The Giant of Africa is Teeming with Violence
Nigeria is grappling with a horrific spate of killings and kidnappings
Despite being the sixth most populous country in the world and a major oil producer, Nigeria doesn’t get a ton of attention in Western media. But the west African nation deserves our scrutiny for a litany of reasons including disruptions to the global oil market, the ongoing Boko Haram insurgency, the presence of the Islamic State-West Africa Province, and deteriorating economic conditions which will likely fuel ongoing violence.
Nigeria (like the other African countries I’ve written about in past newsletters) emerged as an independent nation in the second half of the twentieth century only to be consumed by civil war and military coups, with brief interregnums of democracy. The United Kingdom granted Nigeria independence in 1960 but after six years of parliamentary democracy, a series of coups destabilized the country and led the southeast to secede as the self-styled ‘Republic of Biafra’. The ensuing three year civil war would claim upwards of three million Nigerian lives.
After a brief period of post-civil war democratic rule, various military officers would stage three additional coups during the twentieth century with a civilian government only returning twenty five years ago. And while democratization is always a good thing, the fourth republic has been marred by violence and the emergence of Salafi-Jihadists in the region.
Abuja has been combatting Boko Haram since 2009, but recently there’s been a concerning rash of armed herder violence plaguing the country as well. Just two weeks ago herders slaughtered thirty people in central Nigeria in a devastating raid:
At least 30 people have been killed and several others injured in Nigeria's central Plateau state in a series of attacks around Mangu town, despite a curfew imposed by the state government, a community spokesperson said…Survivors reported that the gunmen indiscriminately shot at people, including women and children, and set fire to houses and property.
This comes directly on the heels of a Christmas Day massacre where gunmen butchered at least 160 villagers in what appears to have been a religiously motivated terrorist attack. Nigerians also have to contend with the threat of kidnapping and extortion—a group of students were abducted 175 miles southwest of the capital just last Tuesday:
Gunmen in Nigeria kidnapped six students and three teachers from a school in southwestern Ekiti state on Monday night, the state government said on Tuesday, in the country's first reported abduction involving school children this year…The Ekiti state government said in a statement the latest abduction took place when the students and teachers were returning from a local trip on Monday night. The school bus driver was also taken.
The recent murder and kidnapping epidemic is reaching all levels of Nigerian society and the federal government seems helpless as the country becomes consumed with banditry and wanton killing. To that point: last Thursday armed men assassinated a local monarch and kidnapped his wife:
Gunmen killed a Nigerian traditional monarch and kidnapped his wife after raiding his palace, police said, as outrage grows over a spate of abductions across the country. Attackers stormed the palace of Oba Aremu Olusegun Cole in south-western Kwara state, shot him dead and abducted his wife and another person on Thursday.
Unfortunately, violence in the country isn’t limited to Islamic jihadists or nomadic herders, as the Nigerian military routinely bombs civilians accidentally and attempts to cover it up after the fact. Amnesty International is reporting that last December, Nigerian air strikes killed 120 civilians attending a Muslim festival:
At around 10pm on 3 December, the Nigerian military launched an air strike on a religious gathering at Tudun Biri – a village near Kaduna northern Nigeria. A second air strike was launched around 30 minutes later, killing dozens, including those who rushed to the scene to rescue victims of the initial strike.
A state can’t function with this level of violence and as fragile west African democracies continue to fall to military regimes, the United States should be doing all it can to strengthen the democratic institutions in Abuja. That starts with urging the government in Nigeria to increase transparency surrounding their counter-terrorism operations and to ensure their intelligence doesn’t lead them to inadvertently massacring innocent worshipers.
Adding to the concern that Nigeria’s government could be overthrown in a coup is the country’s tail spinning currency—a few weeks ago one U.S. dollar was worth 1421 naira. This kind of economic devastation fuels extremist recruitment efforts, fosters resentment towards central governments, and can create conditions fertile for a coup. How many putsches have been justified by military officers claiming civilians were mismanaging their countries’ economies?
Violence, insecurity, and corruption have predictably also affected the nation’s most precious commodity and industry: oil. Violent gangs routinely battle for territory to siphon off oil from pipelines all throughout the delta:
Today, among all the other challenges weighing down Africa’s most populous state, Nigeria must struggle to maintain a steady production of oil in a region where militants and ordinary citizens alike increasingly steal it straight from the pipeline. Oil bunkering, artisanal refining, coal fire—there are several names to describe the business of siphoning crude and distilling it at unofficial, jerry-built refineries into various gasoline products. While illegal, oil bunkering has developed into a sophisticated and far-reaching industry that thrives because of high-level collusion among many of those responsible for ensuring Nigeria’s oil production.
Secretary Blinken visited Nigeria last month as part of a diplomatic effort to counter Russia’s increasing influence in the region but between dealing with the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the Iranian attacks on U.S. troops in the Middle East, I doubt the 7th floor at the State Department has a lot of bandwidth for the deteriorating situation in west Africa. But should Nigeria suffer the same fate as Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Guinea, a country almost the population of the United States will become a repressive deadly nightmare friendly with the Vladimir Putin’s chaos exporting Kremlin.
