Tag Archives: Nigeria
Can Numbers Lie? Is Africa Rapidly Urbanizing (or Not)?
By Edward Paice
Everyone knows that Nairobi’s Kibera district is the largest “informal settlement”, or slum, in sub-Saharan Africa. At least, they used to know. Politicians, journalists, NGOs and urban planning professionals routinely declared that 700,000 – 1,000,000 people lived in Kibera. But when the district was geo-statistically mapped for the first time in 2009 its population was estimated at no more than 220,000-250,000. Kibera has not exactly disappeared, but it is a shadow of its former imagined self.
In similar vein, the city of Lagos is widely believed to have about 15 million inhabitants – an estimate supported by the city authorities in the wake of Nigeria’s contested (and manipulated) 2006 census. But the 2009 Africapolis survey of West Africa’s urban population, the most sophisticated to date and compiled with the aid of satellite imagery, found that the city was home to no more than 10 million people. Even more significantly, while Nigeria’s census claimed that the country’s population was 140 million, the Africapolis team concluded that “in reality, [Nigeria] probably does not contain 100 million”. (more…)
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West Africa: Ethnic Divisions, State Fragility, and Regional Solutions
There has been a lot of bad news out of West Africa recently. Coup d’états have destabilized Mali and Guinea-Bissau. Nigeria has seen a series of terrorist attacks. Toureg rebels have conquered northern Mali and declared independence. Cote d’Ivoire is still recovering from its civil war. Meanwhile, there are reports about drug trafficking, al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, and a food crisis in the making.
No region in the world has more fragile states than West Africa. The region, which consists of the fifteen countries stretching from Senegal to Nigeria, exemplifies the problems of state building when surrounded by other fragile states. Pint-sized, expensive markets keep most countries isolated from the dynamic changes globalization is bringing elsewhere. The region’s aggregate GDP is roughly the same as Norway’s—despite having over fifty times more people. Although Ghana and Senegal have made significant political and/or economic gains in recent years, most of the other states have been rocked by war, ethnic or religious clashes, political unrest, famine, or serious economic dislocation at various times over the past two decades. (more…)
City Development States: Why Lagos Works Better than Nigeria
Nigeria is not known for strong governance. On the contrary, it is arguably one of worse governed countries in the world, losing hundreds of billions of dollars to corruption and waste over the past four decades. Yet, it has two important governance achievements worth emulating.
First, it has devised a system of decentralization that has sharply reduced ethnic conflict. And second it has a major metropolis that increasingly is acting like one of a handful of city development states–large urban areas in developing countries that are driving progress forward in a way typically associated with well-managed central governments. (more…)
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How Ethnic Divisions Become Political Fault Lines
What type of ethnic divisions and political circumstances are most likely to produce conflict?
There is no easy answer, but there are formulas that can provide a guide.
Joel D. Barkan, Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa, provides a good one in his chapter on East Africa in the new book On the Fault Line: Managing Tensions and Divisions within Societies. He argues that the presence or absence of severe social divisions and their varying ‘depth’ is a function of the interplay between three variables: (more…)
New Book on the “Fault Lines” that Plague Fragile States
A new book edited by Jeffrey Herbst, Terence McNamee, and Greg Mills discusses what I consider the most important problem in fragile states: weak social cohesion. It looks at “fragmented and weak states, made up of many nations and cutting across geographical, racial and religious boundaries” and explores why some countries with potential “fault lines” produce conflict while others are better at managing them.
More than a dozen authors contribute case studies on a broad range of countries including South Africa, Northern Ireland, Iraq, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Kenya, India and even Canada and seek solutions that can be transferred elsewhere. (more…)
Nigeria’s Potential for Sectarian Conflict
Maps help explain Nigeria’s social divisions and potential for sectarian conflict.
The country has stark ethnic and religious divides:
The first map shows the country’s major ethnic groups. There are a number of major groups (Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo) and many more smaller groups not listed. The country has over 250 in all.
The second map shows the country’s main religious divide. The areas where Sharia (a relatively mild version) has been adopted are all Muslim. They are all in the north. The south is mainly Christian. (There are still many who practice some form of indigenous religion, especially in the southwest, but these are in the minority.)
Now see how development has been spread across the country:
In the first map, the female literacy rate by state is listed. In the second map, the vaccination rate by state is listed. The south has much higher figures for both. It is richer, has more access to schools and health clinics, and has much stronger international ties (which produces more remittances and more NGO assistance). Stark inequities breed resentment in the Muslim north.
