Nigeria Tempo-Game: the paralysis might deepen

By on March 15, 2010

Input: Umaru Yar’Adua’s failure to constitutionally hand over power to Vice President Goodluck Jonathan has had more than just political implications for Nigeria.
Output: the perpetual power struggle among Nigeria’s ultra-rich elites can be explained in a tempo-game between the vice-president not allowed to take major decisions, and an acting president not yet able to make decisions because of his hailing conditions.
This picture of the top Nigerian brass – Yar’Adua is a Muslim; Jonathan is a Christian- explains exactly the deepening situation between the North and South of Nigeria.

Nigeria is going like an active volcano, summing mini-tensions and pressures that explode when it reach the critical level. One can call it animosities, religious hatred, population discontent or juvenile violence. All of it sometimes ends in streets or villages mass slaughters and killing, between the local farmers (whose Berom ethnic group happens to be Christian), and Fulani-speaking pastoralists who happen to be Muslim.
It is unfortunate what is happening now in Nigeria – a struggle for power at the top, and struggle for land at the bottom – it sounds like a formula for breaking Nigeria in two.
But it will probably never happen. History has shown that Nigeria has passed through very difficult times worse than now -the time of Biafra- and the unity of the country has resisted…

 

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