Iran
The United States has executed a series of air strikes in Iraq and Syria in the wake of the Iran-backed drone attack on U.S. forces in Jordan that killed three soldiers on January 28. In response, Iran has shamelessly claimed these retaliatory strikes violated Iraq and Syria’s sovereignty (ignoring the fact that the presence of the “Axis of Resistance” in the countries is the true escalatory violation of territorial integrity):
Iran's foreign ministry on Saturday condemned overnight U.S. air strikes in Iraq and Syria as "violations of the sovereignty and territorial integrity" of the two countries. In Tehran's first response to the U.S. strikes, ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said in a statement that they represented "another adventurous and strategic mistake by the United States that will result only in increased tension in instability in the region".
The United States is not firing drones and missiles at commercial shipping in the Red Sea, nor would there be anything to “escalate” if the IRGC wasn’t training every radical on the continent how to fire an explosive drone at security forces.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan suggested Sunday that the military will be conducting further operations in response to the deadly January 28 attack. Given this administration’s track record it will likely not be enough to deter additional IRGC sponsored attacks in the region but hopefully they prove me wrong.
Armenia
Recent statements from Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan suggest the south Caucus republic may indeed be drifting out of Russia’s orbit after the spectacular failure of Russian peacekeepers in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict:
Armenia's defense strategy cannot rely on Russia as it used to, and Yerevan needs to more closely examine security relations with the U.S., France, India, and other countries, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Feb. 1, the Armenpress news agency reported…The country must also decide whether to remain a member of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), he added. As the rift between Armenia and Russia widens, Yerevan has been looking further west for allies, securing military aid from France.
I’ve argued before we should be doing everything we can to encourage an Armenian-Russian breakup. Given the strategic location Armenia occupies straddling Russia, Turkey, and Iran they could prove an important security partner in an increasingly unstable region.
Venezuela
President Nicolás Maduro has all but guaranteed himself a third term after Venezuela’s Supreme Court barred opposition candidate Maria Corina Machado from running in 2024’s TBD presidential election. The court justified the move alleging “tax violations”, which prompted the United States to re-impose previously lifted sanctions:
The US has reimposed economic sanctions against a Venezuelan state-owned mining company and says it could go on to reimpose further sanctions on the country’s oil and gas sector after Venezuela’s Supreme Court barred main opposition candidate Maria Corina Machado from running for president last week.
Meanwhile, Brazil is fortifying its border with Venezuela amid the rising tension over Maduro’s faux annexation of the Essequibo region in December:
A convoy of military trucks and armored vehicles set off for Brazil's northern border on Friday to reinforce the presence of the Brazilian army in response to tensions over Venezuela's claim to Guyana's Esequibo region. More than two dozen armored cars arrived in Manaus by river transport and some left by road for Boa Vista, capital of Roraima state, where the local garrison will be increased to 600 soldiers, the army said in a statement.
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Disturbing news coming from the DRC where state intelligence agents apparently abducted peaceful protestors over the weekend:
Suspected agents of the National Intelligence Agency (ANR) abducted seven youth activists at a peaceful rally in Democratic Republic of Congo on Saturday, a youth group said. The LUCHA group said the activists, who included four members of the group, were bundled into a white Jeep by plain clothes agents and taken to an undisclosed location. The incident happened during a rally in the capital Kinshasa to draw attention to the security crisis in the east of the country, LUCHA said.
The country is also still reeling from the devastating flooding that has killed hundreds and displaced thousands more:
More than 300 people have died and 280,000 households in more than half the country have been forced to leave their homes since heavy rains started at the end of November. More than 1,500 schools, 267 health centres, 211 markets and 146 roads have been damaged.
Last week in the volatile east of the country, Islamic State-linked rebels brutally executed field workers as lawlessness and warfare plague the region:
Islamist rebels killed at least nine civilians in a string of attacks on Thursday and Friday in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the army and local authorities said. The attackers used machetes and guns to kill the victims who were working in fields in a rural area straddling the border of conflict-torn Ituri and North Kivu provinces, local traditional chief Fataki Sabuni said.
Ecuador
There are signs for optimism in Ecuador after President Noboa declared the “state of internal conflict” last month. Americas Quarterly editor-in-chief Brian Winter wrote last Friday:
But in the weeks since, Ecuador has shown unexpected resilience, led by its new president, Daniel Noboa. The 36-year-old leader has overseen a firm but calibrated response, jailing hundreds of suspected gang leaders and reestablishing some control of prisons and other institutions while also, in the words of one regional official, “not going full Bukele” – not casting aside the constitution or human rights in the manner of El Salvador’s hard-line leader.
The whole piece is worth reading and Winter makes a strong case that supplying Ecuador with the funds necessary to effectively combat the narco-terrorists operating in the country could help stem the tide of immigration to the United States’ overwhelmed southern border.
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