Now one more map:
Nigeria’s political divide roughly corresponds to its religious divide. In the 2011 election, a Christian southerner, incumbent president Goodluck Jonathan, trounced his main rival, a Muslim, former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari, 59 to 32 percent. Jonathan did especially well in the southeast, receiving more than ninety-five percent of the vote in nine states, and more than ninety-eight percent in six. Meanwhile, every state in the Sharia belt gave a majority of its votes to Buhari; almost every other state massively rejected him. (A third candidate, another Muslim, Nuhu Ribadu, did well in a few states in the southwest and midsection, but received only 5.4 percent of the vote nationally.)
Although fairly contested, this election broke an unwritten rule agreed to by the country’s elites, making strife more likely. Whereas the presidency (which controls massive sums of money) was supposed to rotate between northerners and southerners, now southerners have enjoyed a long period of rule. Muslim leader Umaru Musa Yar’Adua was supposed to serve two terms as president, but died in office before serving his first term. Jonathan, the vice president at the time, replaced him, gaining significant advantages in the 2011 election.
As Frances Stewart has documented, the chance of sectarian strife is greatest when an identity group feels economically, politically, and culturally excluded at the same time. The election of a southern Christian has made many in the north now feel that they have been reduced to second class status in at least two of these three areas. Whereas previously the north felt that they were at least partners in the political realm (compensating for the known differences in the economic sphere), now they are more apt to feel socially excluded within their own country.
Terrorism is certainly not a product of this sentiment, but the seeds from which it sprouts can be laid by such feelings. Nigeria will have to find a way to reduce the economic divisions and make northerners feel more like partners in the country’s political system if it hopes to avoid greater strife in the future.
More on Africa, Conflict and Security, Maps, Religion
“Democracy” in Nigeria
Democracy in Africa has a great post discussing the recent fuel price rise in Nigeria. Patronage and identity politics often matter more in fragile states than electioneering, at least as the latter is understood in more developed, homogenous countries.
Whatever well-meaning technocrats (including Nigeria’s respected ex-World Bank Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala) may think, the ending of fuel subsidies has less to do with correcting a structural imbalance in the national economy, and more to do with the maths of patronage politics. . . .
The agenda here is not an economic one but a political one that is informed by the logic of rent and patronage. The Goodluck Jonathan administration suffers from an unfortunate conjunction of deficiencies of two strategic commodities; legitimacy and cash. Having become President ‘against the grain’ of the unwritten pact of regional power-rotation among the political elite, Jonathan must manufacture that consensus post-facto, which is expensive, as it requires the stuffing of dissenting mouths with Naira bills, issued via lucrative government contracts. . . .
This is a political problem, not just a developmental one, because the patronage system of government – on which elite cohesion depends – is based on the issuance of contracts (and thus, kickbacks and leakage) for big infrastructure projects.
Kickbacks are what the political elite ‘eats’, and without them the machine grinds to a halt. So the problem facing Jonathan was where to look for funds to keep the consensus going. . . . the government opted to pass the buck onto the public by availing itself of the huge sums that were tied up in the fuel subsidy. Given the choice of alienating the elite or the public, the Jonathan administration chose the former. . . .
The Jonathan administration may appear to be more vulnerable than ever, but it is worth noting that the President now has funds that may enable him to co-opt support and re-establish his position. . . .
Just to be sure, it is instructive that Jonathan, like Yar’Adua before him, has ethnicised the top leadership of the military. . . . Note instead that the strategic posts of Chief of Army Staff (CoAS) and National Security Advisor (NSA) are occupied by faces from areas which strongly support Jonathan. The appointment of Azubuike Ihejirika represents a major boost for the Igbo south-east and represents the region’s first top command appointment since the Biafra war. Similarly, NSA General Andrew Azazi is from Jonathan’s home state of Bayelsa. . . .
Despite the public demonization of the President in recent days, the issue is not that Jonathan is an especially mean person or bad President – he is certainly an improvement on some figures in Nigeria’s past – but that the system is remarkably impervious to reform. . . .
So Jonathan alone is not going to make or break Nigeria. The problem is more structural – Nigeria’s government-centred political economy, built on top of a fundamentally unwieldy constitution, has grown too expensive for its own resources and incapable of playing the role that it has carved out for itself. Spatially, central government has been retreating towards Abuja for some time now, ceding more leeway to powerful state governors while it walls itself in to the capital– a glitzy, CCTV-monitored national-scale version of the Government Reserve Area (gated estates) that exist in most Nigerian towns – where it can feed off oil revenues without having to be bothered with actual governance.
