Vol 53 No 9 | NIGERIA Half-truths on subsidies 27th April 2012 The report on the US$6.8 billion fuel subsidy fraud by the Chairman of the National Assembly Ad Hoc Committee, Farouk Lawan, was tabled on 24 April....
Vol 53 No 8 | LIBERIA Keeping it in the family 13th April 2012 The President rejects charges of nepotism after appointing her eldest son to head the state oil company Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has unleashed a storm of controversy by appointing three of her sons and a nephew to important jobs in government. Most attention centred on her eldest...
Vol 53 No 8 | MALI The north and south of it 13th April 2012 Tensions in Bamako ease as Sanogo withdraws but increase in the north as the rebels fall out After regional leaders called his bluff with financial sanctions and threats of military action, putsch leader Captain Amadou Sanogo beat as dignified a retreat from power as he...
Vol 53 No 8 | MALI Rebel against rebel – against the rest 13th April 2012 Tuareg separatists of the Mouvement national de la libération de l’Azawad are in a bitter struggle with a jihadist faction – Iyad ag Ghali and his Ansar Eddine...
Vol 53 No 8 | NIGER Issoufou under siege 13th April 2012 As if food shortages and the collapse of Mali and Libya were not enough, a corruption scandal looms Niger won much praise for the smoothness of the 2011 presidential poll, which returned the country to democracy after a year under the military junta that had deposed...
Vol 53 No 8 | LIBYANIGER Gadaffi Junior's gaffe 13th April 2012 In September 2011, Colonel Moammar el Gadaffi’s son Es Saadi el Gadaffi arrived in Agadez in the dead of night in a mysterious convoy of vehicles, surrounded by...
Vol 53 No 8 | GAMBIA Opposition poll boycott 13th April 2012 After President Yahya Jammeh’s victory in November’s presidential poll surprised nobody, the parliamentary elections of 29 March were similarly predictable. Anticipating fraud, the five major opposition parties...
Vol 53 No 8 | MALI And a food crisis too 13th April 2012 With Islamists, putschists and nationalists claiming all the attention in Mali, the growing food crisis in the Sahel is in danger of slipping under the radar. There were...
Vol 53 No 7 | NIGERIA The President tightens up 30th March 2012 Jonathan is getting a grip on his party and perhaps preparing to run again, despite his northern rivals On the eve of the national convention of the governing People’s Democratic Party on 24 March, former President Olusegun Obasanjo deplored the lack of discipline in the PDP....
Vol 53 No 7 | NIGERIA The people who run the PDP show 30th March 2012 • Chief Mike Oghiadomhe, Chief of Staff to the President: as Edo State Deputy Governor, he made friends with his opposite number in Bayelsa, Goodluck Jonathan. He is...