GoodLuck Jonathan.

Because he'll need it.

The current Nigerian President is perhaps the most appropriately named political leader of our time. At around 01:02 on 11/1/12 he presides over a country so fractured by ethnic and religious tensions that traditionally the only way to keep the peace has been to alternate the Presidency between a northern and southern candidate. By being the second southern President in a row Jonathon has been the first to break that cycle. He hopes to go on to solve Nigeria's other problems like being the largest private small arms market in the world and suffering the sort of crushing poverty you get when a nations politicians and civil servants are chosen more by multi-national oil companies rather then the voters they're supposed to represent. So far he's made a good start by doing some things which I'd prefer not to talk about to put pressure on corrupt local politicians and civil servants.

The most controversial thing he's done though is to abolish the government subsidy for retail petroleum products such as gasoline and diesel which many Nigerians use to fuel the generators that provide them with electricity. This issue more then any other highlights how badly Nigeria - Africa's largest oil producer - is being screwed over by multi-national oil companies. Due to the deals that these companies - mainly Shell - have done with previous governments they are more or less able to pump oil out of Nigeria for free and then sell it back to the country as refined petroleum products like gasoline for a massively inflated price. Successive Nigerian governments have tried to cover up this scandal by subsidising the price of gasoline at the pumps so ordinary Nigerians don't notice just how badly they're being ripped off. By scrapping the subsidy Jonathan is trying to save the Nigerian state around US$6bn per year so that money can be honestly re-invested in domestic petroleum production allowing Nigeria to re-claim some of it's sovereignty.

Unfortunately in the short term the abolition of the government subsidy coupled with the fact the oil companies are really not happy about it has seen the local gasoline price sky rocket to US$1 per litre. In a country where more then 70% of the population live below the poverty line of less the US$2 per day this means that most people are now spending more then 50% of their daily wages on a single litre of fuel. Here in the west we describe someone as being in fuel poverty if they are forced to spend 10% of their wages on fuel. I think it goes without saying that the abolition of the government fuel subsidy has annoyed a fair few people and provoked a lot of legitimate outrage with the country entering it's third day of an ongoing general strike and bloody clashes between police and protesters that have killed at least five.

However to see how effective this plan will be in the long term you only need to look at how the western oil companies and their corrupt local politicians fear it. So far they've lept on the issue and turned it into a well orchestrated campaign that has not only brought chaos to the streets and paralysed the national economy but put pressure on President Jonathon to explain in minute detail exactly what steps he intends to take to root out corruption in Nigeria's political class. The protests have even hit the Internet with organisers dubbing it "Occupy Nigeria" in order to trick western liberals into supporting the anti-government protests. Then of course there are the problems created by that elaborate cartographers joke "Boko Haram."*

Although they've been growing in strength and technical organisation since 2009 Boko Haram chose November 2011 to launch a major offensive from their northern strongholds in the Yobo and Borno provinces in preparation for President Jonathan's reforms. On November 5th they launched a suicide bombing, bombing and gun attack against government buildings in the town of Damatura killing between 100 and 150 people. Then there was the Christmas Day (25/12/11) bombings of Churches in Madalla, Jos, Gadaka and Damatura which killed at least 41 - a relatively low score by Nigerian standards. This increased violence in the north fed into an ongoing tribal land dispute that quickly exploded into rioting, fire bombings and shootings that left god knows how many dead. In response the Nigerian government was forced to call a state of emergency in Yobo and Borno on January 1st 2012 closing internal and national borders. In response on January 2nd 2012 Boko Haram issued an ultimatum giving Nigerian Christians living in the north three days to leave. This ultimatum was largely ignored and rejected by the Nigerian government so on January 5th 2012 Boko Haram mounted a localised bombing and shooting campaign. The good news is that so far they've only had limited success with only 10 fatalities reported in Yobo province, - 8 in an attack in a bar tonight (10-11/1/12) The bad news is that at around (02:10) at least one person has been killed in the southern city of Benin suggesting that the Christian south are now starting to take revenge on the Muslim north. A bad idea if I ever heard of one.



*In colonial times a colonial powers actual nation was shown on maps in a particular colour - red in Britain's case. Their colonies were then shown in a paler shade of the same colour which in Britain's case was pink. These paler coloured areas became known as "The Pale." If a colonial power were to try and gain more territory by moving their army outside the lighter shaded area they would cause offense and be said to "have gone beyond the pale." In the 1960's there was a British band named Procol Harum which sounds similar to Boko Haram. They had one hit entitled " A Whiter Shade Of Pale." So I don't care what Boko Haram think they're doing their names already a joke because that's what passes for comedy in MI6.