A Nigeria Thread (Non-Music Division)

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Hundreds_die_in_fighting_after_Nigeria_1129.html

:-/

i still wanna go mostly cuz of music/food/nollywood. talking to nigerian dudes i was told that the north is mostly islamic & law-abiding and the south is mostly christian & dangerous tho i dunno how true all that is

my limited knowledge - yes, the north is primarily muslim and south primarily christian. there's occasional, serious violence in both regions between muslims and christians (also rooted in ethnic and other divisions). it may well be that the South is more dangerous given that it's where the oil is, and I think it's more rapidly urbanized. it's got Lagos, at least. historically, there's been a slightly larger muslim population (in part due to where the border with cameroon was drawn?), and there have been some efforts to impose sharia law in the North. the military establishment that ran things for decades was most associated with the North, and extracted Southern resources for Northern benefit. military rule ended with the election of the current President, a Christian from the South (who has some repressive military history of his own). Fela and King Sunny Ade are also from the South.

as are Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/nigeria/facts.html

Customs agents seize soapy bird’s head at BWI

LINTHICUM (AP) — U.S. customs officials say agents at BWI have seized a soap-encrusted severed bird’s head from the luggage of a traveler returning from Nigeria.

Customs and Border Protection agents at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport found the head in a container of homemade black soap on Tuesday. The discovery comes less than four months after they seized another soapy bird’s head from a Nigerian traveler.

The traveler in Tuesday’s incident, a U.S. citizen of Nigerian descent, was issued a $300 fine and the soapy bird head was destroyed.

Nigeria is considered to be affected with the “highly pathogenic” avian influenza and foot-and-mouth disease. Customs officials say importing fowl products from regions with bird disease outbreaks poses a significant threat to the American poultry industry.

Anybody?

uh what?

why the soapy birds heads?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/27/us-nigeria-violence-idUSBRE93Q07P20130427

In a country with a government as corrupt and criminal as Nigeria, I could see Islamists gaining a real foothold by posing as an incorruptible moral force.

yep

From today's NY Times

A gruesome assault that left scores of villagers dead has been blamed by survivors on revenge-seeking soldiers and has brought withering criticism at home and abroad

I was just reading this - http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/boko-haram-s-strengthening-position-in-nigeria-by-ike-okonta

I have this fantasy about visiting Lagos and Accra (apparently there's an 8-hour bus ride between the two) one day.

Me too. Interesting piece. Thanks

Man, I dunno. Ever since reading that New Yorker piece on Nigeria as a failed state ... maybe things are better, but it would not be anywhere near the top of my list of places to go.

id love to go. what did the nyer piece say? everything ive read/heard has indicated that its fairly stable and safe for tourists

Don't worry, I won't go until my life insurance kicks in. (And probably not even then - maybe in a few years tho.)

Banning and Sean from Afropop Worldwide are in Ghana now. That sounds like fun too, and maybe safer.

yeah! they're gonna send me a t-shirt from accra :D

This is the piece, from a few years ago:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/11/13/061113fa_fact_packer

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/nollywood-usa-african-movie-makers-expand-filming-to-dc-area/2013/05/22/c132bae6-b107-11e2-baf7-5bc2a9dc6f44_story_1.html

Nollywood movies being made in US

The amount being spent is definitely a new development but there have been a ton of culture clash/diaspora nollywood movies filmed in the US and the UK.

If you live Nollywood films this new comp from Sahel sounds is amazing:
http://sahelsounds.bandcamp.com/album/harafin-so-bollywood-inspired-film-music-from-hausa-nigeria

Aah yeah, I came across that last week. Haven't seen many (non-historical) Hausa movies and while the Bollywood vibes came through as a whole it felt more like party music than movie music.

that's the Bollywood vibe tho too - picture these attached to big dance numbers. nice find Mordy

http://africaindc.wordpress.com/2013/06/06/what-does-susan-rices-appointment-as-national-security-adviser-mean-for-africa/

This thread needs more Lagos photos.

http://relationalbcn.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/lagos_go_slow.jpg

http://relationalbcn.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/298594543_1d57e20d60_b.jpg

Church service:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uAikpk7LRN4/UAZ13i4Y6BI/AAAAAAAAAh4/VqxJUkTFkP4/s1600/lagos-church.jpg

Has been difficult to find any decent on the ground reporting about this, which is probably not unrelated to the surprising dearth of attention the story has been receiving in general.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/25/nigeria-schoolgirls-families-hopes-fade

terrifying story
some suggestion that boko haram have been replenished with foreign jihadis driven out of the sahel in mali etc

A senior security source said the government was in talks with the captors. "At the moment, all options are on the table. It's clear that military force alone cannot solve the problem, and there's a need to have dialogue too."

The official said the country's official satellite imagery database had not been updated since the 1980s – a key hindrance in the ability to track the extremists' movements across wide, isolated tracts of desert and forest.

On Friday the number of students thought to have been abducted climbed to at least 300, amid continuing confusion over how many girls were present during the attack. A school official said many parents had not been informed that they had to formally register their children as missing.

Argh so hard to find a consistent story in all this.

Conflicting details and timelines everywhere.

Latest I'm hearing is that BH are willing to negotiate a deal to return girls that haven't already been trafficked. The fact that they didn't immediately come out and claim responsibility for it suggests internal strife/ disagreement on the matter, plus increased (and unforgivably belated) international attention is almost certainly not what they're looking for right now.

Patience Jonathan really is a piece of work
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-27283278

“I don’t know where they are… there is no confirmation of the location of the schoolgirls, you are a journalist, you know more than me.”

