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Vol 53 No 1

Published 6th January 2012


Nigeria

A year of living dangerously

Northern and Delta insurgents, oil companies and angry citizens threaten President Jonathan’s reform plans

For a year that was meant to presage Nigeria’s great economic leap forward, 2012 could hardly have opened more inauspiciously. First came President Goodluck Jonathan’s declaration of a state of emergency enforced by further deployments of soldiers in several northern states and closure of the borders with Niger and Chad in the wake of more bombings and shootings by northern-based insurgents. That prompted new threats from a spokesman for the Boko Haram militia (Jama’atu Ahlus-Sunnah Lidda’Awati Wal Jihad) for all Christians to leave the north within three days. With such talk of attacks and reprisals over FM radio and social media, some ex-military officers suggest that the crisis could prompt a mutiny or putsch within the army, probably among the junior officers.

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