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When Nigeria, proud holder of the title of the most populous nation in Africa, goes to the polls this weekend it will be watched keenly from across a troubled continent, analysts say.

"For the outside world, including Africa, a successful election in Nigeria suggests that we are heading in the right direction," says John Adeleke, head of the World Trade Centre Association's Nigeria office.

"It puts us in a comfort zone," he says.

One in five black Africans is Nigerian, as Nigerian leaders are wont to recall, and the fate of its 120 million citizens could have an effect on the lives of many more in its poverty-stricken neighbours.

On Saturday, more than 60 million Nigerians will be eligible to vote in legislative elections. One week later presidential and state gubernatorial elections will follow.

They are the first elections since Nigeria emerged in 1999 from 15 years of military dictatorship, and a test of whether its four-year experiment in civilian rule has laid strong foundations for its future democracy.

A stable, democratic Nigeria able to use its vast oil wealth to prime the pump of regional development could act as a good example and helping hand to neighbours less blessed in manpower and resources.

One leading European diplomat said that the international community wanted to be able to endorse the polls and that the "bar had been set quiet low" in recognition of Nigeria's many problems.

But an election marked by high levels of corruption and violence would confirm many outsiders' suspicions about Africa's commitment to democracy, and disappoint many in the region.

"Externally, it would be very damaging if it's not relatively credible," Adeleke says.

And in the short term the biggest loser from a tarnished or collapsed election would be Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo, who has used his four-year term to develop his profile as an African statesman.

He was one of three key architects of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), a blueprint for good governance and economic management that has been adopted by many African states.

While some cynics have written off NEPAD as merely the latest in a series of high-minded but essentially empty projects, the plan received an enthusiastic welcome from western leaders at last year's G8 summit.

Centre stage at the meeting in Kananaskis, Canada, was Obasanjo, receiving the congratulations of George Bush, Jacques Chirac and Tony Blair for his roadmap, and beaming out from a dozen press photographs.

"It is a measure of the new international acclaim which Nigeria currently enjoys, that we have become something of a reference point in African affairs," Obasanjo boasted in February.

The G8 leaders endorsed NEPAD's goals, but did not dig deep in their pockets. For Africa to win debt relief and the 60 billion dollars in aid that NEPAD says it needs, the West wants to see results.

One of the key goals of NEPAD is open democratic government, backed up by a system of "peer review" under which African leaders would keep an eye on each other's performance.

So if NEPAD's most public champion and Africa's biggest country was to fail to hold free and fair elections, another worthy development plan would lie in tatters.

Despite a wave of political violence and last minute chaos in distributing voter materials, most foreign observers expect Nigeria to scrape through the elections with its dignity largely intact.

But many Nigerian observers are nervous, and many point to the weeks and months after the polls as being the most dangerous.

"Remember, we've had a civilian government re-elected once before ... the challenge is in the next three to six months," Adeleke says. In 1983 civilian president Shehu Shagari was overthrown in a military coup three months after winning re-election - Sapa-AFP

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