An excellent indication of the actual stability of any regime is the degree to which it is compelled to resort to physical violence to keep control. A consistent display of force, such as the existence of a strong secret police, is in itself an indication that the regime faces strong internal opposition. --Historian Carl G. Gustavson

On Monday, 8 June 1998, the newscast paused for a brief bulletin: President-General Sani Abacha of Nigeria is dead.

Shock waves ripple throughout Africa and the black world as the head-of-state of the continent's most populous nation succumbs to something as mundane as a heart attack, in a nation that almost seemed resigned to a long, hard, repressive siege at the rapacious hands of the military.

Nigeria, once known as Africa's cultural and spiritual capital, has become little more than a populous place ruled by a venal and brutal dictatorship. Her journalists, lawyers and human rights activists are increasingly cast into her dark and foreboding dungeons like Kaduna Prison, where acclaimed writer Wole Soyinka spent several torturous months, at the relentless mercy of the icy Harmattan winds.

Under Abacha, dissent was a crime, punishable by imprisonment, exile, torture or death. The Nov. 17, 1993 coup which brought Abacha to power marked the army's cancellation of the concept of civilian rule and set the stage for the June 11, 1994 usurpation of the Nigerian elections and the subsequent arrest of the top votegetter, (and therefore rightful president) Chief Moshood Abiola. Abiola remains imprisoned to this date on the dubious charge of 'treason' (for daring to think he should be president simply because he received the most votes).

Nigeria's long nightmare isn't over because Sani Abacha is no more. It didn't start with Abacha, and won't end with his passing.

Nigeria's mixed blessing has been her enormous crude oil reserves, which, while an invaluable natural resource, has been the lure for foreign greed. Abacha represented a powerful social force: the military, which was supported in its repressive role by multinational corporations like Shell, Exxon, Mobil, and Chevron--companies thirsty for oil, who paid millions to the regime. The question is not who is head-of- state, but who runs the head-of-state? For the oil barons anything that blocks the free flow of oil is to be opposed, and anything that supports their flowing oil taps is to be supported. Abacha supported their open taps, and they supported him.

Today, there is little mention of the late Ken Saro-Wiwa, writer and Ogoni activist, hanged by the Abacha regime in 1995.

Shortly after Abiola's imprisonment, his senior wife, Alhaja Kudirat Abiola, was shot dead in her car in Central Lagos. Her car was not taken. In Nigeria, the line of political detainees continues to grow: oil workers, union activist Frank Ovie Kokori, Dr. Beko Ransome-Kuti, Chris Anyanwu, Kunle Ajubade, Ben Charles Obi, George Mbah and on and on.

A new Nigeria will emerge not when a new military leader is named, but when the greasy stranglehold of big oil is broken, and the wealth of the nation serves the interest of the nation.