President Goodluck Jonathan

DAKAR, Senegal — In a video message apparently made by the leader of Nigeria’s Islamist group Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of hundreds of schoolgirls nearly three weeks ago, called the girls slaves and threatened to “sell them in the market, by Allah.”

“Western education should end,” Mr. Shekau said in the 57-minute video, speaking in Hausa and Arabic. “Girls, you should go and get married.” The Islamist leader also warned that he would “give their hands in marriage because they are our slaves. We would marry them out at the age of nine. We would marry them out at the age of 12,” he said.

http://atane.tumblr.com/post/84316429194/everyone-is-an-expert-on-nigeria-now

(BBC) Suspected Boko Haram militants have kidnapped eight more girls in northeastern Nigeria.

The latest kidnapping happened on Sunday night in the village of Warabe, in Borno state. The girls taken were between the ages of 12 and 15.

On Monday, Boko Haram's leader threatened to "sell" more than 230 girls seized from their school, also in Borno, on 14 April.

The Islamist insurgency by Boko Haram has left thousands dead since 2009.

The BBC's Mansur Liman in Abuja says the area around Warabe, the site of the latest abductions, is a stronghold of the Islamist movement.

Map showing Warabe
The gunmen arrived in two trucks and also seized animals and food from the village.

Communications are very poor in the area, which explains why the news took several days to emerge, our correspondent says.

Residents from a nearby town told AFP that they feared Boko Haram would target them next.

xp Atane is largely otm (His second point demonstrates why comments under any article about Northern Nigeria in a Western publication are unreadable, or at least more so than the norm) but he is being a little unfair. He correctly pinpoints poor leadership as a key impediment, so surely anything that puts pressure on the Nigerian government to get results is a boon and international attention does just that. This is something that everybody should feel outrage about, not just Nigerians and Africans but there's a legitimate sense that relative to other tragedies and atrocities, global reaction to this has been sluggish and now that things have picked up, that still remains to have been true.

Also the reality is most people outside of Nigeria, even amongst the Nigerian diaspora simply wouldn't know which sources and publications can be considered reliable and for the most part that's not something I'd be prepared to hold against them. When people were complaining that "nobody is reporting this", it's only fair to assume that they were referring to the news outlets that they use and are familiar with, which as he says is fair enough, so while there has inevitably been a tsunami of paternalistic and misugiuded rhetoric I wouldn't call it out on that front.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/world/africa/islamist-militants-kill-hundreds-in-northeastern-nigeria.html

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/muslim-world-scholars-condemn-nigeria-kidnapping

pvmic that nakh

gotta admit that post is definitely out of character for you

The latest attack, on Monday, followed a classic Boko Haram pattern: Dozens of militants wearing fatigues and wielding AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenade launchers descended on the town of Gamboru Ngala, chanting “Allahu akbar,” firing indiscriminately and torching houses.

humans are a rotten species

oh my god this guy's lopsided smile is horrifying

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9sJnldKRg8&feature=player_embedded

truly an evil muslim

well he's certainly not making a kiddush allah

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/12/the-boko-haram-terrorists-are-not-islamic.html

yeah, i don't know. i think ppl self-identifying as a religion and claiming that their actions are done in the name of that religion's deity is sufficient to label them adherents of that religion. how can we possibly create a higher standard for religious identification than self-confession?

Is it really so straightforward? Is self-identification usually considered to be sufficient? If the vast majority of Muslims condemn their actions and those actions aren't explicitly endorsed by Islamic principles, how representative of Islam can you then say Boko Haram is?

Not necessarily representative but it is insane on multiple to deny that they're Islamic because you feel like they make Islam look bad. First, No True Scotsman fallacy. Second, religion is about self-confession to begin with. Third, the dude literally says 'in the name of Allah' in his speeches. He's not only incidentally a Muslim who is doing things that aren't Islamic. He's grounding his entire ethos in his religion.

on multiple levels*

or at least he's using the religion--or his interpretation thereof--to explain/justify his activities. which is just about what all politicized/militarized religion does.

http://www.listandalucia.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/yorrippetsut1607.jpg

famous christian peter sutcliffe

thats an excellent comparison

I'm first in line to condemn Christian extremism, but it's not just a little disingenuous to compare a solitary schizophrenic to a large political group.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/1/21/1358799714811/Idi-Amin-seated-with-mic-008.jpg

a famous scotsman

this is risible special pleading

does the catholic church get to disinherit its patronage of torquemada on the grounds that his actions would no longer be endorsed by most mainstream and media literate catholic theologians

I'm not sure there's much value in arguing over the validity of boko members' Islamic identification. They are Muslims but their actions are condemned by practically all other Muslims (even Al Qaeda bristles at their indiscriminate violence, if news reports are to be trusted). The only thing we get out of this is that Islam is a religion with black sheep like the rest.

it is kinda weird to hear that there's a line AQ won't cross

According to U.S. Army General Carter Ham, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the Somalia-based Al-Shabaab, and the Nigeria-based Boko Haram were as of June 2012 attempting to synchronize and coordinate their activities in terms of sharing funds, training and explosives.[8] Ham added that he believed that the collaboration presented a threat to both U.S. homeland security and the local authorities.[4

Boko Haram’s funding traced to UK, S/Arabia

INVESTIGATIONS into activities of the dreaded militant Islamic sect, Boko Haram have led operatives of the State Security Service (SSS) and its collaborative local and international agencies into the sources of funding of the dreaded sect.

Information at the disposal of Nigerian Tribune indicates that operatives were told that the group had received funds from some Al-Qaeda-linked organisations based in the middle East.

However, the operatives were said to have made a shocking find, which confirmed that the group actually received funding from a United Kingdom-based (UK) organisation.

It was gathered that leaders of the sect already arrested had opened up by giving some strategic information, especially on the funding of the dreaded organisation.

