Nigeria| West Africa

CrisisWatch database

Recent reports and briefings

With a population estimated at 148 million in 2008, Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country and has been a force for regional peace and stability, contributing significantly to peacekeeping missions, particularly in West Africa. Endowed with vast reserves of oil and gas, Nigeria is also the continent’s potential economic powerhouse. But the country continually falls far short of realising its potentials, and is experiencing multiple and significant conflicts.

After a decade of civilian rule, following nearly three decades of military dictatorship, Nigeria remains handicapped by political malpractice, deep economic contradictions and social inequality.  The civilian experience since 1999 has failed to give most of the country's population a fair share of the country's wealth, open up new opportunities for economic advancement or fundamentally liberalise the political environment.

The April 2007 election, which marked the first transition from one civilian administration to another, was seriously flawed, producing leaders that enjoy scant legitimacy in the eyes of citizens. The political violence that surrounded those elections has subsided, but this does not represent a sustained positive trend. With the present administration failing in its promise to reform the electoral process, the country may be heading to another chaotic and non-credible election in 2011, with implications for peace and stability. Nigeria could also experience a major leadership crisis, along North-South lines, if the ailing President Umaru Yar’Adua fails to complete his term.

The over-centralisation of control over power and revenue; politicisation of ethnicity and religion; decline of state-administered security and justice; and the proliferation of non-state armed groups, all heighten the potential for violence in many of the country's 36 states. In the oil-rich Niger Delta, where ethnic leaders are demanding a greater share of oil revenues for the region, armed groups have been waging an insurgency which has severely sabotaged the oil industry – and enabled massive oil theft. Elsewhere, violent ethnic, religious and communal conflicts are recurrent. Since the return to democracy in 1999, such violence has caused the deaths of over 14,000 people and displaced over three million persons cumulatively. Threats of religious violence (Muslim versus Christian, fundamentalist versus moderate Islam, and anti-establishment sects versus the state) are continually evident, especially in the 12 northern states that have expanded the application of sharia law since 1999.

Deepening socio-economic problems (high unemployment, widespread poverty, dismal human welfare conditions) imply massive structural violence that feeds into various manifestations of armed conflict. Amidst the influx of small arms, evolution of organised crime and limited competence of security and judicial services, urban centres are particularly vulnerable to both organised group violence and armed criminality.

Nigeria is striving to assert its political weight in West Africa, across the African continent and beyond.  The federal government characterizes many of the risks and incidents of violent conflict as no more than law and order problems, and therefore responds to them as such. But unless it engages with the underlying issues of resource control, citizens' rights, power sharing and accountability, Nigeria will face an internal crisis of increasing proportions.  Moreover, if the international community, which tends to see Nigeria largely as a major oil producer and a regional police force, fails to better grasp the country’s internal dynamics and intricacies, there is a very real potential for the persistent levels of violence to escalate with major regional security implications.

Our reports on Nigeria are listed below, starting with the most recent. You can also search for relevant reports using the search box in the top right hand side of this page.
Articles, op-eds, speeches and media releases can be found under the media section.