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Is Lagos next?
Cross-posted from Global Dashboard.
Although it is extremely hard to predict the actions of a terrorist group such as Boko Haram, Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, may be a looming target.
The organization’s capacity and ambition have grown swiftly, probably due to assistance from extremist groups in the Maghreb, Somalia, or farther afield.
And, as I wrote in December,
The country’s weak institutions make it ill-prepared to deal with threats like this. It is unlikely to have the capacity to meet the challenge. Expect more attacks in the coming months.
According to Human Rights Watch, Boko Haram has killed 935 people since 2009 in 164 attacks, including more than 250 in the first weeks of this year. It has bombed churches, police stations, military facilities, banks, and beer parlors. It attacked the United Nations headquarters in Abuja in August.
Last Friday’s devastating attack on Kano, Nigeria’s second largest city, went well beyond what any analyst predicted it was capable of. The Financial Times reported:
Eyewitnesses said hundreds of Boko Haram operatives were involved in the raids on eight police, intelligence and government targets that lasted several hours.
The police discovered 10 car bombs and hundreds of other unexploded devices on Monday in Kano.
The group, loosely modeled on the Taliban, seems intent on provoking greater religious conflict in a deeply divided country. Its members even talk of overthrowing the state. As Shehu Sani, a civil society activist, said,
They will attack again. It’s now a war that’s going on.
President Goodluck Jonathan has called Boko Haram the greatest threat to Nigeria since the Biafra War in the late 1960s.
The group is benefitting at least indirectly from a deep sense of frustration among Muslims in the north at southern (Christian) domination of the central government at a time when it was assumed it was their turn to rule. The inability of the state to promote development in any form compounds the alienation.
Venturing deep into the south—as an attack on Lagos would require—may be difficult to accomplish. All the attacks so far have come in the north or middle of the country, places either predominantly or partially Muslim. But as the Kano attack indicates, the group has reached a new level of sophistication, which could allow it to go where it could not previously.
Lagos offers more Western targets and important government institutions than anyplace else. Attacking the former capital city would help Boko Haram demonstrate that it can strike anywhere it wants and that the southern led administration cannot govern the country, important goals for the group.
The stability of Nigeria matters. The country is the dominant power in West Africa. It is on track to become one of the world’s five most populated countries by 2050. It exports more than 2 million barrels of oil a day, and has vast gas reserves. It is an increasingly important emerging market, receiving an estimated $6.5 billion in foreign direct investment last year. It is expected to soon overtake South Africa to become the continent’s largest economy.
Reversing this ominous trend line will not be easy. It requires a mixture of political, developmental, and security measures, all executed effectively.
But this is probably well beyond the capacity of a government well known for its dysfunction. Right now, the Jonathan administration seems overwhelmed and unsure how to respond. The intelligence agencies and police have shown little indication that they are ready to protect the country. A number of captured suspects, including the one accused of orchestrating the Christmas Day bombing, have even escaped custody.
As John Campbell of the Council on Foreign Relations explains:
If the Jonathan government persists in dealing with Boko Haram as a security issue without acknowledging and addressing the political dimension to the insurrection, it is likely that the conflict will intensify. The impotence of the police, military and security services so far indicates that the Abuja government does not have the ability or resources to destroy Boko Haram. . . .
Money will not solve the Boko Haram problem, and a political settlement would require a restructuring of Nigerian politics that would be difficult for any presidential administration to achieve.
As an ex-resident of Lagos who cares for the future of the country I hope my analysis is wrong.
Photo courtesy of Pan-African News Wire File Photos.
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Boko Haram’s Christmas present to Nigeria
The radical Islamist group Boko Haram obviously does not like Christmas:
Five bombs exploded on Christmas Day at churches in Nigeria, one killing at least 27 people, raising fears that Islamist militant group Boko Haram – which claimed responsibility – is trying to ignite sectarian civil war.
Gun battles between security forces and the sect also killed at least 68 people in the last few days in northern Nigeria. Earlier this year, the Islamists struck the capital, Abuja, twice, including a suicide car bomb attack against the United Nations headquarters that killed 26 people.
Nigeria has stark ethnic and religious divisions and a history of Muslim-Christian violence. Such attacks are unlikely to improve matters.
Unfortunately, the country’s weak institutions make it ill-prepared to deal with threats like this. It is unlikely to have the capacity to meet the challenge. Expect more attacks in the coming months.
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