By Ike Okonta LAGOS: Nigeria’s sparkling new capital, is a city under siege. In August, Boko Haram, a shadowy and violent Muslim sect operating in the northeastern part of the country, bombed a building housing staff of the United Nations in the central part of the city, killing 23 people and seriously injuring 86. It was …
By Ike Okonta ABUJA: Nigerians like political theater, particularly if it is loud, colorful, and has a rich cast of “good” and “bad” characters. Such melodrama abounded from November 2009, when ailing President Umaru Yar’Adua was flown out of the country for treatment, until the just-concluded general elections, Nigeria’s fourth since military rule ended in 1999. …
By Ike Okonta ABUJA: Nigeria’s legislative elections, to be followed by a presidential poll on April 16, indicate that the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) has lost its near-total grip on the country’s politics. Of the four main opposition parties that fielded candidates for the 469 parliamentary seats in contention, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) …
By Ike Okonta LAGOS: The bombs that exploded in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, as the country was celebrating its golden jubilee earlier this month are a disturbing portent of the unprecedented political territory that the country is entering. The death last May of Umaru Yar’Adua, Nigeria’s president, upended the informal agreement between members of the ruling People’s …
