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Published 24th May 2013

Vol 54 No 11

Nigeria

Blocking the great reform bill

Nuhu Ribadu

Partisan wrangling and commercial manoeuvring have derailed plans to make the oil and gas industry more efficient and accountable

Efforts towards comprehensive reform of Nigeria’s oil and gas industry are in tatters some five years after the first version of the Petroleum Industry Bill was presented to Parliament. After several redrafts, the PIB is still on the floor of the National Assembly and at the centre of partisan disputes, as parliamentarians pick over clauses which they claim favour one region of the country over another.Meanwhile, well connected companies and officials continue to benefit from an opaque system of management and operation that has allowed as much as US$100 billion to be siphoned off from state oil and gas revenue over the past decade, according to a report drawn up by the former anti-corruption czar, Nuhu Ribadu (AC Vol 53 No 9).

An insurgency without the oil

Image courtesy of Panos Pictures

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With Map: Recent Boko Haram activity: bombings, shootings, kidnappings, jailbreaks

At face value, the declaration by President Goodluck Jonathan’s government, dominated by appointees from the oil-rich Niger Delta, of a state of emergency in north-east Nigeria and...

Talking Tinyefuza

Image courtesy of Panos Pictures

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Senior army officers are falling out over a succession plan which favours President Museveni’s son, Brigadier Kainerugaba Muhoozi

The raid by armed police on the Daily Monitor offices in Kampala on 20 May has deepened the political crisis. The newspaper had published a private letter from a dissident military...

BLUE LINES
THE INSIDE VIEW

This weekend in Addis Ababa, African leaders celebrate 50 years since the founding of the Organisation of African Unity. They will debate how to achieve the pan-African ideal of continental integration. Some argue for cutting tariffs, ending constraints on the movement of capital and labour to create an African economic community. Others echo Ghana’s founding President Kwame Nkrumah: ‘Seek ye first the political k...

This weekend in Addis Ababa, African leaders celebrate 50 years since the founding of the Organisation of African Unity. They will debate how to achieve the pan-African ideal of continental integration. Some argue for cutting tariffs, ending constraints on the movement of capital and labour to create an African economic community. Others echo Ghana’s founding President Kwame Nkrumah: ‘Seek ye first the political kingdom’ – that only determined leadership can end Africa’s balkanisation and give its economies scale and coherence.

Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Chairwoman of the AU Commission, wants the summit to produce a plan for integration, with the leaders of the African Development Bank and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Donald Kaberuka and Carlos Lopes.

Other pressures point Africa in the opposite direction although its new states have not been a compelling success. Eritrea won independence from Ethiopia and then the two countries went to war in 1999. Today, Eritrea is a closed, isolated society. After high hopes at independence in July 2011, South Sudan has continued battling with Khartoum over borders, politics and oil. Yet many others seek independence: Somaliland, Azawad, Western Sahara, Casamance and more.

The desperate need this weekend is to find government structures that can foster integrated economies but can also allow devolution of power to the many disenchanted communities.

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