Having cut short a trip to South Africa and annulled a planned state visit to Namibia, President Goodluck Jonathan has declared a “state of emergency” in the three northern states of Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa. In announcing this step, Jonathan acknowledged that there is an “insurrection” in northeast Nigeria, and that the government has lost control of certain geographic areas to “Boko Haram,” a defuse Islamist movement. Read more »

Friends of Africa often anoint “for the moment” selected leaders from that continent as heroes. Nigeria’s Olusegun Obasanjo, Congo’s Mobutu Sese-Seko, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame have all enjoyed that status at one time or another. Often the “hero” immediately follows a tyrant–or chaos. Obasanjo followed a generation of military rulers, and his immediate predecessor was the “tyrant” Sani Abacha who resorted to judicial murder; Mobutu emerged from Congo’s domestic chaos and civil war and promised inoculation against the Communists; Mugabe followed the racist regime of Ian Smith and promised racial reconciliation; and Paul Kagame “ended” the genocide in Rwanda. Read more »

French former president Nicolas Sarkozy criticized the French intervention in Mali in a March 6 magazine interview. He is quoted as saying, “the rule is never to go into a country that has no government,” and, “What are we doing there if we’re not just supporting putschists and trying to control a territory four times larger than France with four thousand men?” Read more »

It’s hard to get the details on the logistical arrangements, or numbers, of the ECOWAS force in Mali. The majority of Nigeria’s promised 1,200 troops are reportedly deployed to a military base in Niger, or still stationed in Bamako. However, the Nigerian media organization Premium Times reports that the Nigerian troops actually in Mali are suffering from inadequate provisions, especially food. Citing a “defense source,” Premium Times  reports that Nigerian soldiers are resorting to, in effect, shaking down their Malian hosts under the guise of making “courtesy calls.” Apparently, they ask for–and receive–food, in one case a cow and fifty bags of rice from a prefect. The story is roundly denied by a Nigerian defense spokesman who is quoted, “we have provided the contingent with enough food and funds to last them for the initial three months. Is Nigeria not bigger than that?” Read more »

This is a guest post by Fr. Giles Conacher, a Benedictine monk based in Ghana. 

Ghana is often portrayed as Africa’s answer to sliced bread, a political and economic role model for all of Africa–does it deserve so much credit?

Politically it shows creditable maturity. In elections in 2004, 2008, and 2012 it successfully and peacefully changed president. The margin between losers and the victors, in the 2008 presidential runoff, was 48.1 percent to 51.9 percent, and yet there was a change of government, party, and president; no riots. I was proud of “our Ghana,” I tell you! Read more »

Mali and Algeria have largely driven Nigeria out of the headlines over the past several days, except with respect to Nigerian troop commitments to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) intervention force. Serious and informed speculation about the relationship between Boko Haram, militants in Mali, and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has also been largely absent. Read more »

What a difference a fortnight can make.

On January 7, 2013, the eve of the Islamist feint south, the Jonathan government announced that it was reducing its troop pledge for the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Mali intervention force that was to be deployed in September 2013. Nigeria would contribute 450 troops, not 600. It also signaled that it would be unable to bear the lion’s share of the costs, as it had in previous ECOWAS interventions in African states to restore or maintain security. But, in the aftermath of the French intervention, the Jonathan government reversed its course to significantly increase that contribution. On January 17, the Nigerian Senate approved deployment of 1,200 troops. Some Nigerian troops have been on the ground in Mali for a few days already, according to the Abuja government. Read more »

Nigeria–the giant of West Africa–could be expected to play an outsized role in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) force to intervene in Mali. The commander of the force is Nigerian, and Nigeria has reported it will supply 900 of the total force of 3,300. In the past, Nigeria has also footed the lion’s share of the costs of regional intervention forces. Read more »

The Nigerian press, citing foreign ministry sources, reports that the federal government has cut its pledge of 600 military personnel to 450 for the planned Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) UN Security Council-mandated intervention force in northern Mali. Again citing the foreign ministry, the press reports that such are the domestic security challenges, that the Nigerian military is currently actively engaged in thirty-four of the thirty-six states of the Federation. Nigeria also stated that it is no position to carry almost all of the costs of the regional operations, as it did in the interventions into Liberia and Sierra Leone. Read more »

In Nigeria, it is often said that the Arab racism inoculates the Sahel against al-Qaeda. Now, there is a credible report of black African defections from al-Qaeda linked groups in northern Mali. Hicham Bilal, who claims to have been the only black battalion leader within the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), defected in November and returned to his native Niger. In a press interview he accused jihadist groups in Mali of racism. The leadership is “white,” while blacks are “cannon fodder,” he said. He also complained that MUJAO included drug traffickers. MUJAO controls the city of Gao. According to another journalist, race may also play a role in Ansar Dine-controlled Timbuktu. Its leadership is “white,” from Algeria and Mauritania. Read more »