The other side of the Commonwealth

By HELEN TUNNAH

ABUJA, Nigeria - The stench from a stagnant pond filled with rotting rubbish hits you on arrival at Gishiri village.

Just a few metres away, children are piled on top of one another at the only water tap, scrambling to fill their containers for the day's washing and cooking.

Disease from a lack of clean water is one of the biggest killers in poverty-stricken Africa, and it is anyone's guess what these children and their families drink each day, and if that tap will one day kill them.

Illness and starvation are no strangers to the people at Gishiri.

"Please help us, send us money. Our children are dying here," one man says of his village's plight.

The villagers are shy of being named, or of having their photographs taken. It is clear they worry about reprisals.

Just 10 minutes' drive away, 52 of the Commonwealth's leaders are holding earnest talks in Nigeria's capital, Abuja, wondering what to do for people from villages like Gishiri.

Later today they will release a statement, inevitably saying the world must do more to help almost 800 million Africans living in extreme poverty. They probably won't say how they will do it, and it is a fair guess that security risks will prevent any leaders venturing far outside the air-conditioned halls and hotels where the summit is being held.

"Can you tell the President we need lights," a tall, thin man asks. He thinks if Nigeria's President, Olusegun Obasanjo, hears they have none, he will help.

Well-spoken, and well-read, he works as a quasi-butcher in the village. He has bought meat from a nearby abattoir, and will try to sell it throughout the village.

It lies on a wooden bench, in a shack without solid walls, let alone anything to stop the beef and offal going bad.

The red meat appears black anyway, and is covered with a thick layer of flies.

When he runs from the camera, others take his place in the shop and he steps aside to talk about his home.

"We need a school, the village has no school. We cannot afford to take the bus to school in town."

He knows that without an education his children have little future. They will remain desperately poor and die young.

He knows about New Zealand.

"Zimbabwe is not here because of you. You, Australia and England," he says.

There doesn't seem much point talking to him about awful human rights abuses elsewhere in Africa.

Further on, the dirt paths between the houses and shops are filled with smoke from cooking fires and the constantly smouldering rubbish tips that lie only a metre or two from the houses.

One house is for sale. The restaurants are empty; one has only tins of milk. There's no one at the hairdresser's.

Soon, Gishiri may be flattened. The villagers have been moved off their land once to make way for an expanding Abuja and we're told the bulldozers are due again.

Further on in the village, another man stops and again pleads for the world to help Nigerians escape their misery. "We are very poor here."

He, too, wants a school. His young children, gathered around, have nowhere to learn. His friend says people are trying to start private teaching.

They know about the Commonwealth leaders' meeting too, but they are not so sure Mr Obasanjo will do anything.

"We need help. You have to intervene because the authorities here are doing nothing," he says.

"The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer."

He says Nigeria's leaders are corrupt.

Back in Abuja, there is an area called "Minister's Hill". Locals call it "corruption hill".

It is a suburb of wealth. On the left are the walled houses where Government officials live, on the right the huge homes of "individuals", business people who those in the village say are getting richer.

These houses are palatial, two or three storeys high, some with fancy pillars by their front doors.

Some can only be glimpsed behind high walls, topped by razor wire metres high. The wealthiest street finishes with a private club, with tennis courts and a golf range.

Nigeria is the world's fifth largest producer of oil, a country of immense resources, the profits from which end up who knows where.

Maybe the money which has built these flash houses has been earned fairly.

But in a country where backhanders, graft and tribal croneyism is the way of life, it is hard to see how.