A Country’s Frustration Fueled Overnight—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie—Lagos, Nigeria—16 January 2012—On New Year’s Day, in my ancestral hometown of Abba in Anambra State in eastern Nigeria, my family and I woke up to unbelievable news: the price of petrol had doubled. Overnight, the government had removed what it called the subsidy on fuel, and almost immediately, transport fares exploded and food prices rose astronomically. It used to cost 4,000 naira—about $25—to fill my petrol tank. Then it cost 10,000 naira. When I stopped to buy okpa, a steam-cooked bean dish, from a street hawker, she said it was no longer 50 naira; it was now 100.  “Why?” I asked.  “Because of fuel subsidy.”  A relative who had traveled to her village for the holidays called me to say that she was stranded there, unable to return to her job in Lagos; she could not afford the bus fare, which had doubled in price.  Nigeria, one of the world’s biggest exporters of crude oil, does not have adequate refineries and so it imports most of its petrol. The government claims that it pays a subsidy to importers to keep the prices low, and that these companies defraud the government by inflating their costs. Perhaps that is true, but it is a strange reason for raising prices, as though the government is incapable of policing fraud. Politicians have long discussed ending the subsidy, but no one expected it to happen when and how it did. There was something frightening about the abruptness of such a dramatic change, a sense of lurching, a violent uncertainty that captured the general mood in Nigeria. . . . 

Economic arguments are useful, but so are human arguments, which seem alarmingly lost on the Nigerian government. Prices have gone up but salaries remain the same. A driver in Lagos who earns 25,000 naira, about $152 a month, would have had to spend almost three-quarters of his salary on transportation to and from work, and this is before he would have to pay for food and, if he has children, for school fees. In Nigeria we like to say that we can “manage,” but it is almost impossible to see how many people could manage that. We are an oil-producing nation and it is not unreasonable for Nigerians to expect affordable petrol, nor is it unreasonable for Nigerians to expect more from a democratic government. A friend of mine, after calculating how much she would now spend getting to work in Lagos, said, with her eyes alive with rage, “Our senators make $100,000 a month if you count their salaries and allowances. A month! In dollars! They live in government houses and have government cars. And none of them pay for their own petrol.”—NYTimes

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Under Pressure, Nigerian Leader Relents on Gas Price—Adam Nossiter—16 January 2012—LAGOS, Nigeria — Nigeria swallowed a hard lesson on Monday that has been inflicted on governments of developing nations the world over for years: try cutting subsidies for gas and the populace will erupt in rage.

“Government appreciates that the implementation of the deregulation policy would cause initial hardships,” Mr. Jonathan said in a stiffly worded capitulation on Monday, after a week of refusing to back down. . . . The Nigerian government spends about $8 billion a year on fuel subsidies, and getting rid of them would be “an important first step” to shoring up the finances of one of Africa’s largest economies, according to a 2009 International Monetary Fund report. But in resource-rich countries like Nigeria, with its enormous gap between rich and poor, subsidized gas is one of the few benefits trickling down from an infamously corrupt government that has pocketed billions of dollars in oil profits, with little to show for it.  For the poor—and three-fourths of this country’s population lives on about a dollar a day—the fuel subsidy means a cheap ride to the market. It means lower prices for the food they buy there. And it means some sense of ownership in a national resource, oil, in which roughly 80 percent of the economic benefit has flowed to 1 percent of the population, according to some estimates. “It’s one of the few ways the urban and rural poor feel they benefit from this strategic resource,” said Michael J. Watts, an expert on the politics of oil at the University of California, Berkeley. “The fuel subsidy is experienced as one of the few things they get.” That sentiment was strongly in evidence as the protests dwindled here on Monday. Under the rollback union leaders agreed to, gas in Nigeria will drop to about $2.27 a gallon from about $3.50 —higher than the $1.70 price before Jan. 1, but low enough to end the strike.

