Jump to navigation

Published 20th January 2012

Vol 53 No 2

Nigeria

How the fuel row caught fire

Lagos: Demonstrators holding a placard which reads 'N(aira) 65 or nothing' burn tyres and protest in Lagos against the government's decision to remove a popular fuel subsidy.
Lagos: Demonstrators holding a placard which reads 'N(aira) 65 or nothing' burn tyres and protest in Lagos against the government's decision to remove a popular fuel subsidy.

Image courtesy of Panos Pictures

An unwieldy and spontaneous opposition has won its first battle against the government; now it needs a strategy

Nobody in government, least of all President Goodluck Jonathan, seemed prepared for the torrent of opposition excited by the decision to end fuel subsidies. This doubled the retail price of petrol on New Year’s Day. The inflationary effect of the new fuel prices on goods and services was devastating for poor people and lost the government any goodwill it had picked up since April’s elections. Many know that the main beneficiaries of the subsidy are a cabal of crooked oil traders, so they ask why the government can’t pursue them and keep the fuel cheap for the public.

Sanusi hits out at subsidy racket

Image courtesy of Panos Pictures

View site

Almost alone among his colleagues in government, Central Bank of Nigeria Governor Sanusi Lamido Aminu Sanusi has made a credible case for the removal of fuel subsidies*. He argues ...

The Accra boosters

Image courtesy of Panos Pictures

View site

Foreign praise-singers try to justify aid but skate over the difficult choices facing President Mills before this year’s elections

Western commentators and politicians are lining up to pour accolades on Ghana. Some are self-interested: they aim to show that their policies and aid budgets are working. Aid advoc...

BLUE LINES
THE INSIDE VIEW

The embarrassing admission that the Liberian warlord Charles Taylor, now awaiting verdict on his trial at the Hague for crimes against humanity, worked for the United States’ intelligence services was extracted from the authorities via a Freedom of Information request. To many Liberians caught up in their country's civil war, reports of Taylor cavorting with Western intelligence are not surprising. The relationship dates back to the overthrow of William Tolbert in 1980 and Taylor’s role in th...

The embarrassing admission that the Liberian warlord Charles Taylor, now awaiting verdict on his trial at the Hague for crimes against humanity, worked for the United States’ intelligence services was extracted from the authorities via a Freedom of Information request. To many Liberians caught up in their country's civil war, reports of Taylor cavorting with Western intelligence are not surprising. The relationship dates back to the overthrow of William Tolbert in 1980 and Taylor’s role in the subsequent regime under Master Sergeant Samuel Doe. Then, Liberia hosted the main US intelligence and surveillance centre in Africa.

When Taylor fell out with Doe and was charged with embezzlement, he fled to the USA. There he was detained at a gaol in Massachusetts from which he says friendly officials helped him escape in 1985.

In the early stages of the 1990 insurrection, Taylor kept in close touch with one Lieutenant Colonel Bob Richards, a US military attaché in its Abidjan embassy. Although the Defence Intelligence Agency has confirmed Taylor was a source, it is more coy about the details of the relationship: did it provide him with tactical advice for the insurrection or put him on its payroll? Money may not have been a major concern: by then, Taylor’s joint ventures with Burkina Faso’s President Blaise Compaoré – arms smuggling and selling assets from captured territory in northern Liberia – were providing a big income. Taylor had also taken on a lucrative ‘consultancy’ for the German-based defence company Merex, which specialised in breaking international arms embargoes.

Read more

Marques takes them on

A crusading journalist has launched a criminal complaint against the President’s allies, accusing them of grand corruption

A doughty campaigner, Angolan journalist Rafael Marques de Morais, has launched a formal complaint against three top officials close to the presidency for taking personal stakes in...

Electoral chicanery and the UN

Electoral fraud has rarely been better documented than in the presidential poll of 28 November, of which every stage involved the Mission de l’Organisation des Nations Unies pour l...

Dragons in Eden

Príncipe wants a tourist bonanza and fears that São Tomé may try to obstruct it

The authorities are still tracking down protestors on Príncipe island who, at dawn on 8 December, burned the national flag in front of the Regional Government building in Santo Ant...

Cobalt's compulsory partners

In its annual disclosures (also known as the 10-K Form) to the Securities and Exchange Commission in New York on 31 December 2010, United States-registered Cobalt reported that it ...

Opposition steps up fight

The parliamentary election results look no more credible than the presidential vote and oppositionists wants to test Kabila’s will

Battle lines are hardening as disputes rage over the results of November’s legislative and presidential elections. Although the parliamentary results are not to be formally announc...

New technology, new repression

Authoritarian regimes’ use of cellphones is under the spotlight

One of the most striking aspects of last year’s North African revolutions was the use of new technology as a tool for political organisation – and to outwit flatfooted dictatorship...

Maputo shuns US concern

The government appears indifferent about beefing up coastal security and introducing anti-pirate laws

The United States is making little headway in its bid to get Mozambique and other coastal states to beef up their anti-piracy laws and their military response. It also wants action...

Positions pending

After his annual holiday in south-east Asia, Mugabe has to decide whether to reappoint many of his ageing securocrats

The security officers around President Robert Mugabe like to shroud his movements in mystery. During the congress of his Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) i...

No confidence vote from companies

The election campaign and its dubious results have made foreign companies jumpy. In early January, the monetary policy and banking operations department of the central bank, the Ba...

Pointers

Cutting rivalries

The coming battle between two gemstone plutocrats in London’s High Court could embarrass Angola’s secretive diamond marketing organisation, Angola Selling Corporation (Ascorp). Uzb...

Famine fallout

The slowness of the international response to the developing famine in the Horn of Africa last year needlessly cost thousands of lives, says a report by Oxfam and Save the Children...

Crash goes the conspiracy

Relations between Rwanda and France have received another boost. On 11 January, French judges Nathalie Poux and Marc Trévidic cleared the ruling Front patriotique rwandais (FPR) of...

Drop the pilot

A letter to the National Congress Party has emerged this week from some 1,000 Islamist activists, including Salafists, secretly egged on by Hassan el Turabi, we hear. It accuses th...

Critics still not welcome

In Africa Confidential Vol 52 No 25, we said Wubishet Taye of the Awramba Times had fled Ethiopia (‘Critics still not welcome’). In fact, it was Awramba Times Managing Editor Dawit...

The war goes regional

In Africa Confidential Vol 53 No 1, we wrote that Al Qaida commander Fazul Abdullah Mohamed had been killed by a United States drone in June 2011 (‘The war goes regional’). In fact...

Stories by country

Footer Map