Vol 43 No 3 | NIGERIA New parties, new plots 8th February 2002 The chief sponsor of the new party movement is Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, the former military leader who bankrolls the United National Democratic Party (UNDP), run by the veteran ...
Vol 43 No 1 | NIGERIA Murdering sleep 11th January 2002 The murder of Attorney General and veteran politician Chief Bola Ige on 23 December raises new doubts about the prospect of free elections in 2003. He was murdered at his home in I...
Vol 42 No 25 | NIGERIA Octopus at work 21st December 2001 Opus Dei, a secretive organisation favoured by Pope John-Paul II, hopes to sign up more followers in Africa, where only 1,500 of its 80,000 members are estimated to live. Its found...
Vol 42 No 22 | NIGERIA Unknown soldiers 9th November 2001 A massacre of more than 200 Tiv causes ructions in the military and the federation When Nigerian soldiers slaughtered more than 200 civilians in Benue State, they called into question the moral basis of President Olusegun Obasanjo's government. The Obasanjo regim...
Vol 42 No 17 | NIGERIA Northern Lights 31st August 2001 The north wants to rule again but its two strongest candidates are deadly rivals General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida is once more at the centre of Nigerian politics. As he celebrated his 60th birthday in Saudi Arabia on 17 August, many northern Nigerians were as...
Vol 42 No 17 | NIGERIA Shariacracy on trial 31st August 2001 The adoption of Sharia hasn't reduced crime and corruption Nigerian advocates of Sharia – governance according to the norms, principles and rules laid down by Islamic law – face a reckoning this year. The poverty and frustration that drive...
Vol 42 No 17 | NIGERIA How Sharia spread 31st August 2001 North-west Nigeria, with probably more than 30 million people, is the country's most populous zone - overwhelmingly Muslim, with significant numbers of Christians only in southern ...
Vol 42 No 15 | NIGERIA 2003 starts here 27th July 2001 The coming elections are about the survival of Nigeria's federation as much as President Obasanjo's career Two years before the next national elections, decision-making comes a poor second to political manoeuvring - and that threatens the few recent successes in reforming the mismanaged...
Vol 42 No 15 | NIGERIA Politics dead or alive 27th July 2001 The ruling People's Democratic Party, with 209 of the 348 seats in the National Assembly and 59 of the 103 seats in the Senate, enters the electoral race with a commanding lead and...
Vol 42 No 15 | NIGERIA Murder, pillage, scandal 27th July 2001 Military men are portrayed as clowns, thieves and psychopaths in a human rights tribunal Mountains of facts, many of them highly inconvenient to present and past governments, are emerging from Nigeria's Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission, the home-grown c...