Nervous in Nigeria
Tremors in an important African nation
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation at 200 million, has two enormous problems. An insurgency has claimed another kidnapping at a girls’ school. Its president is in poor health and should probably step down. The fate of Nigeria matters to the United States, first for its size and magnitude and, second, because it is an important oil producer, with U.S. companies’ involvement.
The kidnapping follows the infamous Chibok event in 2014, in which nearly 300 female students were taken away by Boko Haram insurgents in northeast Nigeria; 112 are still missing. An estimated 110 schoolgirls were captured Feb. 19 at a school in Dapchi, also in the northeast, presumably by Boko Haram.
Boko Haram is an Islamic extremist movement whose name translates as “Western education is a sin.” It operates in northeastern Nigeria, centered on Maiduguri, but also in neighboring Cameroon, Chad and Niger, where four American soldiers were killed in October.
Nigeria’s president problem is complex. Normally the presidency rotates at the polls between someone from the predominantly Christian south and someone from the mostly Muslim north. Each frequently serves two terms. President Muhammadu Buhari, a former general, is in his first term and could expect a second in 2019. However, his health is bad. He has spent a significant part of his term in Britain, being treated for a disease that he has not even acknowledged by name. Pressure to decline a second term is growing.
The problems that Mr. Buhari and any successor would face are numerous and to some extent intractable. Nigeria remains breathtakingly corrupt. It depends for its export earnings on oil, the price of which remains volatile. Apart from the insurgency in the northeast, its government faces a rebellion in the south as well, in the former Biafra, by a movement that calls itself the Indigenous People of Biafra. The region is also home to Nigeria’s oil production.
Nigeria will be the last stop on a March 6-13 visit by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to Africa. It is hard to see what he or the United States can do about Nigeria’s dilemmas, except to say we care.