The presidential election, the oil trade and community peace deals are at risk in the latest Niger Delta conflicts
Leaders of the Ayakoroma community in Delta State saw the violence
coming. They warned the military Joint Task Force in mid-November that their town was in the crossfire between...
The self-styled General of the Niger Delta struggle, warlord John Togo, emerged from the Itsekiri/Ijaw ethnic war of 2003, when rival tribal groups from Delta State spawned death,...
Northern politicians have regrouped and are making a determined
bid for the presidency in next year's election
The postponement of the presidential election until 9 April
2011 means another four months of intensive party politicking
and the shelving of plans to
reform the oil, gas and electricity sectors....
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...
Despite the President’s political base in the oil-rich Niger Delta,
militant groups are on the march again and abandoning the amnesty deal
A new coalition of fighters in the Niger Delta has emerged to oppose President Goodluck Jonathan’s amnesty and has launched a new round of violence. A younger generation...
After the Abuja bombings, the political process turns back to the Niger Delta, where militants are frustrated by the aftermath of the amnesty deal
Bomb blasts in Abuja on 1 October killed twelve people. They could foretell more trouble to come and it is still not clear who was responsible, despite an...
If the amnesty fails and the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta resumes its armed struggle, figures from the past and future of Delta militancy will...
Bold reform plans are put on hold as the battle for Aso
Rock intensifies
The brief interest shown by President Goodluck Jonathan's government in economic reform seems to be waning in favour of a concentration on short-term tactics that might help his...
Whoever was responsible for the car bombs that killed 12 people in Abuja during the 50th anniversary of Nigeria's Independence on 1 October and whatever their motives, they...
Doubts about the election timetable, dissension in the President’s
party and some surprise new candidates are changing everyone’s
calculations
The tight election timetable announced at the beginning of the month is now being questioned again by election officials, civil activists and most of the contesting candidates (AC...
There is no shortage of candidates or political parties contesting the presidential election due early next year; the exact timetable (AC Vol 51 No 18) is under review...
Despite the time constraints, hopes for straight elections are vested in the Electoral Commission’s impressive Chairman Attahiru Jega
Everyone, in and out of government, acclaimed the appointment in June of academic and trades unionist Attahiru Jega as Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission. Now with...
Key events in the coming months
Opposition parties, trades unions and civic activists are protesting against the breakneck schedule announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for presidential elections on 22 January 2010....
President Jonathan is slowly winning over the governors and
party barons - but time is short
The arithmetic is not right yet but Goodluck Jonathan is making steady progress in his bid for the candidacy of his party in next year's presidential elections. Last...
A new burst of militancy is haunting the Niger Delta less than a year after the amnesty deal delivered an uneasy peace
Delays over cash payments, the coming national elections and rising concern over oil pollution are behind the latest wave of protests and attacks in the Delta. Scores are...
In the Nigerian tradition of irrepressible optimism periodically suffused with brutal realism, Father Matthew Hassan Kukah argues that the last decade's attempts at democracy in Nigeria have been...
President Goodluck Jonathan's government is taking on the United States' oil services giant Halliburton and its Nigerian associates for organising bribes to secure contracts for the $6 billion...
Vol 51 No 12 |
- NIGERIA
- BRITAIN
Britain’s Metropolitan Police have told Africa Confidential that they are confident they will secure the extradition of Nigeria’s former Delta State Governor James Ibori from Dubai, ‘by the...
An exciting election looms next year: no one knows who is going to run and, more importantly, who is going to win
President Goodluck Jonathan has a year to make good on his promises to tackle the electricity crisis, lead a credible anti-corruption campaign and implement the electoral and political...
Three groups are emerging within the governing People’s Democratic Party (PDP).
The eagerness of the United States-based private equity firm Blackstone to talk up the value of Nina Bracewell Smith’s 16% stake in Arsenal Football Club may have prompted...
The ruling party is set to win next month’s elections amid growing criticism at home and abroad
Nine months after he ordered the sacking of six bank chief executives and took their institutions into state management, the Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Sanusi Lamido...