Sources confirmed that while the organisation relied on donations by its members in its earlier days, its links with Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) opened it to fundings from groups in Saudi Arabia and the UK.

According to the sources, different confirmations coming from sources in Boko Haram had indicated clearly that a group known as Al-Muntada Trust Fund, with headquarters in the United Kingdom, had extended some financial assistance to the sect.

Investigations, so far, revealed that the sect received financial assistance from some Islamic organisations.

“The sect was also said to have received funding from Islamic World Society with headquarters in Saudi Arabia,” one source stated.

It was gathered that while initial funds for the sect came from contributions by members, there were also donations from notable Muslims, especially a businessman, who was once said to have donated a bus and some loud speakers to the organisation and the late Baba Fugu, Mohammed Yusuf’s in-law, who was said to have donated a farmland at Auno village in Konduga Local Government Area of Borno State.

It was also gathered that security agencies have uncovered another sponsor, whose identity was given as a businessman from Bauchi State. He was said to have developed links with Al-Qaeda in Somalia having received some training from one Abu Umar Al-Wadud, the man who leads Al-Qaeda in Somalia.

The danger in funding and empowering radical militant extremist groups like Boko Haram is that ultimately they might end up doing something that even Al-Qaeda finds reprehensible. But at that point they've already become a significant political force that can't just be waved away.

xps and burnt rice

Nobody is denying that they're Islamic and frankly, I'm not all that concerned with how Islam ends up looking in the eyes of people with no sense of scale and context. I've made no universal claims about what a Muslim is supposed to be but we can't pretend that such rhetoric doesn't incite unnecessary Islamophobia and produce narratives that eschew more practical realities in favour of ideological ones.

Religion can be just as much (if not more) about 'the group' as it is self-confession. The reality of what Boko Haram actually does - how and why they do it, are not to be found in the professed ethos of Abubakar Shekau.

tbf, the link I posted was explicitly denying that they were Islamic?

like it's even in the title lol:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/12/the-boko-haram-terrorists-are-not-islamic.html

And he's well within his rights to do so. If he doesn't interpret their actions to be in line with Islamic principles, then how would you suggest he go about saying so?

maybe there is some extreme form of cargo cult enormity that is simply too remote from any substantial sect of whichever faith, boko haram's methods are perhaps too diffuse, extreme, whatever, for mainstream salafist jihad and anyone with any care for what the west thinks about islam will doubtless disinherit them but to simply remove them from spectrum of islam entirely is wilful delusion

if non-muslims want to invest in intra-islamic realness claims then they will presumably endorse as /properly/ islamic the claims of those quoted grandees who are denouncing boko haram, such as the current saudi grand mufti

In April 2012, he issued a fatwa allowing ten year old girls to marry insisting that girls are ready for marriage by age 10 or 12: "Our mothers and grandmothers got married when they were barely 12. Good upbringing makes a girl ready to perform all marital duties at that age."[9]

Rather than condemn the media for rightfully pointing out that this militant group organizes its ideology around an interpretation of Islam, he could condemn the group for calling themselves Islamic while transgressing tenets of the faith. The former is apologetics, the latter is totally within his rights (and virtuous even maybe). xp

I'd imagine that goes without saying? (though to be sure many people are)

And if his concern is "Islamaphobic" Westerners using this group to tar all Muslim believers, why doesn't he just remind readers that not all Muslims believe the same things, just like all Christians and all Jews don't believe the same things. Why can't he condemn a radical interpretation of Islam without writing it out of the Islamic context entirely? Can the religion not survive being associated in any way w/ Boko Haram? And if it can't, is that because Nigeria is not the only area in the world where violent Islamic fundamentalism is a phenomenon?

Because its quite clear that many Westerners aren't prepared to see things that way.

I'd imagine that as far as he's concerned the only way to divorce radical Islam from broader Islamic contexts is to severely emphasize a divergence between the two.

Well apparently it can

So do you believe that violent fundamentalism and Islam are inevitable bedfellows irrespective of other contextual considerations?

Well, I do believe that there is plenty of scriptural justification for violent fundamentalism in the Quran, but no, I don't think it's inevitable. Lots of religions have violence in their history + sacred texts but aren't damned to participate in it in 2014. I do however think that in 2014 there's a wide enough current of violent fundamentalism that justifies itself within the parameters of Islamic scripture and doctrine that to pretend otherwise is silly.

I should say Quran/Hadith. I'm not trying to make an argument about textual legitimacy in Islam.

the no true scotsman fallacy is interesting but I don't think straightforwardly fallacious as it conflates the formal, concrete sort of scottishness with the ideal sense, which is the more apposite for religion. I think that a pluralist approach to defining religions that prioritizes self-identity is anathema to the way a lot of actually religious ppl conceive of their own faith. There's a sense in which religions are vast, contradictory entities existing across eras that are responsible for countless appalling crimes, but individuals invested in a tradition will inevitably have their own take on its muggy, highly contested borders, something which they can personally reconcile with. everyone is trying to be a better scotsman.

the level of self-identification is trivial. to recognise the boko haram guys' actions as in some interesting sense islamic is to take their conception of islam over that of the vast majority of muslims, and I would wonder why. the chances of a catholic being associated in a negative sense with the inquisition seem slim, it's not part of discourse in the way that salafi-jihadism is, & carries less weight.

during the nairobi mall attack, the al shabab gunmen asked people to name the prophet's mother as a test to mark out who could leave. to stress the arbitrariness of demarcating a religion misses its importance, & using self-identification is as political a way of doing it as any other.

