Confusion over the names of two similar-sounding African countries may have helped boosted oil prices to near $80 a barrel this week as traders rushed to buy oil after reports of a military coup. A Reuters reporter received a flustered phone call from a hedge fund partner who had heard animated discussion in the market… Read More »
Nigeria’s debt profile at the end of last year stands at $3.97 billion, the Minister of Finance, Mansur Mukhtar said yesterday at the beginning of a two-day public hearing on the loans and debt collected by federal and state governments organised by an ad-hoc committee of the House of Representatives in Abuja. Mr Mukhtar said… Read More »
Liberal orthodoxy is avuncular and patronising and it bestows upon the “helpless” African a benevolent but malignant label – subhuman. It is malignant because most days these days we spend our waking hours trying to convince the other that well, we are human, just like them. Why do they see us differently from how we… Read More »
Remember that Ms Dambisa Moyo recommends that African countries raise money through the international bonds market? The Nigerian Debt Management Office is planning to do just that: From Reuters: The head of Nigeria’s debt management office said on Friday he was hopeful of gaining parliamentary approval for its $500 million debut global bond now that… Read More »
While the Nigerian Civil War devastated Igbo business activities across Nigeria, and precipitated a mass return of Igbo migrants to their home area, it also laid the foundation for a consolidation and rapid development of Igbo informal enterprise, which has had integrative rather than divisive social and economic consequences for Nigeria as a whole. Operating… Read More »
Matthew Tostevin, Reuters editor for Africa, writes in the Reuters Africa News blog: It now appears very unlikely that Yar’Adua will ever return to office, but that only intensifies the battle ahead of the election due by 2011. According to an unwritten agreement within the ruling PDP party for rotating power between Nigeria’s regions, Jonathan… Read More »
Nigerian-born singer, Nneka, performs on David Letterman’s show. Someone writes on Twitter, ‘it feels good to hear ‘Nigeria’ being mentioned for something good on US National TV. …’ I wrote about her first album a couple of years ago here.
Sola Odunfa, Nigerian journalist, writes in an article on the BBC website: I often ask myself: Should Nigeria break up, how many countries will it produce? I am not aware that any three of its more than 200 ethnic groups sincerely agree so much as to come together in a peaceful independent state. There is… Read More »
I wrote last week about violent conflict and modes of identification. It comes up again in this nice piece by FT’s Tom Burgis: Like previous outbreaks in 2001 and 2008, the latest bloodshed in Jos is wrought in the name of religion. Officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross said both Christians and… Read More »
Our 1960 national anthem, given to us as a parting gift by a British housewife in England, had called Nigeria “our sovereign motherland”. The current anthem, put together by a committee of Nigerian intellectuals and actually worse than the first one, invokes the father image. But it has occurred to me that Nigeria is neither… Read More »