Category Archives: Nigeria

Violent conflicts and modes of identification

My saxophone instructor, a Muslim, asked me today about the ‘religious violence’ in northern Nigeria. I tried to explain to him that most of the violence that is reported from northern Nigeria is about a weird definition of who an indigene is and who a settler is, and that most often, the immediate cause of… Read More »

Problems facing regional integration in West Africa

In a group interview in September, 18 disgruntled truck drivers in Cotonou, Benin, vented their frustrations to two Trade Hub consultants: driving freely from Cotonou to Ouagadougou was impossible without harassment, they said. They sometimes spend three days at borders where customs officials hold up paper work when they refuse to pay bribes; meanwhile, their… Read More »

Of Commentaries, Reactions and Over-Reactions

My column of this week. December 25, 2009: A Nigerian-born male, with secondary education in Togo and university education in London, said to have been radicalized during his university days in London, and to have been further radicalized in Yemen, attempted to detonate an ‘incendiary device’ that he had sown into his underwear before getting… Read More »

A country that has an over-bloated impression of itself?

Former American ambassador to Nigeria, Princeton Lyman, writing on today’s (ir)relevance of Nigeria. If Nigeria fails? I have a long connection to Nigeria. Not only was I ambassador there, I have travelled to and from Nigeria for a number of years and have a deep and abiding emotional attachment to the Nigerian people, their magnificence,… Read More »