In just twelve months Acting President Jonathan’s team wants to fix the power crisis, reform the NEC and reorganise the state oil company
The mixture of military officers, bankers and feisty female politicians in Acting President Goodluck Jonathan’s new cabinet has just over a year to make an impact in five...
With a new cabinet in place, the acting President wants to push through some economic and political reforms
The next stage of the political plan mapped out by Acting President Goodluck Jonathan and his advisors is taking shape, following the Senate's confirmation of the list of...
The reappearance of the President has worsened the political paralysis – and the splits in the PDP government
On 3 March, the state governors decided to block a vote that could have set in motion President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s enforced resignation on medical grounds. This has...
Wits in Abuja have taken to referring to First Lady Turai Yar’Adua as ‘Her Majesty’ and her coterie of apparatchiks as the ‘Secret Service’. She organised the clandestine...
From the surrealism of ‘missing president’ Umaru Yar’Adua, linked to the outside world via a ghostly voiced interview with the BBC, and with attendant disputes of legitimacy and sovereignty, Nigeria has solved the crisis in its own way, by effecting what some call a ‘democratic coup’. One by one, the elected institutions of state (the powerful governors’ forum and both houses of the National Assembly) and several non-elected regional councils met and agreed to support the handover to Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan.
Whatever the constitutional doubts that remain, the 9 February resolution by the National Assembly, citing the ‘doctrine of necessity’, to recognise Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan as Acting President was...
Now a man in a hurry, Acting President Goodluck Jonathan has to stamp his authority on Abuja and quickly decide which ministers and officials can help him and...
After President Yar’Adua’s two-month health crisis in Saudi Arabia,
Vice-President Jonathan’s supporters urge him to seize the day
On 16 January, the Vice-President, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, began to sound like a Nigerian President. His many supporters across the country say it's not before time: they are...
Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan is trying to build a broad consensus across political parties and ethnic regions, with advisors outside party and government circles who are mostly from Bayelsa....
Desperate to stop the crisis over President Yar’Adua’s illness from spinning out of control, senior politicians plot compromise deals
Politicians in Abuja currently have two main imperatives: to forestall a military coup and to prevent war restarting in the Niger Delta (AC Vol 50 No 25). They...
Nigeria’s military, though much diminished, still sees itself as the last truly national institution and the final custodian of the state. If the current crisis unravels, senior officers...
Vol 3 (AAC) No 12 |
- NIGERIA
- CHINA
Abuja wants to use Chinese export finance to build a spy network with
the controversial ZTE company – instead of a railway
Security experts reckon that cyber warfare and espionage will be this century’s new battlegrounds. With that in view, Beijing is now considering whether to allow the Nigerian government...
Vol 3 (AAC) No 12 |
- NIGERIA
- INDIA
Wherever China goes in Nigeria, India tends not to be too far behind. Chinese contractors may have landed all of the major railway deals in Nigeria (AAC Vol...
Vol 3 (AAC) No 9 |
- NIGERIA
- CHINA
- INDIA
China's state companies advance billion-dollar oil and banking deals while India's plans are now on hold
The Lagos State government, the Nigerian National Petroleum
Corporation and the China State Construction Engineering Corporation
signed an US$8 billion deal this month for a 300,000 barrel-per-day
oil refinery and a...
Vol 3 (AAC) No 9 |
- NIGERIA
- CHINA
Plans to sell the state-owned Nigeria Telecommunications (Nitel)
have floundered after China Unicom announced it would not be contributing
to the front-running New Generation Consortium comprised of China
Unicom Europe, the...
Vol 3 (AAC) No 7 |
- NIGERIA
- CHINA
Beijing’s biggest African offer yet is a risky gambit to gain a major stake in the upstream and downstream sectors of Nigeria’s oil business
Equal measures of optimism and scepticism greeted China’s
announcement of an agreement to build three oil refineries worth US$23 billion. The
terms of the memorandum of understanding are clear; the...
The on-again off-again plan to renovate the railway
linking coastal Lagos to Kano in the north may formally start up this
year, but questions about the validity of any contract...