The Swamps of Insurgency: Nigeria’s Delta Unrest

By International Crisis Group | Published 3 August 2006

The root causes of the Delta insurgency are well known. Violence, underdevelopment, environmental damage and failure to establish credible state and local government institutions have contributed to mounting public frustration at the slow pace of change under the country’s nascent democracy, which is dogged by endemic corruption and misadministration inherited from its military predecessors. Nigeria had estimated oil export revenues of $45 billion in 2005 but the slow pace of systemic reforms and the lack of jobs, electricity, water, schools and clinics in large parts of the Delta have boosted support to insurgents such as MEND. Militants appeal to the kind of public disaffection that prompted ethnic Ogoni leader Ken Saro-Wiwa to protest the military-led government and Royal Dutch/Shell before his execution in November 1995.


They Do Not Own This Place

By HRW | Published April 2006

While Olusegun Obasanjo have publicly denounced the growing negative impact of Nigeria’s indigene/settler divide, federal government policies have served to reinforce and legitimize its consequences. These discriminatory policies have served to aggravate intercommunal tensions that are dangerously volatile in and of themselves. After more than four decades of disastrously corrupt and unaccountable governance, the benefits that are meant to go with Nigerian citizenship are in desperately short supply. As poverty and unemployment have both become more widespread and more severe in Nigeria, competition for scarce opportunities to secure government jobs, higher education and political patronage has intensified dramatically. Many Nigerians believe that this desperate competition between citizens for some basic level of economic security lies near the heart of most of the country’s intercommunal conflicts. As the secretary general of Nigeria’s Catholic Secretariat put it, “Poverty in Nigeria has assumed the moral character of war, and this is what you see reflected in much of the ethnic violence in this country.”


Human Rights Abuses and Murders: 1 October to 27 October 2006

By HomeOffice | Published 27 October 2006

The most common types of abuse committed by the police in Nigeria described to Human Rights Watch by victims and perpetrators includes repeated and severe beatings with metal rods and wooden sticks or planks, as well as other implements described above. Other violations reported include the tying of arms and legs tight behind the body; suspension by hands and legs from the ceiling or a pole; resting concrete blocks on the arms and back while suspended; spraying of tear gas in the face and eyes; electric shocks; death threats, including holding a gun to the victim[’s] head; shooting in the foot or leg; stoning; burning with clothes irons or cigarettes; slapping and kicking with hands and boots; abusive language or threats; and denial of food and water. Although the law prohibits such practices and provides for punishment of such abuses, police, military, and security force officers regularly beat protesters, criminal suspects, detainees, and convicted prisoners. Police physically mistreated civilians regularly in attempts to extort money from them.


Heightened risk of violence and displacement ahead of 2007 elections

By IDMC | Published 12 September 2006

Closely linked to this is the problem of poverty and unequal access to resources. Despite its oil wealth (Nigeria is Africa’s leading oil producer, and the seventh largest in the world), at least two thirds of Nigerians live on less than $1 per day. Many people believe that conflicts are created and fanned by scheming politi-cians, particularly elites of the former military regime, relying on the huge pools of destitute and frustrated youths to create social division. The violence can then quickly spread and take on a momentum of its own.


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What Ails the American Economy?
By Kevin Phillips, Barry Gewen
28 Feb 2009

Even if his pessimism doesn’t seem wholly warranted, a sense of foreboding surely is, which is why his warnings have to be taken seriously. Mr. Phillips writes that the inventors and marketers of the new financial instruments didn’t entirely understand them. An executive of Fidelity International says a panicky feeling has set in on Wall Street because no one knows where the risks really are. The finance minister of France observes that investments may have reached such a level of complexity that no one can assess them. And Charles R. Morris, in his own gloomy book, “The Trillion Dollar Meltdown,” reports that even Citigroup’s chief financial officer “did not know how to value his holdings.