surely catholicism is less associated w/ the inquisition than islam w/ boko haram bc the inquisition was back in the 12th century. it's not like anyone is claiming that the Umayyad conquest of Hispania indicates violent undercurrents in Islam. they're looking at contemporary political movements. also, i'm not even sure about your distinction anyway. at least in the Jewish community there continues to be a historical memory of crimes of the inquisition - not just liturgically (the kol nidre melody was supposedly written by conversos who regretted being forced to hide) but continues to play out in actual communities of crypto-jews, which is enough of a real thing that i know about half a dozen ppl from crypto-jewish families.

like notably recent popes have felt it was necessary to apologize to communities who were affected by the inquisition, suggesting a level of institutional responsibility at the very least. (of course islam does not have an institutional coherency like catholicism does.)

the distinction is just that ilxors aren't shuddering in moral revulsion at the tics of catholic inquisitors

self-identification creates monolithic, incoherent entities that ironically no single believer could ever identify with. it's inherently an outsider's way of looking at a religion & pretty unenlightening in this situation insofar as it groups the boko haram guy with the schoolgirls he has kidnapped

the schoolgirls are christians from what i understand so i'm not sure your point... unless you are considering them (very) recent converts to Islam?

the distinction is just that ilxors aren't shuddering in moral revulsion at the tics of catholic inquisitors

the 800 yr old tics?

i do agree that it doesn't make sense to lump together a fascist radical islamic ideology w/ the forced convert victims of that ideology...

I'd assumed that being from borno/the north in general they were muslim but ok, if not I stand corrected

They were abducted from a mixed school and there are Muslim and Christian girls missing fwiw.

anyway, i'm not sure what it adds to mention that muslims themselves are victims of these radicals (i've seen this article made a lot recently - as tho it somehow absolves Islamic theology of any kind of influence in BH). that's really only an objection if the argument is that this is a holy war between christians and muslims (a claim i've only seen from the political christian right). the real critique is that this radicalism hurts all kinds of people, including muslims.

article argument

like if i argued that a particular religion oppressed women, you wouldn't say that the critique groups the women of that religion w/ its oppressors. that would be weird.

i don't see this debate as anything new, really. al qaeda and other militarized forms of islam have been at the center of debates about islamic identity for decades.

the question is what counts as 'islamic theology', who makes that call & why. the broader your definition of a blanket term the less useful it becomes as an explanation of events&motivations. if you argued that say, islam, oppressed women you would have to exclude certain elements as inessential, despite lots of people explicitly identifying as islamic feminists

no disagreement from me. that a particular ideology emerges from islam means more about the ideology than it does about islam as a whole (which is too complex to reduce to most sociopolitical generalizations)

A pretty good summation of what a lot of Nigerians think is really going on here, albeit with a very strong Jonathan/PDP bent
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/05/season-conspiracies-goodluck-jonathan/

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/05/23/nigerias_house_of_cards_growth_boko_haram_inequality

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/08/world/africa/nigerian-newspaper-weekly-trust-says-army-blocked-distribution.html

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/boko-haram-may-have-killed-thousands-attack-say-experts-n283011

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-30728158
From the BBC story on this

While President Goodluck Jonathan, who is seeking re-election next month, has condemned the attack on a French satirical magazine in Paris as dastardly, he has not commented on the violence at home, our reporter says.

this story made me so sick + sad
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/world/africa/suicide-bomber-hits-maiduguri-nigeria-market.html

Terrible. Using a 10-year-old girl as your suicide bomber.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/12/-sp-boko-haram-attacks-nigeria-baga-ignored-media

More on why the Baga killings have gotten little media attention

journalism has had trouble covering African conflicts (thinking specifically sudan, congo, nigeria, mali off-hand) for a long time now - it's not safe so it's hard to keep ppl out in the field and i guess it doesn't generate enough clicks to dedicate specific reporters to various areas. so a lot of western media can only re-report african news stories which are often underfunded themselves.

Plus, as the article and others have noted, Nigeria's own politicians, especially its prez, don't even want to talk about it:

Media analyst Ethan Zuckerman said that the president is “understandably wary of discussing Boko Haram, as it reminds voters that the conflict has erupted under his management and that his government has been unable to subdue the terror group”. Nigeria’s elections are set to take place on 14 February. The president was also criticised for celebrating his daughter Ine’s wedding over weekend, in the aftermath of the killings.

The situation in the north can seem so hopeless. Will the February elections make a difference?

I don't see how it could help.

Couldn't a new president help improve the military, the government bureaucracy, and work with other nations better to make life in the north better for the citizens(controlling or defeating extremists and making life better for others so they won't wanna join the extremists). Naive dreams?

Maybe if we all started wearing t-shirts that said "I Am Nigeria"?

Nigerians in the diaspora are already tweeting stuff like that!

First thing to do is to get shot of this clown, Goodluck Johnson.

http://touchvision.com/video/96698

The PDP is by far the most powerful political party in Nigeria and has won every election in the country (handily but by no means uncontroversially) since sustained civilian government became a reality 16 years ago. This may change in the future if the newly formed APC continues to gain traction, but it almost definitely won't during next months election. In that sense thinking of Goodluck as the problem isn't really helpful, especially if we're not giving due consideration to what the most likely alternative would be.

The government's silence on the Baga situation is odd and inexcusable but not entirely surprising. Goodluck's unfailing tactlessness as a leader and public figure aside, the level of intrigue surrounding Boko Haram and power brokers in the north is crazy and looming elections only serve to exacerbate that. The silence is certainly calculated but trying to parse what the logic behind it might be is futile and depressing.

The military was quite purposefully hobbled both in terms of manpower, funding and bureaucratic infrastructure, retaining usefulness in the fulfilment of foreign mandates but severely limited in its capacity to act meaningfully within the country. Of course in the wake of a deadly civil war and the coups and counter-coups that brought about numerous military dictators this made absolute sense. Now of course things are different, the army isn't equipped to deal with Boko Haram and Washington is blocking attempts by the Nigerian government to purchase arms on human rights grounds.

