After months of speculation, President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua has sacked half his cabinet but retained several of his old associates and surprisingly kept on a few of the...
President Obasanjo mixes old military friends and human rights activists in his new cabinet
'Is this 1999 or 1979?' asked one senator on seeing President Olusegun Obasanjo's list of 42 ministerial nominees. Another opined more diplomatically that the list favoured 'experience over...
A long history of failure does not discourage Western leaders
who believe their intervention can improve conditions in the oil-rich
Niger Delta. Yet judging from recent history, the capacity of
outside intervention to make things even worse in the Delta looks
assured. After the United States' stalled efforts at training
Nigeria's military and Royal Dutch Shell's attempts at corporate
responsibility, Britain and France have offered military assistance
to tackle continuing violence in the Delta.
Offering military assistance to a country that did not request it is extremely bad manners, responded a seasoned Nigerian analyst after French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British...
Building on growing northern resentments, the Islamist sect wants to create a political and security crisis by bombing the police
Few seem convinced by President Goodluck Jonathan’s assurances that the security situation is under control following the bombing on 16 June of Louis Edet House, the national police...
Jonathan must win the Delta vote and is mustering the violent gangs to ensure his victory
The fierce race for the presidency and National Assembly in
next year's elections is worsening the violence in the Niger Delta
and undermining last year's amnesty deal. Within the governing
People's...