Still, many Nigerians were disappointed that Mr. Jonathan had not dropped the price all the way back down. “We are not benefitting from this oil!” shouted Ali Mohammed, a motorcycle-taxi driver. “No lights, no roads, no hospitals. Make him reduce the price. We are suffering in this country.” Hundreds of other young men milled about close by in what has been a center of the protest here: the New Afrika Shrine nightclub of the Afro-beat star Femi Kuti, son of the Nigerian musician and dissident Fela Kuti. In a speech Monday morning, Mr. Kuti both incited and calmed the crowd listening at his feet amid clouds of marijuana smoke, expressing disgust with Nigeria’s institutions from his rickety wooden stage as supporters murmured their approval. Later in his office, Mr. Kuti shouted at his television as he watched the labor leaders announce the end of the strike. “I told you those people would back down,” he said to his aides, looking up from the screen. As for the government, he said, “They prosecute people for being gay, but there is no law against stealing 14 million.” NYTimes

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Boko Haram’s terrorism—Let me begin by reminding everyone that Boko Haram has a very long history, whether you describe Boko Haram as an army of the discontent, or even as some people grotesquely try to suggest, “revolutionaries,” or you describe them as, legitimately, this time, as marginalised or feeling marginalised. . . .

People wonder, sometimes, if they are fighting the cause of religion, why are they also killing fellow religionists? It is very important for us to understand that they have a very narrow view of even their faith. Anyone outside that narrow confine, narrow definition (in this case, we are talking about Islam), is already an infidel, an unbeliever, a hypocrite, an enemy of God (they use all these multifarious descriptions) and therefore is fit for elimination. If they believe that this environment contains any non-believer in their very narrow strain of Islam, that person or that very area is due for sanitation. And if there are those who also believe, who are confined within the very narrow limit of their arbitrary religion, any chance that there are such people, they consider them martyrs, who will be received in the bosom of Allah, with double credits as having been killed accidentally.

What I am saying is not any theorising; it is not any speculation. Examine this particular strain of Islam from Afghanistan, through Iran to Somalia to Mauritania. We are speaking in fact of a deviant arm of Islam, whose first line of enemies, in fact, are those who I call the orthodox Muslims with whom we move, interact, inter-marry, professional colleagues and so on. They don’t consider them true Muslims. . . .

The second elaboration I want to make is that I have never liked the expression, “the core North”. We are talking about North because the North is very much identified with Islam. And for one reason, there is no core South. I don’t know about the core East, I don’t know about the core West. So why that expression? For me it is too general, too loose and it confuses the dramatis personae of our political life.

I, however, identify hard-core northerners, as in hard core pornography. There exist hardcore northerners. They may be in the minority, but they believe that they are divinely endowed to run any society. . . .

The first signs that the sponsors of Obasanjo got that they made a mistake was when he dismissed military officers, who had held political offices. That was the first time those who sponsored Obasanjo, who were hardcore northerners, felt they had got themselves into trouble because as it happened, those who were most affected were northerners. That was the first sign of trouble.

And they just didn’t take it and say ‘oh let it pass’ until later. They then opened a war office at that time. I’m talking of a physical office in which every single thing he said, every clipping, was stored. Ask Olusegun Obasanjo. I personally told him this. I said: ‘By the way, I hope you realise that the people who sponsored you have declared war on you; that they have opened an office on you, specifically an Obasanjo office!’ How do I know about this? If anybody denies this, I will come back to you and I will tell you how I knew about it. I am not ready to divulge. So, that is the first. The second phase was when Obasanjo proceeded and began privately to plan his re-election (that is the second term in office). At that time, what I called the hardcore northerners began to mobilise at what level yet, I cannot categorically say.

I don’t have the slightest interest in whether Obasanjo was right to seek a second term or not. I am not going to discuss whether it is right or wrong for anybody to try to impose a limitation, which is not backed by the constitution, on any individual candidate. I’m just telling this nation certain facts which no one can deny.

