Ready to pour oil over those troubled waters

As he hands over the business card which bestows this title upon him, Aret Adams cheerfully suggests that it should have an expiry date marked on it. Like others in the transitional government of Nigeria, he is insistent that following the democratic handover in May, he will return to life outside government.

In the meantime, he and his colleagues have an enormous amount to do if the incoming government is to have a decent chance of success. Nigeria is oil-rich and cash-poor. It

is easily capable of producing two million barrels of oil a day yet

the queues at filling-stations testify to the fact that it cannot supply its own people.

The state-owned oil refineries desperately need investment. Civil strife in the Niger delta area, where oil production is concentrated, is undermining output. On top of all this, the slump in the world price of oil has

meant that the transitional government, dependent for 95% of its income on oil, has to budget on the basis of far lower revenues than could have been envisaged.

If the transition is to be successful, Nigeria needs international support and investment. The colonial past is a mixed bag but many of the country's leaders, current and probably future, certainly look to Britain as a natural friend and ally in the current process. Given the educational pedigree of people like Aret Adams that is, perhaps, not surprising.

My own visit was the first by a UK Trade Minister in eight years and was a direct follow-through from Tony Blair's meeting with the interim

president, General Abubakar, in

London last September. This was

the first port of call for Abubakar's mission to assure the world that things really were about to change for the better in Nigeria.

They would have to. Nigeria has been robbed and mismanaged by its rulers for so long that the cupboard is just about bare. The regime of Sani Abacha, whose excesses led to Nigeria's suspension from the Commonwealth, ended with his death in June of last year. He bequeathed a crumbling economy, growing civil strife in the neglected areas whence the oil wealth flows, and an abysmal human rights record. The execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa was only the best publicised of myriad abuses.

The advent of Abubakar appeared to signal very fundamental change. There is an unmistakable determination to make the transition of democracy work and, if that can be achieved, economic transformation just might not be far behind. Then the prizes really could be glittering, for this is Africa's biggest market of more than 100 million people.

We will soon know whether the transition is on course. Local elections have already been held and were, according to independent observers, pretty clean and well participated in. Next month, there will be elections both for a National Assembly, and to choose a president. The new administration then takes over in May.

My own visit to Nigeria almost ended before it had begun. Laden with desert sands, the Harmattan had closed airports all over Nigeria and flights were diverted to Accra. But we made it into Lagos and then up to Abuja, the modern capital, for meetings with a string of transitional ministers.

My clear message was that the UK offers warm support for the reform process and looks forward to restoration of a full relationship once it is complete. The trade potential is enormous - even now, British exports to Nigeria are worth #400m per year. But the process still has some way to go and ultimately the key to the future lies in the hands of the Nigerians themselves.

There are clear litmus tests of the willingness to press ahead with reforms which will signal a break with the past. Perhaps the greatest service which the transitional government can perform is to clear

away the most sensitive reforms before the hand-over occurs. For example, the dual exchange rate is a blatant scam which offers a huge advantage to those who are in a position to exploit it.

Another hard decision will involve initiating a privatisation process for the incoming government to inherit. It is not an ideological matter but a necessary condition if Nigeria's utilities and infrastructure are to obtain the investment which they urgently need. Oil refineries, power, and telecommunications head the list.

Perhaps most challenging of all is the unrest in the delta area. The oil companies are looking to the government to maintain the rule of law. But it is unlikely that this alone will have any long-term success in addressing the tensions unless there is also clear evidence that the newly-enshrined commitment, to spend 13% of oil revenues in the oil-producing areas, is being fulfilled.

For all the difficulties, there are plenty of British companies which continue to trade successfully in the vast Nigerian market.

For instance, I visited the headquarters of Guinness Nigeria near Lagos. Though per capita beer consumption in the country is tiny, Guinness holds a quarter of the market and, such is its scale, that is enough to make Nigeria the third biggest consumer of the black stuff, behind only Ireland and the UK.

the most optimistic meeting I had was with the Agriculture Minister, Alhaji Alfa Wali. Not so long ago, Nigeria was a net food exporter. He clearly loathed the oil industry for drawing people away from the land with the promise of riches and thus creating a new class of urbanised poor. But he stressed that Nigeria is not characterised by the classic symptom of malnourishment, precisely because more than 80% of its population continue to be engaged in subsistence agriculture.

He recalled that British agriculturalists left behind this legacy of self-sufficiency as well as 18 agricultural research institutes, all of them now defunct. But - against that background - if the ''new'' Nigeria is to seek investment partners in the modernisation of agricultural units both large and small, where more natural to look than to the United Kingdom?

There are, indeed, a lot of attractive prospects, if one looks through the window of opportunity which the next few months represent. The difficulties entailed in getting there cannot be underestimated. A military Harmattan could still descend. But in seeking to make that less likely, it is certainly a journey which the international community and Britain above all must encourage.

n Brian Wilson is MP for

Cunninghame North and UK

Minister for Trade.