Deadly riots still flare at times and Nigeria is regularly rated one of the world's most corrupt nations. Yet Nigerians hope a summit of 52 leaders, including Britain's Queen Elizabeth, will cement their nation's return to the global fold after decades as a pariah.
"I remember all those years when foreigners were afraid of us in Nigeria. They love our country now. Nigeria is a grown-up country," says Shola Agun, a driver ferrying dignitaries to and from the airport.
President Olusegun Obasanjo's government hopes the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) will prove the country is making progress on the democratic and economic reforms he promised when he was first elected in 1999, ending decades of military rule in the vast western African nation.
Yet allegations of human rights abuses -- in Nigeria as well as in the suspended Commonwealth members Zimbabwe and Pakistan -- are expected to surface during the summit's candid behind-the-scenes discussions, in which leaders are traditionally discouraged from delivering written speeches.
New York-based Human Rights Watch challenged the Commonwealth on Tuesday to use the summit to speak out about alleged rights abuses in Nigeria -- including the stifling of free speech and the torture and killing of opposition activists -- in the same way the global body did against Zimbabwe and Pakistan, which are suspended from the collective for thwarting democracy.
Nigeria dismissed the report as "jaundiced and misconceived."
Presidential spokeswoman Remi Oyo charged the rights group sought to "cast undeserved aspersions on the integrity of the Nigerian government and people."
Although human rights have improved in Nigeria since the end of military rule, soldiers have killed hundreds of civilians at a time on two occasions since then, in 1999 and 2001. Religious and ethnic violence erupt sporadically, and has claimed more than 10,000 lives in the past four years.
Also under scrutiny is Zimbabwe's status in the Commonwealth, a prestigious grouping that sees its key clout as shaming members with suspensions.
Britain, Australia and Canada have warned of a split in the Commonwealth if Zimbabwe is reinstated as some African nations have requested. Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has said he may decide to permanently withdraw from the body anyway.
Obasanjo said pointedly last week that Mugabe would not be invited.
The Nigerian president hopes to turn the summit into a forum where rich and poor countries can find common ground on divisive trade issues. The disputes have little chance of reaching resolution in larger, more formal organizations like the WTO, he said.
"We've rich countries from the West, large developing countries like India and smaller countries, as small as Caribbean islands," Obasanjo told foreign journalists recently.
"If we can agree, such agreements can persuade others. The Commonwealth is unique in this respect," he said.
Yet the yawning divide between Western rich and the southern hemisphere's poor has reportedly produced a bid by a handful of major developing nations to replace Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon, an Australian sometimes viewed as patronizing to Africans, in favor of Lakshman Kadirgar, from Sri Lanka.
Queen Elizabeth will open the summit tomorrow, after a two-day state visit accompanied by her husband, Prince Philip. It marks her first trip to Nigeria since 1956.
Penny Russell, the Queen's press secretary, said on Tuesday that the 78-year-old monarch will see a very different country from the one she encountered nearly a half-century ago. Nigeria was a colony then and the capital of Abuja did not exist.
Although time constraints and security concerns will limit her contact with working-class Nigerians to a walk through a mock-up village market constructed by the British Broadcasting Corp outside Abuja, Russell said the Queen was "delighted to be coming back to a democratic Nigeria. Her main aim is to meet as many Nigerians as she can."
Prince Philip will visit health and environment projects in the sprawling commercial capital of Lagos -- developments that Russell said were his "passion."
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