be used to relieve mass poverty and improve the country’s inadequate social services.

Michael Peel, Financial Times, July 26, 2002