As for cooperation with other nations...
http://www.punchng.com/news/chad-niger-pulled-out-soldiers-from-baga-cds/

Sadly, things will most probably get worse beyond the election, which is likely to see unprecedented levels of violence. Plummeting oil prices has put tanked the economy with the added insult of Nigerians not experiencing the benefit of reduced prices. The Naira is in a hole and public sector workers aren't being paid, so yeah I guess naive dreams is about right.

it should probably be mentioned that chad soldiers have been pretty controversial as well

Was reading about refugee issues across the borders in the North. Folks are fleeing

The idea of Goodluck Jonathan not wanting to talk about Boko Haram for reasons of political expediency is sickening.

unless you are considering them (very) recent converts to Islam?

Forced conversions, of course.

That image reminded me of Ceddo, Ousmane Sembene's 1977 drama about the forced Islamisation in the 17th century Sahel of his native Senegal. It's on YouTube with French or English subtitles.

bh now in cameroon

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2015/01/chadian-troops-join-war-against-boko-haram-201511815165034154.html

interesting -- didn't chad mostly intervene on the side of Séléka in CAR? not that they couldn't be okay w/ one form of nationalist islam and be disgusting by haram (and who wouldn't be tbh)

Don't know.

A Nigerian general from the 1980s is back:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/world/africa/muhammadu-buhari-nigeria-election.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

After ruling Nigeria with an iron hand 30 years ago as the country’s military leader, Mr. Buhari is now a serious threat at the ballot box, analysts say, in large part because of Boko Haram’s blood-soaked successes.

http://pando.com/2015/01/28/the-war-nerd-boko-haram-and-the-demon-consensus/

I was hoping ilx would get all fired up about this super provocative piece but I just realized that like only 4 of us actually read this thread so it's unlikely most of ilx is going to even see it.

I liked it fwiw, his points abt the "Left" are mostly on target although imo a bit reductive in terms of seeing 'the Left" as some monolithic entity

love his slam on colonial Britain as well

basically an article that needed to be written, hope it gets read more widely than it probably will.

I have missed this left-wing Boko Haram apologism. Does it exist?

did he mention left-wing apologism for boko haram or just the left-wing cynical exploitation of boko haram to deflect attention from charlie hebdo but otherwise total ignorance?

At the end he approvingly quotes Mark Ames saying that the left views Boko Haram style jihadis as an anti-imperialist hence progressive force.

People who wanted to divert attention from CH to Nigeria probably wanted to say something like “the West doesn’t really care about Islamic terrorism, it only cares when it hurts white people, or when there is political currency to be gained by appearing to care”.

well i mean i agree w/ mark ames analysis of the post-colonial left (aka any enemy of the west is a friend of mine) but i think he's more speculating about why the left doesn't care so much about boko haram (or seleka, or houthi, or a few years ago janjaweed in darfur, etc) under normal circumstances, but not suggesting that there's a cottage industry of boko haram apologia which would be too crass for everyone.

for one thing, you have to know something about these countries before you can even start on the apologia. easier to just ignore it.

People who wanted to divert attention from CH to Nigeria probably wanted to say something like “the West doesn’t really care about Islamic terrorism, it only cares when it hurts white people, or when there is political currency to be gained by appearing to care”.

I did see this

That guy paints with too broad a stroke re "the Left", "Sahel/Muslim" etc and of course only takes on certain "cool bloggers" (meaning Greenwald, et. al)while ignoring governments and "the right" and right-wing bloggers. Acknowledging enduring aspects of colonialism is propably too cliched left for this guy (some of his writing I just skimmed so I could b ewrong). Thus, it seems like he is just more interesting in some "gotcha" points against certain lefty bloggers, than in trying to get people to really care about Africans in the affected areas.

well to be fair he makes it clear that he has been trying to get ppl to care about that for years now, and this column was mostly venting about the way the issue has recently come up

i think he legitimately cares, but yeah his shtick is a kind of matt taibbi style outrage for the geopolitical set- he's not a particularly sensitive writer. (but also i don't think he feels the need to condemn the right-wing since Pando/Exile is nominally left wing - so they're swinging at ppl in their group)

mordy you do a good job being "provocative" by posting the most asinine "thinkpieces" on political issues, even ones you disagree with. i'm not sure if you think you're going god's work or what.

i'm instantly skeptical of anyone who invokes "the left" as some kind of monolithic enterprise

note to self: never click on a mordy link again. i've wasted so much time reading thinkpieces by smart people making really dumb, overly broad arguments.

idk about "god's work" but I do prefer a "wrong" provocative piece to a "right" boring one

your reaction to an article you didn't like seems a bit over the top imo

i'm just sick of reading stupid thinkpieces, is all.

idk about "god's work" but I do prefer a "wrong" provocative piece to a "right" boring one

― Mordy, Friday, January 30, 2015 1:08 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

disagree. who need to get their blood pressure up for no reason? not me.

Maybe its a worthwhile discussion in its own right but I'm not particularly interested in the whole leftist disingenuity wrt Islam angle he hooks the piece on. His gloating on the matter cheapens whatever genuine interest and sympathy he purports to have; even more so when he links back to earlier pieces in making his point that feature the same factional sneering.

Beyond that its a pretty good illustration of the nonsense you're likely to come up with if you evaluate culture and religion in broad strokes and through the prism of warfare. His conflation of all Sahelian conflict is particularly daft. His relating of Boko Haram to Arab racism/skin tone is baffling and completely nonsensical.

