Nigeria Government

A ship carrying about 160 exhausted Liberians, about half of them children, disembarked its passengers here Tuesday after being stranded at sea for more than three weeks and being turned away by three other West African countries. At least 10 of the passengers, all desperately short of food and water, needed urgent medical attention, and two had to be carried off the Swedish cargo ship, the Alnar, on stretchers. Many on board said they had been drinking salt water to survive.

The Zuma Hotel used to be the trendiest spot in this dusty, wind-swept capital of Nigeria's northern Zamfara state. Patrons sipped beer and cocktails at the bar, danced to the latest music in the hotel's disco and socialized into the wee hours. That was until October, when the state outlawed drinking, partying and so-called lewd behavior as it began the imposition of Sharia, the Islamic penal code based on the Koran. In December, the Zuma was raided and abruptly shut down.

On a recent evening in this steamy city that rims a lagoon, about 80,000 fans poured into the streets after a soccer game. Some waved banners or chanted slogans to celebrate a victory in an Africawide tournament. In such situations, emotions and frustrations tend to boil over in Nigeria's bustling commercial capital, a traditional hotbed of opposition politics. But the atmosphere this time was elated but calm, a mood more typical of Nigerians since civilian rule was restored in May.

Two years after President Clinton excluded Africa's most populous nation from his historic two-week trek through the continent, he arrived in Nigeria on Saturday to acclaim its nascent democracy and challenge its leaders to stay their course to lead all of Africa toward a better future.

President Clinton warned Nigerians on Sunday that their impressive new democracy will be imperiled unless they openly and aggressively tackle the problem of HIV and AIDS. "AIDS can rob a country of its future," Clinton told a predominantly female crowd at the National Center for Women's Development in Abuja, the capital.

Nigeria's current efforts to reinstate the ousted civilian government of Sierra Leone and restore democracy to that impoverished West African nation carry a certain irony: Nigeria is ruled by a military regime that itself took power by force in 1993 and has no credibility as a defender of democracy. But Africa's most populous nation is trying to clean up its reputation as a bastion of political and social injustice. Nigerian strongman Gen.

As Pope John Paul II begins a three-day visit to Nigeria today, many in this populous West African nation are banking on him to work a few miracles. Members of the Roman Catholic clergy are counting on the pontiff to help forge reconciliation among Nigeria's opposing groups, religious and political, and leaders of the country's political opposition and human rights groups hope that the papal visit will lead to the release of scores of imprisoned dissidents, journalists, academics and activists.

Pope John Paul II, the first prominent visitor in years to a nation widely scorned for its harsh repression of dissent, urged Nigeria's military rulers Saturday to free about 60 prisoners and to "guarantee respect for human life and for human rights." The Roman Catholic leader coupled his criticism with praise for Nigeria's peacekeeping efforts in West Africa, including an armed intervention last month that booted out a military junta and restored elected leaders in neighboring Sierra Leone.

Shortly after nominating dictator Gen. Sani Abacha for president, Nigeria's largest government-backed political party insisted that he resign from the military before campaigning, news reports said Friday. "We are talking about a transition to democracy," Gbazuagu N'Gbazuagu, secretary of the United Nigeria Congress Party, said in an interview carried Friday in Lagos newspapers. "We will not, I repeat, we will not support his being in uniform to contest" the presidency.

By the millions, Nigerians didn't vote Saturday in legislative elections billed as the first step toward ending the country's military rule. Opponents of Gen. Sani Abacha's military regime urged voters to stay away to show disapproval of his presidential nomination by all five political parties. They accuse Abacha of manipulating both the presidential nomination process and the legislative elections.