Is Nigeria at a turning point?
Jeremy Weate, the blogger who writes at Naija Blog pointed to the London Times editorial today. How would your students react to this analysis?Nigeria on the brink
Four days of violence in Nigeria have left hundreds dead, destroyed towns and villages across the north, brought the cold-blooded police shooting of an Islamist rabble-rouser and left the outside world horrified. Nigeria, with 140 million people, is Africa’s largest country. It is also one of the most corrupt, unstable, unequal and fissiparous: in half a century of independence it has seen civil wars, separatist rebellions, military coups, ethnic vendettas and a terrible descent into virtual ungovernability. What happens in Nigeria matters not only to Africa: it affects the huge diaspora in Britain, distorts the oil market, drives international criminality and opens the gates to extremism and terrorism...
The uprising, however, is just a symptom of the social breakdown that has made Nigeria so prone to violence. Rampant corruption has undermined even the feeble central government efforts to tackle social inequality, failing health and education systems, the stinking detritus burying most big cities and widespread unemployment. The oil boom has only exacerbated corruption and inequality, and the dreadful conditions in the Niger Delta have spawned an endemic rebellion, regular kidnappings and crime syndicates that siphon off so much oil that total production is running at millions of barrels below capacity...
Nigerians are desperate to see better government in Abuja. The onus is now on President Yar’Adua to overcome doubts about his democratic legitimacy, grasp the urgency of Nigeria’s situation and save a failing state before he is swept away by violence, despair or another coup.
Labels: Nigeria, politics, regime
posted by Ken Wedding @ 12:21 PM
1 Comments:
Jeremy Weate points out an analysis from Jean Herskovits in Foreign Policy
The Real Tragedy in Nigeria's Violence
"Nigeria's latest spate of violence -- which began with attacks on police stations in four northern states -- is not what it seems. Superficially, the story looks similar to (though it was not connected with) outbreaks of Islamist fanaticism elsewhere in the world: An Islamist sect run amok, threatening a town's security, demanding an end to Western institutions, and seeking to impose a strict religious code. But instead, the clashes are a northern Nigerian version of what is happening in another (mostly Christian) region of the country, the Niger Delta. Both are violent reactions to the flagrant lack of concern on the part of those who govern for the welfare of the governed.
"Ten years of supposed democracy have yielded mounting poverty and deprivation of every kind in Nigeria. Young people, undereducated by a collapsed educational system, may "graduate," but only into joblessness. Lives decline, frustration grows, and angry young men are too easily persuaded to pick up readily accessible guns in protest when something sparks their rage. Meanwhile, those in power at all levels ignore the business of governing and instead enrich themselves. Law and order deteriorate. The Nigerian police, which are federal, are called on, but they have grievances of their own. Ill-trained, ill-paid, and housed in squalid barracks, they are feared for their indiscriminate use of force. The military, though more professional, is not prepared for dealing with unrest -- and unrest has proliferated more and more...
"And in the Niger Delta, as in the north, the goverment's indifference to life on the ground has had growing consequences. Protests there have escalated over the years to kidnappings, explosions, and armed combat. Successive governments, especially at the lavishly funded state level, have done little to develop the area and improve people's lives. What is different, of course, is that the delta's oil, which despoils the mangrove creeks but funds Nigeria's government at all levels, has also produced criminal networks whose activities, with political and even military complicity, have made the tragedy there all the more intractable. And the massive importation of weapons into the delta has made guns of all kinds -- particularly AK-47s -- available cheaply throughout the country, notably now in the north.
"The problems are not new. Nigerians and others who cared to look closely have seen the political venality, lack of concern, and flamboyant lifestyle of the corrupt rich and powerful who have made daily life for the vast majority of the population worse and worse, year after year. A decade ago, with the return of democracy, Nigerians had high hopes. But now, after rigged elections at all levels in 2003 and 2007, and the prospect of nothing different in 2011; with unclean drinking water, a failed electrical grid, unsafe roads, ever rising crime, and a host of other grievances, they have little hope left..."
Post a Comment
<< Home