The blunt vilification of the Kanuri is appalling bordering on outright racist. In fact much of the ethnography he employs in that piece vacillates between patronising, ill considered and flat out malicious. Its baffling to me that he thinks it makes sense to refer to century old sources that are couched in the scientific racism that underpinned the colonial period and use them unreservedly in blanket evaluations of modern day people. He might as well bring out some tape and start measuring skulls.

This is a decent (and relatively concise) appraisal of much of what the article touches on for anyone that's interested.
http://africanarguments.org/2014/12/19/the-tragedy-of-borno-state-local-dimensions-of-boko-harams-insurgency-by-michael-baca/

The history he lays down is extensive (even admirably so) but also deeply flawed. You're better off disregarding his description of the civil war and its causes entirely. The narrative that places the Igbo as victims of Nigerian history and the Hausa/Fulani as the hand of oppression is seductively elegant and easy to swallow but also beyond facile. I strongly suspect that much of his understanding of the Biafra war and the Igbo people came from Chinua Achebe's "There Was a Country" and while a great read, it is a reflection of Achebe's place in Nigerian history as an Igbo man that loved his people and fought for Biafra. It reflects his growing disillusionment with the realities of Nigerian statehood shortly before he passed. It is a memoir, not a dedicated historical text but it's quite clear that this guy has treated it as such.

A weird piece. Aside from the Igbophile streak and a blanket disdain for Islamic Sahelian cultures I can't really understand where he's coming from or place what paradigms he's followed to get to a lot of the conclusions he's made. I can't be too mad at that because he's essentially working in a vacuum with this. The people he considers his peers aren't likely to challenge what he writes here and I guess that gives him room to take a lot of license with the topic. At least in that sense the lack of "Hunger for Knowledge" he refers to presents a real issue.

To his credit I will say the aside about Ben Okri made me chuckle.

Thanks

yeah, good critique there

An NRA style response to a NY Times article on the brutality of Boko Haram:

Why can't we arm the women? Everyone else has guns. They seem as plentiful as gum drops. At least then they'd have a fighting chance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/06/world/africa/boko-haram-refugees-recount-brutality-and-random-killings-in-nigerias-north.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

i'd love to read a breakdown of chad's foreign affairs involvement over the last 2 decades

Chad's involvement in Mali with the French was considered a success by some, but its role elsewhere as you have noted has been considered more problematic. Someone must have published and posted a study or report or something on their recent history

Nigeria’s election agency on Saturday night put off a closely contested presidential election after weeks of pressure to postpone it from the ruling party, which analysts say was facing potential defeat for the first time in more than 15 years

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/world/africa/nigeria-postpones-elections-citing-security-concerns.html?mabReward=R4&action=click&pgtype=Homepage®ion=CColumn&module=Recommendation&src=rechp&WT.nav=RecEngine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/world/africa/nigerias-fight-against-boko-haram-gets-help-from-south-african-mercenaries.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/world/africa/nigeria-presidential-election.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Election day

Goodluck Naija

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-32139858

General Buhari won. 1st time a sitting Nigerian president has been defeated in an election.

So he's gonna stop corruption and Boko Haram.

Yup he'll also bring peace to the middle east and make the NCAA pay student athletes.

Reaction has been relatively muted which I guess isn't surprising. I'd imagine most feel like his presidency doesn't actually start until we get first indication of how good (or bad) he's actually going to be.

Asari-Dokubo is tacitly and eloquently threatening a return to militancy in the Delta which is also expected but his words are resonant.

“While President Jonathan enjoys his moments and basks in the euphoria of a new world-renowned statesman having congratulated Muhammadu Buhari, we must quickly be reminded that our struggle was never about Jonathan or about the presidency.

“President Jonathan is an establishment beneficiary of our struggle, our sweat and blood that many bled and died for. He was never in the struggle and he can never wish away our collective march for statesmanship.

“Yes indeed, to an extent, he was a mitigating factor in self-determination pursuit as we went on sabbatical. This mitigation he seems to have willingly repudiated. The days coming will be critical. We shall study all the conditions and consult widely before determining the way forward for our collective existence and survival as a people. The days coming shall either drive the quest of integration or further separate us.”

Is this the dude who jailed fela?

I think so

http://granta.com/lagos-must-prosper/

14 April marks one year since the nearly 300 ‪#‎ChibokGirls‬ were kidnapped in Nigeria, and kidnappings and violence are ongoing. Today, UNICEF released a report about the hundreds of thousands of children facing abduction and conscription in regions where Boko Haram is active. ‪#‎365daysON‬ ‪#‎BringBackOurGirls‬

hard to believe it's been a year

Just got around to reading the piece on Lagos you posted Mordy, it was excellent. Captures a very wide snapshot of where the city is right now. Thanks for putting me on to that guy had never heard of him.

this is simply horrific:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/19/world/africa/boko-haram-militants-raped-hundreds-of-female-captives-in-nigeria.html

Hopefully the Nigerian government can finally do something but it does not look good

this is outrageous - that it's going on and that it has been ongoing w/ barely a whisper in the media:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/18/number-of-children-displaced-by-boko-haram-surpasses-1-4-million/

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/16/dozens-die-in-double-suicide-bomb-attack-on-nigerian-mosque

I really hope the US can bring some stability to Nigeria. I know it seems unlikely but this seems to me like the kind of foreign intervention that the US can execute effectively and make a difference. It reminds me in many ways of the recent French intervention in Mali - and not just because I love music from both countries. For one, they actually seem happy that the US is there: http://news.yahoo.com/nigeria-welcomes-us-troops-cameroon-over-boko-haram-152233717.html

Also, although it gets a bad rating from the Democracy Index, surely the election in March and peaceful transition of power is an indication that democracy is much healthier in Nigeria than previously thought?