Obasanjo decided to have a second term, that is a southerner, not just an ex-military man, but a southerner. The language at the time was very overt. It was ‘we are just lending you the presidency, we will take it back at the end of your term.’ It was a feeling, a belief, which percolated through the various levels, various ranks of politicians and across all ages. . . .

So I suspect that the breaking point was when Yar’Adua took ill and the question of succession began. ‘If Yar’Adua dies, you mean another southerner is going to get into that position?’ This now became a real nightmare. For this, hardcore northerners (it’s too long, let’s just use the word cabal, even though that word is misused, to narrow it down to make sure we are talking about individuals, not about a region).

They decided that something drastic had to be done. Around this time, they had begun to activate, they intensified the training, this set of foot soldiers, they began to make intensified contacts, alliances with international religion-based insurgents like al-Qaeda. And their soldiers began to go to Mauritania, Sudan and Somalia, particularly those who were categorically confirmed by the security services. They began to send them seriously for training. That is not the problem, al-Qaeda has always been interested in Nigeria, as in Kenya and Mauritania. Osama bin Laden listed, if you remember, it’s published, Nigeria among the nations to be Islamised.

And so, these people went for training, they came back lying low, waiting to be activated. Remember all these didn’t begin with the period I’m talking about. They have a long history of extremists. People tend to forget about Maitatsine; that was a different calibre altogether. So there is nothing new about what we are seeing. It is the intensification and the murderous dimension that this narrow Islamism is taking.

I am talking of accumulation of grievances of this narrow group. And this is why even some of their own fellow northerners were targets because these were considered malodorous among them and in any struggle of this kind historically, you find that the first stage is to clean out your rearguard, those whom you consider might stab you in the back–the rearguard traitors. You wipe them out first. And that is why we are seeing the intensification of the antagonism towards certain progressive liberal northerners. . . .

If you read the ‘manifesto’ of the Boko Haram, you will find that there is nothing you can actually hold on to unlike, say, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, MEND, which is categorical on the polluted environment. . . .

PDP is at the heart of the trouble, it’s within PDP they have been making this dirty bargain. “You rule for so long, it’s my turn.” It is not in the constitution. So it’s the PDP members, who really should go and sort out this problem among themselves. But the nation is the one paying the penalty. This is not comfortable because they can protect themselves. They are the ones that divided the country into two–the North and then, the South.

I think that the reason which you might say is on paper, in terms of political planning, are the six geo-political zones. This ‘two’ business, I don’t understand. But they are using this division of North versus South the same way as they are using religion. The issue is completely political. But with toxic element of religion infused into it, it gives them the leg to ally with international terrorist bodies based on religion. Those are only too happy to be of assistance. . . .

The politicians are so desperate; they are the ones who utilise religion. They are not alone. We saw Goodluck Jonathan kneeling before a Christian prelate for his blessing. The only difference is that I am not aware that Goodluck Jonathan has been sponsoring any militant fundamentalist Christians. People turn to religion. . . .

Many people are worried that what Boko Haram is doing may lead to the dismemberment of the country, while some others are saying: “we are too interwoven to split”. On what side do you queue?

If Boko Haram succeeds in its stated agenda to make the country ungovernable, if Boko Haram succeeds in goading those areas that have victim citizens in the northern part of the country into reprisal actions on the nearest targets, not only will this cause a break-up, it will be very messy. That is the reason some of us have been issuing appeals to community leaders to make sure it doesn’t happen in their communities.

It isn’t the break-up as such. Other nations were broken up, but the way in which we will break up will be intensely irremediable, it will be extremely messy. I can reveal to you, for instance, what the third phase of Boko Haram is supposed to be. . . .

That is why I believe that the country is very much on the verge of disintegration, especially if Bokom Haram succeeds in its agenda, which I outlined. With complete sense of responsibility and with the accumulation of facts, some within the government know what I’m saying, they acknowledge it. Some within the security services, I hope, have reached that analytical truth. I hope so, but they are not acting as if they heard and it is very worrisome.—TheNewsAfrica