Vol 42 No 25 | NIGERIA Octopus at work 21st December 2001 Opus Dei, a secretive organisation favoured by Pope John-Paul II, hopes to sign up more followers in Africa, where only 1,500 of its 80,000 members are estimated to...
Vol 42 No 22 | NIGERIA Unknown soldiers 9th November 2001 A massacre of more than 200 Tiv causes ructions in the military and the federation When Nigerian soldiers slaughtered more than 200 civilians in Benue State, they called into question the moral basis of President Olusegun Obasanjo's government. The Obasanjo regime, in contrast...
Vol 42 No 17 | NIGERIA Northern Lights 31st August 2001 The north wants to rule again but its two strongest candidates are deadly rivals General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida is once more at the centre of Nigerian politics. As he celebrated his 60th birthday in Saudi Arabia on 17 August, many northern Nigerians...
Vol 42 No 17 | NIGERIA Shariacracy on trial 31st August 2001 The adoption of Sharia hasn't reduced crime and corruption Nigerian advocates of Sharia – governance according to the norms, principles and rules laid down by Islamic law – face a reckoning this year. The poverty and frustration...
Vol 42 No 17 | NIGERIA How Sharia spread 31st August 2001 North-west Nigeria, with probably more than 30 million people, is the country's most populous zone - overwhelmingly Muslim, with significant numbers of Christians only in southern Kaduna and...
Vol 42 No 15 | NIGERIA 2003 starts here 27th July 2001 The coming elections are about the survival of Nigeria's federation as much as President Obasanjo's career Two years before the next national elections, decision-making comes a poor second to political manoeuvring - and that threatens the few recent successes in reforming the mismanaged and...
Vol 42 No 15 | NIGERIA Politics dead or alive 27th July 2001 The ruling People's Democratic Party, with 209 of the 348 seats in the National Assembly and 59 of the 103 seats in the Senate, enters the electoral race...
Vol 42 No 15 | NIGERIA Murder, pillage, scandal 27th July 2001 Military men are portrayed as clowns, thieves and psychopaths in a human rights tribunal Mountains of facts, many of them highly inconvenient to present and past governments, are emerging from Nigeria's Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission, the home-grown copy of South Africa's...
Vol 42 No 15 | NIGERIA Who's who in the military plots 27th July 2001 The following dramatis personae have key roles in events scrutinised by the Oputa Panel...
Vol 42 No 9 | NIGERIA Exit top brass 4th May 2001 Big policy differences are behind the departure of three military chiefs Did they jump or were they pushed? The retirement on 24 April of the Chief of Army Staff, General Victor Malu; Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Ibrahim...