I met a guy from here this summer who was definitely not treating his job as a sinecure: https://www.cert.gov.ng/
I actually think that bodes well. A tiny anecdotal indicator but hey

to unpack that a bit - having a national CERT function is a bit of a luxury, and having one that has senior staff who really seem to care, and want to work collaboratively with their peers and counterparts, is a sign that a state is investing in infrastructure in a pretty forward-thinking way. If you want an advanced economy then you invest in ICT capacity, and if you want the best ROI on your ICT investments then you sponsor security and risk management functions like a national CERT. If that is indeed where NG is heading then that's really exciting. This reminds me yet again that I need to pay more attention to G77 goings-on.

just supplying intelligence not combat

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/14/us-nigeria-bokoharam-usa-defense-idUSKCN0S828F20151014?mod=related&channelName=worldNews

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/14/us-nigeria-bokoharam-usa-idUSKCN0S823F20151014

U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the troops would provide intelligence to a multi-national task force being set up to fight Boko Haram and composed of troops from Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, Chad and Benin.

just in case you weren't sure if the boko situation was still a horrific mess: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-nigeria-violence-idUSKCN0VJ265

Stealing NG's bandwidth
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/news/photos/000/838/83851.jpg

Incredible thing is how much further it is to the absolute front.

I mean yeah the scale of the thing is grotesque and the traffic it results in is beyond insane but once you actually go to the camp and see the orphanage, rehab centre, soup kitchen, the schools, banks, the clinic, maternity centre and the jobs the whole outfit generates, Wole Soyinka grumbling about the Ibadan expressway seems somewhat irrelevant.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/12/world/africa/niger-nigeria-boko-haram-food-crisis.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

DIFFA, Niger — Only 2 years old, Fatouma Ouseini lay in a hospital room, undernourished and listless from fever.

She is among the nearly half a million children expected to endure the food crisis that has plagued the Lake Chad region in the past year, aid groups say, a disaster brought on by Boko Haram’s relentless campaign of killing, kidnappings and looting of entire villages.

Fatouma and her family fled from just across the border in northeastern Nigeria, the epicenter of the war with Boko Haram, where scattered areas have teetered on the brink of famine for most of this year, according to the United Nations. Now, some aid workers fear that similar conditions could spill over to bordering areas like here in Niger, putting even more children at risk.

More than 70,000 people fled their homes along the border between Niger and Nigeria in the first half of this year after militant attacks increased. Many have resettled in Diffa, living in labyrinth-like neighborhoods of mud-brick homes, competing with longtime residents for food and water.

Will see what the UN and ngos can do...

On the current mass protests against police brutality (that I mentioned in the Wizkid thread):

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/12/world/africa/nigeria-protests-police-sars.html

https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2020/10/14/in-pictures-protests-in-nigeria-2/

Queer activist Amara, one of the protesters profiled in that Al-Jazeera piece, ran into her own problems unfortunately:

A lady brought a 🌈 rainbow flag
and our fellow
protesters turned on us at Berger Roundabout Abuja.
they tore our placards and seized the flag.
I got it back but they refused that we fly it.
I wore it on my neck and they refused.
said we either take it off or leave.
I’m leaving pic.twitter.com/ZyaTzR7TQg

— Amara, the lesbian. (@the_amarion) October 14, 2020

Good thread on the protests:

I’ve been looking for a thread to share with some context to the #EndSarsNow protests for my followers but I haven’t seen one yet – so I’ll do one. Feel free to quote tweet threads in the replies.

— Black as in Revolution. (@annie_etc_) October 11, 2020

that thread provides useful background - meanwhile, the government’s response is becoming increasingly horrifying:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/21/nigeria-president-calls-for-calm-amid-reports-of-protesters-shot-dead-in-lagos

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on the protests and the crackdown:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/opinion/chimamanda-adichie-nigeria-protests.html

paywalled, so I’m putting it here:

Opinion

Nigeria Is Murdering Its Citizens

Under President Muhammadu Buhari, there is a sense that the country could burn to the ground.

By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Oct. 21, 2020

LAGOS, Nigeria — For years, the name SARS hung in the air here in Nigeria like a putrid fog. SARS, which stood for Special Anti-Robbery Squad, was supposed to be the elite Nigerian police unit dedicated to fighting crime, but it was really a moneymaking terror squad with no accountability. SARS was random, vicious, vilely extortionist. SARS officers would raid bars or stop buses on the road and arbitrarily arrest young men for such crimes as wearing their hair in dreadlocks, having tattoos, holding a nice phone or a laptop, driving a nice car. Then they would demand large amounts of money as “bail.”
SARS officers once arrested my cousin at a beer parlor because he arrived driving a Mercedes. They accused him of being an armed robber, ignored the work ID cards he showed them, took him to a station where they threatened to photograph him next to a gun and claim he was a robber, unless he paid them a large sum of money. My cousin is one of the fortunate few who could pay an amount large enough for SARS, and who was released. He is not one of the many tortured, or the many disappeared, like Chijioke Iloanya.
In 2012 Mr. Iloanya was 20 when SARS officers arrested him at a child dedication ceremony in Anambra State. He had committed no crime. His family tried to pay to have him released but were asked to bring more money than they had. So they sold their property to raise money and went back to the SARS office but Mr. Iloanya was no longer there. They have not seen him since. Photos of him on social media show a young man, still almost a child, with sensitive eyes and a future waiting for him. There are so many families like the Iloanyas who are caught between pain and hope, because their sons and brothers were arrested by SARS and they fear the worst, knowing the reputation of SARS, but still they dare to hope in the desperate way we humans do for those we love.
There have been End SARS protests, since 2016, but October 2020 was different, a tipping point had been reached. The protests signaled the overturning of convention — the protesters insisted on not having a central leadership, it was social rather than traditional media that documented the protests, and, in a country with firm class divisions, the protests cut across class. The protests were peaceful, insistently peaceful, consistently peaceful. They were organized mostly on social media by young Nigerians, born in the 1980s and 1990s, a disaffected generation with the courage to act. Their bravery is inspiring. They speak to hope and to the possibility of what Nigeria could become. Of those involved in the organization, none is more remarkable than a group called Feminist Coalition, set up by Nigerian feminists, who have raised more than $180,000, and have provided legal aid, security and food to protesters.
But the Nigerian government tried to disrupt their fund-raising. The Nigerian government has reportedly accused Flutterwave, the company through which the donation link was created, of accepting funds from terrorists, even though it is clear that Feminist Coalition’s members are not terrorists. Their fund-raising link suddenly stopped working. Still, they persisted, and began to raise money through Bitcoin.

