December 2, 2024: Fighting broke out again in central Nigeria, with several dead and many more wounded. Fulani raiders continue to attack farmers with abandon. Soldiers are unable to be everywhere at once to stop the raiders. There are similar trouble spots throughout central and northern Nigeria.

Despite the problems in the north, Nigeria is prospering, driven by increasing oil income from oil fields in the south. All sectors of the economy are improving. President Tinubu has been in office since March 2023, and concentrated on his pledges to reduce corruption in the Nigerian government. One of his first acts was to order an audit of the central bank to be followed by an audit of the federal payroll. The current economic crisis has made endemic and epidemic corruption more visible. This is very visible in the oil production industry, which has greatly inflated costs because of corruption. Higher oil prices are canceled by declines in production caused by criminals and corruption. Corruption inflates the cost of everything and reduces the quality of work done by the government, especially when it comes to infrastructure.

Nnamdi Azikiwe, who served as president from 1963 to 1966, was one of the key people in obtaining independence for Nigeria from British colonial rule. What is now Nigeria was a collection of separate kingdoms and tribal territories that Britain got involved with after it outlawed slavery in 1807 and began a decades-long campaign to suppress the slave trade between African tribes and the Americas. Slavery was an ancient custom in most of Africa but American and European demand for more slaves led to more powerful tribes attacking weaker tribes to capture them as slaves for sale to American and European slave traders.

In 1861 Britain took control of some portions of the Nigerian coast to deal with persistent slaving by inland tribes. Twenty years later Britain had control over more territory and installed a colonial government. This led, over the next 80 years, to Nigerian nationalism and talented men like Nnamdi Azikiwe working for independence. When the 1960s Igbo rebellion broke out, he advised the Igbo government for a few years before switching back to the Nigerian government.

After independence the biggest problem was corruption fed by the growing oil wealth coming from the oil fields in the southern Niger River Delta. It was later calculated that about a trillion dollars of oil income was stolen between the 1960s and the present.

Back in 2004, Islamic terrorist violence in the northeast appeared and created some lasting problems. There are still millions of refugees plus substantial economic damage in the northeastern Borno State, where it all began. There seems to be no end in sight because of corruption, but more competent leadership in the security forces reduced the violence. All this was caused by a local group of Taliban wannabes calling themselves Boko Haram. In English Boko Haram means that English Education is forbidden. Most Nigerians abhor the nihilistic Boko Haram and see this group as a threat to peace, prosperity and economic growth.

Boko Haram activity in the capital of Borno State grew for a decade until in 2014 it seemed unstoppable. It took over a year for the government to finally muster sufficient military strength to cripple but not destroy Boko Haram. This did not get much media attention outside Africa, even though in 2014 Boko Haram killed more people than ISIL/Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant did in Syria and Iraq. The main reason for Boko Haram gains in 2014 and 2015 was corruption in the army, which severely crippled effective counterterror efforts. By itself Boko Haram was too small to have much impact on a national scale but the inability to deal with this problem put a spotlight on the corruption that has hobbled all progress in Nigeria for decades.

A new president, a former general who is Moslem, was elected in early 2015 and made progress in changing the army’s corrupt culture, but that is still a work in progress even though he was reelected in early 2019. More bad news was expected because of too many tribal feuds and too much corruption creating growing unrest throughout the country, which led to reduced oil income and further disputes over that, etc. This is especially bad down south in the oil producing region, the Niger River Delta. Violence against oil facilities continues. Worse, local politicians and business leaders had taken over the oil theft business.

Northern Moslems want more control over the federal government and the oil money. In northern and central Nigeria there is increasing violence as nomadic Moslem herders move south and clash with largely Christian farmers over land use and water supplies. For the last few years these tribal feuds have killed more people than Boko Haram. The situation is still capable of sliding into regional civil wars, over money and political power. Corruption and ethnic/tribal/religious rivalries threaten to trigger, at worst, another civil war and at least more street violence and public anger.