Tyson's ECOWAS Occasional Journal - Politics in West Africa

OK, so a few hours I put up a post with a quick history of politics in Nigeria. A few words now about the current campaign. Nigeria's presidential elections are scheduled for April 9, 2011 .  I've had several people ask me my opinion about the election, but I hadn't been keeping up, so I did a little research and this is what I came up with: The frontrunner seems to be Goodluck Jonathan , the current president and PDP candidate.  The PDP has held the presidency since democracy was reintroduced to Nigeria in 1999, although these each of these elections have been marred by violence and fraud . The PDP has a "gentleman's agreement" that the presidency will be rotated between the North and South.  Obasanjo, president for 1999-2007, is Yoruba, from the Southwest part of the country.  Obasanjo's vice-president, Atiku Abubakar, is a northerner (and former supporter of bad guy Sani Abacha, who imprisoned Obasanjo) that planned to succeed Obasanjo, but then...

Several times over the past few weeks people have asked me what I think about the Nigerian election coming up, and I haven't been keeping up, so I will quickly get up to speed now. Background Under British colonial rule, Nigeria was divided into two or three regions (the Southern region was divided in 1939) - the North, mostly Muslim and Hausa, and in the South there was the West, mostly Yoruba (Christian and Muslim), and the East (mostly Igbo and Christian now, probably a higher share of animists back then). Historically the South was more educated than the North, but Northerners made up a good share of the military. At independence it was 3 provinces in a federal system, but the number has multiplied since, in part because oil revenues are shared by province so there's an incentive to have your own province. In Nigeria's history, it's had a couple of short democratic spells (4-6 years each) followed by military coups in 1966 and 1983.  There were democratic ele...

Things are still bad in Cote d'Ivoire Three months after Ouattara won the presidential election, (former) President Gbagbo refuses to give up the office. When I was in Abidjan in 1997, it felt like a little piece of Paris in the middle of Africa.  But now there are youth militias, pro-Gbagbo and pro-Outtara, fighting it out in Abidjan suburbs, with dozens of casualties. The police and army, pro-Ggagbo, are firing on peaceful protestors.

This map from the NY Times has a nice summary of the current state of affairs.  Qaddafi still controls Tripoli, where about 1 out of 6 Libyans lives (the city has a population of about 1 million, and the country has a population of about 6 million). Tripoli is on the western side of the country, not too far from Tunisia.  He also controls several other smaller cities in the neighborhood, particularly west of Tripoli, with the exception of Zawiyah, which is 25 miles west of Tripoli and has an oil refinery.  Qaddafi has a major attack right now against Zawiyah, trying to win it back from rebels. Most of the country east of Tripoli is controlled by the rebels except for Surt, which is where Qaddafi's tribe is from. A few days ago the rebels took control of Ras Lanuf, another refinery town, but Qaddafi's troops are attacking there, too, trying to win it back. Most of the towns south-west of Tripoli are also held by the rebels. The opposition does not want the West to s...

So it's been almost 2 months since my last post.  I haven't been keeping up with my plan to post something almost every day.  I am now recommitting myself!  Not to the insane asylum, but to trying to put something up every day. And there has been a lot of news in the past two months, obviously. In my last post I said that Mubarak and Qadaffi might want to worry, and that was indeed true - Mubarak has now stepped down and Qadaffi is in big trouble, but holding on.  I was somewhat right that Qadaffi was likely to hold on because of that country's dependence on oil - he has a freer hand to crack down on rebellious citizens because he doesn't rely much on local tax dollars to survive.  But the rebellious citizens are doing a good job of taking control of the oil fields and refineries and whatnot, and the international community is freezing his foreign assets where they can find them, so he eventually may run out of funds, but he obviously has a lot saved up and ...