From the capital city of Abuja to the small town of Ogbomosho, state agents attacked and beat up protesters. The police killed a few and detained many others, until social media and video evidence forced them to release some of the detained. Still, the protesters persisted.
The Lagos State government accused protesters of violence, but it defied common sense that a protest so consistently committed to peaceful means would suddenly turn around and become violent. Protesters know they have everything to lose in a country like Nigeria where the mere hint of violence gives free reign to murderous security forces. Nigeria’s political culture is steeped in state-sponsored thuggery. Politicians routinely hire thugs to cause chaos, especially during elections, and many people believed that thugs had been hired to compromise the protests. On social media, videos that attested to this — of thugs getting into SUVs that belonged to the government, of hardened and hungry young men admitting they were paid to join the protests and become violent. Still, the protesters persisted.

At about noon on Oct. 20, 2020, about two weeks into the protests, the Lagos State governor suddenly announced a curfew that would begin at 4 p.m., which gave people in a famously traffic-clogged state only a few hours to get home and hunker down. I feared that a curfew would provide an excuse for state violence, that in the name of restoring order, the army and police would unleash violence. Still, I was unprepared for the carnage that followed at the Lekki Toll Gate, the most prominent in Lagos. Government officials reportedly cut the security cameras, then cut off the bright floodlights, leaving only a darkness heavy with foreboding. The protesters were holding Nigerian flags, sitting on the ground, some kneeling, some singing the national anthem, peaceful and determined.
A blurry video of what happened next has gone viral — soldiers walk toward the protesters with a terrifyingly casual calm, the kind of calm you cannot have if you are under attack, and they shoot, not up in the air, which anyway would still be an atrocity when dealing with peaceful protesters, but with their guns at arm level, shooting into a crowd of people, shooting to kill. Sparks of gunfire taint the air. It is still unclear how many died. Those at the scene say that the Nigerian army took away some bodies, and prevented ambulances from getting in to help the injured, and that there was still shooting going on hours later, in the morning.
The Nigerian state has turned on its people. The only reason to shoot into a crowd of peaceful citizens is to terrorize: to kill some and make the others back down. It is a colossal and unforgivable crime. The brazenness is chilling, that the state would murder its citizens, in such an obviously premeditated way, as though certain of the lack of consequences.
It is anarchy, a friend told me. Nigeria is descending into chaos, another friend said. They may be right, but “anarchy” and “chaos” are different ways of using language to shield what is fundamentally to blame — a failure of leadership. It did not have to be like this. The government of President Muhammadu Buhari has long been ineffectual, with a kind of willful indifference. Under his leadership, insecurity has worsened; there is the sense that Nigeria could very well burn to the ground while the president remains malevolently aloof. The president himself has often telegraphed a contemptuous self-righteousness, as though engaging fully with Nigerians is beneath him. Twelve hours after soldiers shot peaceful protesters, Mr. Buhari still had not addressed the nation.

A movement cannot spread so organically and widely across Nigeria if it does not legitimately reflect the grievances of ordinary people. A democratically elected government that is unable or unwilling to fully address those grievances has failed.
In the first week of the protests, the president sent out a tweet and then gave a flaccid speech about ending SARS. The inspector general of police has announced that SARS has been scrapped, but the government has announced the dissolution of SARS a few times in the past, starting in 2017. Because Nigerians are so accustomed to the two-faced nature of their governments, to promises destroyed even before being made, it is unsurprising that the protesters distrust the government and are demanding clear actions rather than words.
For weeks I have been in my ancestral hometown, where we first buried my beloved father, and then a week later, buried his only sister, my Aunt Rebecca. Immersed in my own raw grief, the frequent moments of stunned sorrow, thinking of my father’s casket being lowered into the rain-softened earth, wondering if it might still all be a bad dream, I think with a new kind of poignancy about those who have been killed. I think of their families brutally plunged into the terrible abyss of grief, made more terrible by the knowledge that their loved ones were killed by their country. And for what? Because they peacefully asked to be allowed to live.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a novelist and the author, most recently, of “Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions.”

If anyone wants to keep up to date, Al Jazeera’s reporting seems quite on the ball. Not sure what’s the most reliable Nigerian news site, but The Guardian (guardian.ng) appears not to be in bed with the Buhari government at least (it does have other issues tho, if Wikipedia is to be believed). Music/culture website Native (thenativemag.com) is good for its reporting and opinionating from a pro-youth, pro-feminist, pro-lgbtq+ perspective.

I can't get al-jazeera america. Don't have cable. But ty for posting that article.

I meant aljazeera.com, their news site, sorry if that was unclear.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/19/nigeria-battling-worst-floods-in-a-decade-with-more-than-300-people-killed-in-2022