After 20 years of politicking, the National Assembly has passed a landmark law to reform the country’s oil and gas industry
Reaction to the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) 2020 through the Senate and House of Representatives on 30 June veered from relief in government, quiet excitement...
The latest illness of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua adds urgency to calls for far-reaching electoral and political reforms ahead of national elections due by early 2011. Despite mounting calls for Yar’Adua to step down on health grounds after he was spirited off to Saudi Arabia for treatment of acute pericarditis, his cabinet ministers insist he must remain in charge. Meanwhile, activists and opposition politicians are reorganising to challenge the incumbent People’s Democratic Party’s overwhelming grip on power.
With national elections due by early 2011. The financial stakes are huge - control of some US$100 billion of annual oil and gas revenue. The last elections in...
From the surrealism of ‘missing president’ Umaru Yar’Adua, linked to the outside world via a ghostly voiced interview with the BBC, and with attendant disputes of legitimacy and sovereignty, Nigeria has solved the crisis in its own way, by effecting what some call a ‘democratic coup’. One by one, the elected institutions of state (the powerful governors’ forum and both houses of the National Assembly) and several non-elected regional councils met and agreed to support the handover to Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan.
Whatever the constitutional doubts that remain, the 9 February resolution by the National Assembly, citing the ‘doctrine of necessity’, to recognise Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan as Acting President was...
The Niger Delta still simmers a decade after the execution of its leading campaigner
The legacy of writer-campaigner Ken Saro-Wiwa a decade after his execution is secure. Saro-Wiwa put the worsening political and environmental crisis of the Niger Delta, the country's key...
For ambitious politicians, the exalted office of state governor is
worth fighting for, sometimes literally. That made the 26 April
gubernatorial elections in 24 of Nigeria’s 36 states a hefty
test...
