The western countries are at imminent risk of yet another great debacle: failing to come to the help of Nigerian democracy, even as the country is rocked by riots and unrest stemming from profound impoverishment and financial destabilisation.

Strategically, Africa's most populous country is the best hope for peace and economic revival throughout the west of the continent and beyond. But it is socially fragile, disease-ridden and bankrupt: after several inadequate debt reschedulings, foreign debt stands at about 100 per cent of gross domestic product and is massively in arrears.

The country has an internationally respected leader in President Olusegun Obasanjo, and a rare chance at democracy; yet powerful forces of chaos loom. The moment is both urgent and propitious for help from the rich countries, including debt cancellation and increased and well-designed aid, focused on disease control, manufacturing export-led growth and new agricultural technologies.

This week's brief visit by Lawrence Summers, US Treasury secretary, offered a glimmer of hope that the western countries might finally begin sensible policymaking towards Nigeria after months of reckless neglect. Mr Summers declared, in hedged and somewhat convoluted terms, that if Nigeria made significant progress on reform, the US would support multilateral debt reduction. Britain had made similar statements; other creditor nations have so far opposed debt reduction.

Until now, the US and Europe have insisted on stringent International Monetary Fund-led measures, including massive debt servicing ($1.5bn, or 4 per cent of GDP), a denial of debt cancellation, crumbs of aid, and demands for the elimination of fuels subsidies that, as we have seen during the past few days, are a guaranteed trigger of violence.

Killing the new democracy with austerity, while denying Nigeria even a penny of debt cancellation is beyond logic. I have heard one excuse after another why Nigeria has been rejected until now as a candidate for debt reduction. The IMF says that the G7 industrial countries insist that the IMF collect the debts. The World Bank says that the debt decision is not its to make. The Clinton administration blames Congress. The US blames the Germans and the Dutch. Britain says it favours debt cancellation but cannot act without other countries. And so on.

There is one pervasive argument that runs through all of this, an argument so untested that I find it shocking. The argument is that the western public believes Nigeria is a rich country, rolling in oil, that does not need outside help, only an end to internal corruption.

The fact is Nigeria is a poor country. It produces 2m barrels a day of oil, with a market value (at $25 per barrel) of about $50m a day. About $6 a barrel, or even more, goes to production costs and to the foreign oil companies. That leaves close to $38m a day for the 120m Nigerians, or about 31 cents a day per person. Given that oil is just about Nigeria's only export earner, its total per capita income (adding in non-traded goods) is only about $280 a year. Some riches!

Some say that Nigeria is just too corrupt to justify help in any event. But this argument utterly ignores Nigeria's recent history. The rich-country approach precisely fails to differentiate between the ethics of the new president and the despotic General Abacha. Mr Obasanjo, before his election, chaired the international advisory board of Transparency International, the most respected anti-corruption organisation in the world. He held that position, indeed, while jailed by Abacha, in part for his protests against the corrupt excesses of the regime.

Mr Summers understands the urgency of the situation, and has been very eloquent in support of greater global assistance for Africa, especially in the fight against killer infectious diseases. But so far the US has done nothing but give moral support for Nigerian democracy. Nor can the Nigerians understand why their bankrupt country has been kept off the list of countries in line for debt cancellation, even though in 1996 Nigeria was recognised by the IMF and World Bank as in need of debt cancellation by inclusion in the so-called Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative (HIPC) at the launch of that programme.

The rich countries need to differentiate with much more than words between Nigerian leaders who are murderous, corrupt thugs, and Nigerian leaders who endure incarceration to bring good government to their people. Time will tell whether Mr Summers' hints about debt cancellation are soothing words of the moment, or the beginning of a new western policy.

The US statements should be followed up urgently by a joint declaration by the G7 recognising the case for debt cancellation for Nigeria, which in turn would prompt a change in the IMF's destructive negotiating position on the ground in Abuja.

The writer is director of the Centre for International Development at Harvard University. Copyright Financial Times Limited 2000. All Rights Reserved.